Mexican President Mocks Texas Governor Over DOJ’s Border-Barrier Lawsuit
Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador mocked Texas Governor Greg Abbott this week over the recent lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against the state seeking the removal of various border barriers including buoys and fencing.
New York Times: Mandatory E-Verify Raises Wages for Florida Workers
Despite having only been in effect for a month, Florida’s mandatory E-Verify law — which requires employers to hire legal immigrants and American citizens — has already raised wages in working class jobs in the state, the New York Times admits.
As Breitbart News reported in May, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) made Florida the largest state in the nation to require all employers with 25 or more employees to screen its workforce through the federal government’s E-Verify system — ensuring that all new hires are legally residing in the United States.
Mandatory E-Verify in Florida took effect July 1.
In a piece where business executives complained that they cannot operate without hiring illegal aliens, the New York Times admits that the law has already helped boost wages for working class Americans who are the most likely to compete against illegal aliens for jobs.
The Times reported:
Tim Conlan, president of Reliant, a roofing company in Jacksonville, said a subcontractor had recently turned down a project after his workers refused to travel to Florida, preferring to stay in Georgia and the Carolinas. He also said that hourly rates for jobs had increased about 10 percent since the bill was signed into law in May. [Emphasis added]
In February 2020, tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us drafted a report that seemingly admitted that mandatory E-Verify in Florida would likely prod employers to raise wages so as to attract a legal workforce.
Though the Wall Street Journal has claimed that Florida already has a severe labor shortage and businesses cannot afford not to hire illegal aliens, wages across blue-collar industries in the state show no signs of a labor shortage or even a tight labor market for that matter.
For years, analysis of the federal government’s labor data has proven that there are no jobs Americans will not do. Of the 474 occupations tracked by the Commerce Department, just six are dominated by foreign workers.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
CUT AND PASTE YOUTUBE LINKS
“Midnight At The Border" | Running on Truth | Episode 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onrxX6Dwezs
HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF U.S. MONEY FLOWS BACK TO THE NARCOREGIME
"Mexican president candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for mass immigration to the United States, declaring it a "human right". We will defend all the (Mexican) invaders in the American," Obrador said, adding that immigrants "must leave their towns and find a life, job, welfare, and free medical in the United States."
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/07/mexican-president-andres-manuel-lopez.html
The deal with Mexico cooperation helps Biden’s deputies quietly funnel the chaotic and growing flood of illegal, job-seeking migrants through hidden side doors in the border, she said:
You no longer have videos of hundreds of people streaming across the Rio Grande [because] people are being flown in on taxpayer dollars, [and] poor people are coming through the ports of entry — again, with no legal right to be there — so that it doesn’t look like chaos …. [But] the end result is exactly the same: A massive number of people with no right to be here coming into the United States, using taxpayer dollars, taking taxpayer-funded services, competing for housing, competing for jobs, all of the rest of it.
THERE'S NO GREATER DANGER TO AMERICA THAN GAMER LAWYERS BIDEN AND MAYORKAS
Joe Biden increased pathways for migrants into the U.S. -- only to create a new border surge
Once upon a time, New York City's top urban planning strongman, Robert Moses, built highways and bridges across and into New York City, aiming to stop traffic congestion.
And more of them. And more. Moses is why New York City has the Triborough Bridge, the Brooklyn-Battery Link, Interstate 278, the Cross Bronx Expressway, and many other passageways. He built them all, and then he built some more.
And as every journalism student, having read Robert Caro's The Power Broker, would know, Moses was astonished. Instead of less traffic coming into Manhattan from the outer boroughs and beyond -- there was more. Manhattan became more traffic-congested than ever as a result, and lots of neighborhoods were ruined, too, divided and corrupted by the roaring overhead highways.
This curiously corresponds exactly to what we are seeing at the border right now -- a new migrant surge, coming in the wake of Joe Biden's expansion of what he claims are new, expanded, legal pathways for illegal immigrants to get into the country solely on their claims to asylum.
According to the Border Report:
McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) – Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol agents report recently encountering five large groups of 648 migrants on the South Texas border, a massive uptick since the lifting of Title 42.
...
But well, now they are. The old border surges are back, ready for the television cameras again, just as Joe Biden and his minions have gotten done crowing about how Biden solved the border crisis.
Observers of city planning have a word for this: The Congestion Paradox, brought on by what's known as "induced demand." When you build more roads, you get more, not less, traffic.
According to a very good unnamed writer at The Generalist Academy:
Moses built many bridges and roads with the goal of alleviating congestion in New York. However, every time a new bridge was built, traffic did not improve. Instead, people who normally wouldn’t drive switched from public transport to cars. People who wouldn’t normally make the trip decided that now it was worth it. More roads = more traffic.
Now, the fact that people were observing this back in the 1940s doesn’t change the fact that people keep insisting that more roads will solve traffic problems. And I understand why: it makes intuitive sense. It’s just mostly wrong. The technical term for this is “induced demand” – as in, by building roads you’re inducing more demand for roads.
The Wikipedia entry on Induced Demand has many important technical economic details for why this always happens, brought on by short-term and long-term variables.
But the conclusion is this:
A 2004 meta-analysis, which took in dozens of previously published studies, confirmed this. It found that:
...on average, a 10 percent increase in lane miles induces an immediate 4 percent increase in vehicle miles travelled, which climbs to 10 percent – the entire new capacity – in a few years.
An aphorism among some traffic engineers is "Trying to cure traffic congestion by adding more capacity is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt."
Its roughly correspond to the old economic adage that if you tax something less, you get more of it, and if you tax something more, you get less of it.
It's the same dynamic with roads -- and now immigration pathways -- because human nature is always going to be human nature.
Joe Biden has repeated the Moses mistake in spades by increasing "legal" pathways for entry into the U.S. from people who shun ordinary immigration procedures. Unlike Pete Buttigieg, whose "racist highways" claims were clearly bowdlerized from Caro's book, Biden doesn't read these kinds of books. He doesn't even care, because what he does want is more illegal immigrants coming into the country, and this serves his aim perfectly.
He's instituted pathway after pathway for them, starting with something called CBPOne, a mobile app for getting appointments for entry into the U.S. from countries such as Haiti and Venezuela if someone already has a relative in the country to serve as sponsor. If you are that first person, bravo, all your relatives can now come into the country. If you are not, you've got the border to cross in order to open that pathway to the rest of your family, village, or tribe. Recent reports say the acceptance rate for these applicants is 100%.
Biden's also set up migrant service centers, through Central America and now even Colombia, to provide even more pathways for migrants to get in. The migrants accepted from this pathway are reportedly bussed into the states under cover of darkness, in buses paid for by the federal government. Those migrants get in, too.
He's also sued the state of Texas, which has set up inflatable border barriers along the Rio Grande to stop migrant traffic, apparently for the migrants' own safety. Because a few unwise migrants have attempted to ignore these barriers and got themselves killed in the harsh currents of the river, Texas's governor is now being branded a human rights violator in the loopy newspeak coming from the Bidens, and the Bidenites of course are suing him.
More passages, more migrants. And these aren't the only new passages Biden's set up, catch-and-release is still very much in operation, too, as well as other means of getting in.
Now after a quiet period dating from these new pathways to immigration into the states, the border surges are back.
Moses at least, could be reliably have been said to have made a mistake in calculating that new passageways would create less trafffic.
Joe Biden has no such excuse -- the information is out there and has been there for years, while his own transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, has clearly read the book.
I remember this detail well from my own journalism-school reading (we had to read this book during the preceding summer) and I think it's still required reading.
Biden bragged loudly about opening more legal pathways for migrants to get in, and now the verdict is in -- we are getting those pathways -- along with a second border surge as a result of those pathways, owing to the fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world would like to get into the U.S. and see their chance now. The increased pathways not only filled up quickly and left the illegal immigration totals the same as before, they freed up the border for even more illegal entrants, just as all of Moses's highways filled up the more he constructed additional ones. That is bound to at raise the illegal immigration into the U.S. beyond even its current records, even as cities affected, at the border and in the blue-city destinations, are at breaking points.
It's coming. It's reached the 10% point, as described in the Wikipedia passage. The Big Guy always was about ten percent, and this emerging event is just another demonstration of it.
Image: Library of Congress, via Picryl // public domain
Exclusive: Biden’s Migrant Detention Facilities Exceed Capacity as Border Crossings Increase — Again
The Border Patrol is again facing overcrowding issues in several migrant detention facilities along the southwest border, according to a source within Customs and Border Protection. The source says the return of increasing numbers of large migrant group crossings is spurred by migrants’ frustration with the functionality of the CBP-One application. Daily migrant detention numbers exceeded 17,000 in recent weeks according to the source.
The source, not authorized to speak to the media, says daily migrant apprehension numbers peaked at nearly 6,000 per day during the week. At one Border Patrol facility near Eagle Pass, Texas, once the epicenter of the current border crisis, more than 2,000 migrants are being held. The temporary detention facility at this location is designed to hold 1,000 migrants, the source indicated.
On Friday, Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez reported more than 1,000 migrants were apprehended near La Grulla, Texas, in a single 24-hour period. During the first three days of August, RGV agents apprehended nearly 4,400 migrants, according to a law enforcement source.
On Wednesday, Chief Patrol Agent John Modlin of the Tucson Sector reported the apprehension of several large migrant groups encountered near Lukeville, Arizona over the previous weekend. The largest single group consisted of 533 migrants from 17 different countries. Tucson Sector agents apprehended 5,061 migrants during the first three days of August, a law enforcement source reported.
The CBP source told Breitbart Texas that migrant apprehensions in July stood at slightly more than 132,000, up from the 99,545 migrant apprehensions made along the southwest border in June, a 33% increase. During the first four days of August, agents in the nine southwest border sectors apprehended more than 17,000 migrants, the law enforcement report indicates.
The source says many of the migrants in detention cited frustration not being able to quickly acquire an appointment for admission under the Biden Administration’s CBP-One application as the reason for crossing between the ports of entry. The migrants in detention cannot be processed fast enough to avoid overcrowding, the source added.
Thousands of mostly single adult migrants from the Northern Triangle Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are lingering in overcrowded detention centers as ICE Air cannot remove the migrants fast enough to ease the overcrowding, the source explained.
Nationals of these three countries were rapidly expelled to Mexico under the CDC Title 42 authority that expired in May. President Donald Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), also known as the Remain in Mexico policy, provided quick relief as Northern Triangle migrants could be quickly expelled to Mexico. These two Trump-era programs are no longer an option to stave off overcrowding.
Between October and June, more than 294,000 migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador were arrested by the Border Patrol after entering between ports of entry. Of that total, more than 286,000 were single adult males.
According to CBP, the daily average in June was nearly 1,000 migrant arrests of nationals from these three countries alone. The source says the pace of Northern Triangle migrant arrests overshadows the agency’s ability to keep up through removal flights.
“ICE Air can move up to 500 migrants per day to Central America, so long as there are no flight cancellations,” the source told Breitbart Texas. “That means hundreds will be detained for the next round of flights. With apprehensions starting to surge again, the overcrowding will only worsen.”
Aviation tracking software shows two ICE Air flights were destined for Guatemala and two others headed for El Salvador on Friday. The repatriation flights are conducted by Swift Air LLC, part of the iAero group, a private company under contract to ICE to transport migrants within the United States and conduct international repatriation flights.
The Swift Air fleet consists mostly of Boeing 737s — some capable of carrying up to 162 passengers.
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.
Bob Price contributed to this report.
THE BELOW WAS PERPETRATED BY GAMER LAWYER BRIAN DEESE WHO WORKED OUT OF THE BIDEN REGIME FOR BIDEN'S BIGGEST PAYMASTER BLACKROCK.
That included the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, based on a 50 percent cut in the pay of all newly hired autoworkers.
Biden, long known as Delaware’s “senator from DuPont,” Biden served on committees that were most sensitive to the interests of the ruling class, including the Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee. He supported the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, a milestone in the deregulation of the banks, and other right-wing measures. After nearly four decades in the Senate, Biden became Obama’s vice president, helping to oversee the massive bailout of Wall Street following the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent restructuring of class relations to benefit the rich. That included the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, based on a 50 percent cut in the pay of all newly hired autoworkers.
The Biden administration has forged an alliance with the trade union bureaucracy to suppress strikes and hold down wages. This was shown at Yellow Freight, where the Teamsters union blocked a strike in order to ensure that the bankruptcy went ahead smoothly.
As a result of decades of betrayals by the trade union bureaucracy, the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay is at its second highest level in history, 272-1, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Meanwhile, productivity gains have outpaced wage rises by a ratio of 3.7-1 over the past 40 years, a period that has seen a vast enrichment of the super wealthy and a massive growth in social inequality.
Employment report for July shows decline in US job creation under impact of rate hikes
The US employment report for July released Friday showed that 187,000 jobs were created last month, fewer than the 200,000 that had been predicted. The news initially sent stock prices higher, as investors welcomed the indication that continuing interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve were beginning to deflate the demand for labor and undercut workers’ wage demands.
However, stocks fell in the late afternoon on reports of lower revenue for Apple. Stock prices were down overall for the week in the wake of Fitch’s downgrade of the US long term credit rating and a rate hike by the Bank of England.
The response of Wall Street once gain illustrates the socially retrograde nature of capitalism, where bad news for working people is considered a positive development by financial markets.
This view was expressed bluntly last week by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who said at a press conference, “What we’re looking for is a broad cooling in labor market conditions, and that’s what we’re seeing... By so many indicators, labor market demand is cooling.”
The jobs numbers do not reflect recent events, such as the bankruptcy of Yellow Freight, which overnight threw 30,000 out of work.
Despite the efforts of the Fed to undercut the ability of workers to press for wage increases, strike activity has risen in 2023, according to the Cornell University labor action tracker. While there were 17 strikes involving more than 2,000 workers in the year before July 31, 2022, this year that number has risen to 22. Over the most recent 12-month period, there have been 407 strikes at 656 locations, a 12 percent rise.
The Fed has persisted with its policy of interest rate rises despite a pronounced decline in inflation and the threat posed to the massively leveraged banking system by higher credit costs. Three of the four largest bank failures in US history took place this year due to the interest rate increases, which have caused a devaluation of US government securities held by banks as reserves.
However, the consensus in the markets is that things are not nearly bad enough for the working class. The report showed that wage growth continued at a 4.4 percent annual clip in July, too low to make up for years of cuts in real wages, but still too high as far as Wall Street is concerned.
The monthly employment report by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a sharp fall in hiring by temporary help companies as well as retail trade and tech and information services. A cutback in temp hiring is a sign of a slowing economy. The number hours worked in July was also down, another sign of a slowing economy.
Employment in the key construction sector remained steady, while residential construction slowed under the impact of rising interest rates. Nonresidential construction increased, likely due to government handouts to corporations aimed at spurring electric vehicle production. The official unemployment rate fell slightly to 3.5 percent, near an historic low.
Investors took the slowdown in hiring as an indication that the US central bank may pause its interest rate increases at its next meeting on September 19-20. Since March of 2022, the Fed has raised interest rates a total of 11 times, driving rates to their highest level in 22 years.
While the rate hikes have been carried out in the name of fighting inflation, the real target is the working class. The rate hikes are part of a deliberate policy by the Biden administration aimed at driving up the unemployment rate to weaken the working class and undercut the growing strike movement in the US, which is part of a counteroffensive of the international working class spurred by record inflation. Wall Street wants to impose the cost of the massive Wall Street bailouts and the expanding war drive of US imperialism on the workers.
The interest rate increases are already having an impact on workers’ lives by driving up the cost of everything from home mortgages and car loans to credit card debt. On top of this comes the ending of the moratorium on student loan debt, with collections due to resume in September.
One of the clearest manifestations of the impact of this reactionary assault on the working class is the bankruptcy declaration by Yellow Freight earlier this week, an action that overnight threw 30,000 workers out of jobs. Given that half of Yellow’s $1.6 billion debt was held by the US government, the bankruptcy was a calculated decision by the Biden administration, undoubtedly coordinated with the Teamsters union bureaucracy.
The Biden administration has forged an alliance with the trade union bureaucracy to suppress strikes and hold down wages. This was shown at Yellow Freight, where the Teamsters union blocked a strike in order to ensure that the bankruptcy went ahead smoothly.
At UPS, the Teamsters have delivered a sellout contract tailored to the needs of management. The deal provides below-inflation pay raises and freezes the company’s contributions to pension plans covering the majority of drivers.
As a result of decades of betrayals by the trade union bureaucracy, the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay is at its second highest level in history, 272-1, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Meanwhile, productivity gains have outpaced wage rises by a ratio of 3.7-1 over the past 40 years, a period that has seen a vast enrichment of the super wealthy and a massive growth in social inequality.
Hundreds of asylum seekers forced to sleep on New York City’s sidewalks for days
The rightwing Democratic mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, has allowed the housing of tens of thousands of migrants in the United States’ largest city to deteriorate so rapidly that hundreds of them were forced to sleep on the sidewalk in front of the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan for over a week.
The 1,000-room hotel, closed for three years, has been reopened by the Adams administration and functions as an induction center for migrants arriving in the city. Hundreds of migrants last weekend were told that there was no space in the hotel and they would have to wait on the sidewalk until rooms opened up. As more and more arrived, they were forced to live and sleep rough in front of the hotel.
Volunteers gave them meals and water. Police and a COVID-testing agency, hired by the mayor, managed the refugees in one of the most crowded urban spaces in the United States. Migrants in the blistering heat were offered a chance to cool off in air-conditioned vans, where some of them eventually slept.
Adams appeared at the hotel on Thursday night and was heckled by passersby, who told him to solve the problem. Migrants were placed on buses later that evening.
Over 95,000 migrants have arrived in the city since May when the federal pandemic restrictions at the US borders were lifted. Most are asylum-seekers fleeing political persecution or economic or environmental disaster in their home countries, which range from those in Latin America to the Middle East and West Africa. Some 2,300 migrants arrived last month and approximately 200 continued to arrive each day, most from the US-Mexico border.
The city’s shelter system is overwhelmed with over 56,000 migrants living there in addition to tens of thousands of other homeless families. The city has opened 194 ad hoc shelters in gyms, hotels, parking lots and warehouses. But none of these is enough. “There is no more room,” Adams told a press conference earlier this week, adding, “It’s not going to get better.”
Refugees complained to the media that they were served frozen food and, during a sharp uptick in COVID-19 infections in the city, the Adams administration has not provided migrants with masks or any other mitigation measure in conditions in which migrants are crowded cheek-to jowl.
The crisis is so overwhelming that the city has apparently floated the idea of housing migrants in tents in Central Park. “Everything is on the table,” Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom told a press conference on Wednesday, including not only Central Park in Manhattan but Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Williams-Isom added: “We think that the system is at a breaking point.”
New York City is the only large municipality in the United States that has a right-to-shelter law, which obligates the city to provide shelter for anyone who is homeless. In May, the Adams administration petitioned a New York court to relax some of the right-to-shelter strictures. While the case is still pending, the National Lawyers Guild and the New York Coalition for the homeless announced on Thursday that they would take the city to court to enforce the law.
In a joint statement, the organizations said, “Last night, we petitioned the court to schedule an emergency conference requesting judicial intervention to protect the health and safety of our clients who face immense risk due to the City’s failure to comply with the Callahan consent decree.”
Callahan is the 1981 legal settlement made by the New York County Supreme Court that mandates the city to shelter those in need of housing—a necessary and democratic ruling. The conference was scheduled to take place on Friday.
Adams, unable to immediately flout the law has limited single adults to a 60-day stay in city-provided housing.
Last month, the city issued fliers in English and Spanish, to be distributed at the US-Mexico border that read, in part: “There is no guarantee we will be able to provide shelter and services to new arrivals. Please consider another city as you make your decision about where to settle in the U.S.” National Guard troops at the border, who process asylum seekers, refused to hand them out, saying they had no orders from their superiors to do so.
Since the beginning of the crisis in May, Adams has sought to offload as many refugees as possible to upstate cities and towns, in some cases inspiring fascist-minded resistance from local officials. Last month, the New York Times revealed that the COVID-testing company hired for $432 million to oversee the migrants, DocGo, not only had been award a contract by the city without a bidding process but that its staff repeatedly threatened migrants whom the company bused to Albany, New York state’s capital.
The capitalist media has attributed Adams’ allowing migrants to sleep on sidewalks as a cynical ploy to force the federal government into giving the city more aid. The Biden administration has promised a mere $135 million in aid.
In fact, much deeper issues are involved. In the first place, there are few guarantees that migrant workers, like over half longer-term residents of the city, can afford to live there. The average cost of rent is now over $4,000 for a one-bedroom apartment and the vacancy rate for “affordable” housing stands at less than 1 percent. Asylum seekers are legally unable to seek employment for the first six months of their stay in the US, making it impossible for them to afford New York rents.
More fundamentally, the cost of feeding and sheltering migrants has upended the plans of the mayor to impose massive austerity in the city budget. The pittance offered by the Biden administration is little more than a demand to the city—that is, to the local Democratic Party politicians—to make massive budget cuts in the coming months and years. The gesture is reminiscent of the famous 1975 newspaper headline when the federal government under President Gerald Ford refused to bail out New York City during its bankruptcy crisis: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”
Conditions are more dire than they were 48 years ago. Not only is New York City over $100 billion in debt, but the war in Ukraine and the preparations for war with China—the main foreign policy goals of American imperialism—demand the smashing of the standard of living for the working class.
Austerity is non-negotiable in the eyes of the ruling class. Strikes must be illegalized, as the Democrats did with a potential railway strike last year, fully abetted by New York City’s Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Democratic rights are a luxury in conditions like these. The fact that the New York police and staff from DocGo attempted to prevent reporters from the New York Times and the New York Post from speaking with migrants in front of the Roosevelt Hotel this week is a small but telling sign of things to come.
Adams, a right-wing and unabashed shill of the bankers and real estate magnates, has been devoted to implementing austerity, but was unable to immediately put into it effect in the recent Fiscal Year 2024 budget which registered an increase in spending—in large part because the anger of the working class, particularly educators and other city workers as well as transit workers, is so intense. The United States is in the midst of the largest strike wave in decades and Democrats, mainly on the City Council, made an agreement with Adams to wait.
Although some critical programs were cut and city workers were given below-inflation “raises,” state agencies have noted that Adams will be forced to slash the budget by billions in the next year and the can was essentially kicked down the road, and, therefore, only preparing a larger social explosion in the next months and years.
From the point of view of human need, there is no shortage of clean, safe and unoccupied places for people to live in New York City, both for migrants and for longer-term residents. New York City has been in the middle of an unabated luxury condo building boom for years.
The city’s own Housing and Vacancy Survey, published last year, found that 10 percent of Manhattan apartments are vacant. There is moreover, because of remote work during the pandemic, an exceptionally high vacancy rate in commercial real estate. The funds to convert these, too, quickly into housing exist in the bank accounts of New York’s 107 billionaires and its many multimillionaires.
But no Democratic politician, including those of the Democratic Socialists of America, in his or her wildest dreams would consider violating the holy of holies, big real estate and its investments, by housing workers in these spaces.
The plight of migrants, nevertheless, has caused no small concern in the ruling class, a section of which supports the import of cheap labor. More fundamentally, though, there is rising concern that Adams is not handling things well and that his treatment of refugees may ignite larger opposition within the already hostile working class in the city.
On Thursday, the New York Times published an op-ed by one of its editorial board members, Mara Gay, who compared Adams to the fascistic Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbot, who routinely buses migrant out of this state—often to New York City.
Adams says, falsely and nervously: “I have taken extraordinary measures to shelter and care for asylum seekers.”
But he would rather expel the refugees from New York if he could, or, barring that, make life as miserable as possible. That is exactly what he is seeking to do, and in that he represents a definite political constituency in the ruling elite that wants to hasten austerity as much as possible.
In fact, extraordinary measures are necessary to resolve the housing crisis in the United States. Migrants and all the homeless must be housed immediately. But the Democratic Party cannot be pressured to resolve the housing problem.
Emergency aid to the homeless and to migrant workers must be part of a program of the working class, independent of the capitalist parties, to put all empty housing owned by the super-rich and big real estate firms to use as a first step to resolving the housing crisis.
Independent neighborhood committees in working class areas that include both migrant and native-born workers, and rank-and-file committees at workplaces must be built as the only organizations that can implement this program.
Biden Admin Waives More Migrants Through Southern Border Than Promised
An average of 1,473 migrants were released into U.S. per day during July
The Biden administration is ignoring its own limits on asylum seekers, allowing more to enter the United States than it said it would, internal Department of Homeland Security data obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show.
Customs and Border Protection waived through 45,662 migrants with the CBP One mobile application in the month of July, an average of 1,473 a day. Customs and Border Protection dramatically expanded the app’s parameters in May after the end of the public health measure Title 42—which gave immigration authorities power to promptly deport migrants—but limited the amount of daily appointments to 1,000 a day. The number of daily appointments was later expanded to 1,250 and then 1,450 at the end of June. But the data from the Department of Homeland Security show immigration officials are not honoring that limit either.
The figures raise serious questions about President Joe Biden's proposals to fix the border crisis, which is the worst in the nation's history. The United States saw more than 2.76 million illegal border crossings in the 2022 fiscal year alone, compared with the Trump administration's annual high of roughly 1.6 million. Although the average daily surplus in CBP One appointments is roughly 23 migrants, that translates to nearly 8,400 annually at a time when cities are struggling to house and feed a surge of new arrivals. New York City, for example, entered into a $275 million contract with hotels to shelter just 5,000 migrants and its mayor Eric Adams (D.) says its city has "no space" left.
Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment.
The CBP One app allows migrants to apply for asylum remotely on their phone as a way to streamline the asylum process and bring order to the southern border. Republicans such as Rep. Clay Higgins (La.) have criticized CBP One as part of a "shell game" that merely reclassifies would-be illegal border crossers and releases them into the U.S. interior.
But Biden in January touted the CBP One app as part of a "new process" that "is orderly … safe … and humane. And it works." Those who are not approved on the app, Biden said, would be immediately deported.
"And let me say it again: The actions we’re announcing today will make things better—will make things better but will not fix the border problem completely," Biden said.
The news of the nearly 46,000 CBP One admissions comes as the southern border saw a 50 percent increase in illegal crossings in July compared with June, according to the Washington Post. Law enforcement arrested more than 130,000 illegal aliens along the Mexico border last month, the paper reported, a period that traditionally sees a dip in crossings given the extreme heat.
"The short term effects of the many legal pathways Biden has pushed to curb illegal immigration are failing," one senior Department of Homeland Security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Washington Free Beacon. "One can only wonder what changes are coming to bring more would-be illegal aliens in legally. The slippery slope ends at open borders."
The Biden administration initially took a victory lap after a brief decrease in southern border crossings at the end of Title 42, crediting its CBP One app. In a statement to the Washington Post, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection blamed the subsequent increase in illegal border crossings on "disinformation" from smugglers who are continuing to lure migrants across the border with the promise that they will not be deported.
Both Republican-led states and immigration activists have filed lawsuits against the Biden administration’s recent immigration policies. Those lawsuits could spell doom for the CBP One app. Republicans allege it is an illegal power grab, while liberal groups have said the penalties for migrants who are denied on the app are too harsh.
A federal judge in California struck down many of the regulations governing CBP One app in July. The Department of Justice said it would appeal the ruling.
California's Homelessness Policy Is a Disaster. Biden Wants to Replicate It.
Dem admin invests $3 billion into programs that pursue Golden State's failed 'Housing First' policies
California's homeless population has skyrocketed since the state adopted housing policies that critics say enable drug users and fail to treat the mentally ill. Now, the Biden administration is spending more than $3 billion to replicate those policies.
President Joe Biden's Department of Housing and Urban Development in July announced its investment in so-called Housing First programs, which subsidize rent costs for those living on the street but do not impose drug or mental health treatment requirements. California adopted those programs in 2016 and has since seen its homeless population steadily grow. Last year, for example, California was home to 30 percent of the nation's homeless people, despite Californians making up less than 12 percent of the U.S. population. From 2020 to 2022, California's homeless population increased by roughly 6 percent, a rate 15 times higher than the rest of the country.
Biden, during his 2020 campaign, presented himself as a run-of-the-mill Democrat who would restore "normalcy" to America. After taking office, however, Biden has in many cases mirrored California—perhaps the nation's most liberal state—on policy. After California banned the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, for example, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm credited the state for inspiring her to "move faster and further" toward a green energy transition. The Biden administration went on to introduce environmental proposals that effectively force automakers to sell electric cars over their gas-powered counterparts.
Housing First programs have failed the Golden State, experts told the Washington Free Beacon, because they exclude treatment requirements for issues that commonly plague the homeless, such as substance abuse and mental illness. As a result, homeless people who receive housing subsidies often continue using drugs and fail to become independent, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Stephen Eide argued.
"Other problems are left as sort of afterthoughts, and nothing much ends up being done about them at all," Eide told the Free Beacon. "In practice, actually, this looks a lot more like 'Housing Only' than 'Housing First.'"
The Department of Housing and Urban Development did not return a request for comment.
Californians have soured on Housing First since it formally became the state's strategy to combat homelessness in 2016, Eide said. After the strategy's adoption, the number of unsheltered homeless people in California grew, prompting Eide to call Housing First a "failed strategy."
"The communities that were most passionate about Housing First invested the most money into it—California most notably—and the results were not very impressive," he said.
American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Howard Husock echoed Eide, saying Housing First is "built on false premises."
"If you put people with substance abuse problems and mental health problems into their own four walls without necessarily providing treatment of some kind, including withdrawal from drug addiction, what's the case for this being the best approach?" he told the Free Beacon. "It's just self-evident."
Beyond its adoption of California's homelessness policies, the Biden administration has embraced so-called harm reduction, a public health theory that argues governments should minimize the hazards associated with drug use instead of eradicating it. Biden's Department of Health and Human Services has funneled tens of millions of dollars to harm reduction facilities to fund "smoking kits" and other materials meant to help addicts get high without overdosing. The White House earlier this year also made naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses, available over the counter.
California has also worked to advance harm reduction, investing $61 billion in such programs in July. Months earlier, in April, liberal California lawmakers blocked bills to strengthen punishments for fentanyl dealers, arguing that the state should pursue harm reduction instead.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams Considers Opening Migrant Camp in Central Park
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) is considering a plan that would house thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens in a migrant camp in Manhattan’s iconic Central Park.
Since the spring of last year, more than 95,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in New York City — costing local taxpayers at least $8 million every day. Just as rents have skyrocketed, migrants are sleeping on the streets as Adams has said “there is no more room.”
Now, Adams’ office has suggested that Central Park is among more than 3,000 locations where city officials are considering setting up camps and tent cities for migrants to live.
Other potential migrant camp locations include Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Randall’s Island, where children’s soccer fields may soon be shuttered so the city can house thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens in the area.
Adams is also set to start moving migrants into a recreation center in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park which sits in between the deeply liberal neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint.
Meanwhile, Adams has started handing out fliers, available in English and Spanish, to border crossers and illegal aliens not yet in New York City, asking them not to travel to the sanctuary jurisdiction, citing the high cost of living, the lack of housing, and the strained public resources.
Flier via NYC.gov
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Wall Street moves to profit from mass layoffs as Yellow prepares to file for bankruptcy
After laying off 30,000 employees, national less-than-truckload company Yellow is set to be looted by Wall Street. Since its shutdown, Yellow has seen large investments from Boston-based hedge fund MFN, and a group of investors led by Apollo Global Management is reportedly preparing an investment to restructure Yellow’s debt under a bankruptcy filing.
The immediate cause of Yellow’s collapse was its inability to pay off its debt, totaling $1.6 billion with $1.2 billion due next year. Of this, $700 million is due to the United States government and over $500 million is due to Apollo, a major private equity firm with close to $600 billion in managed assets.
Apollo played a leading role in Yellow’s management over the last few years. It had kept Yellow afloat in 2019 by loaning it $500 million, and Apollo co-founder Marc Rowan used his connections with the Trump administration to secure a bailout from the CARES Act.
Despite the influx of new cash, Yellow was still unable to manage its debt, and its only way out of potential bankruptcy was to cut costs. This took the form of Yellow’s One Yellow plan, a massive consolidation program designed to sell off facilities, slash jobs and cut wages and benefits.
Phase two of One Yellow was delayed by contract negotiations with the Teamsters. With One Yellow stalled, Yellow was unable to convince Wall Street it could extract value from workers effectively. Investors made it clear that no new money would be made available until Yellow could prove that it could force workers to pay for its debts and Wall Street’s profits.
Struggling to post a profit, Yellow quickly ran out of money and shuttered its operations last Sunday.
Yellow could easily enter into bankruptcy, which it apparently has not done yet and sell off its assets to pay back its investors. But Wall Street appears to have other plans for Yellow.The hedge fund MFN has rapidly bought up shares of Yellow, now owning more than 40 percent of the company’s shares (22 million). This seemingly peculiar move from MFN is a maneuver by the hedge fund to manage its investments in Yellow’s rival XPO. Should Yellow declare bankruptcy and go under, MFN will see profits from XPO absorbing some of Yellow’s volume. If Yellow survives bankruptcy and returns as a competitor, MFN will profit from its stake in the company. This investment sent the price of Yellow shares up by 78 percent to $3.14.
MFN’s gamble that Yellow might survive bankruptcy was accompanied by reports that Apollo and a group of other lenders are preparing to loan Yellow money as part of a debtor-in-possession (DIP) bankruptcy plan.
DIP is a form of Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that allows for the debtor, Yellow, to continue with its operations on behalf of its creditors, such as Apollo. If Yellow does file for a DIP program, its creditors would be able to form a committee to oversee the company and manage its operations. If the committee believes that the company is not operating in its best interests, it can ask a court to appoint a trustee.
Essentially, Apollo and its associate lenders would take control over the company and its operations.
However, this does not necessarily mean that Apollo plans on resuscitating Yellow as it was operating previously. Under DIP, and even currently, Apollo has the first lien on Yellow’s debt obligations. This means that it must be paid back first before anyone else, including the US government.
By loaning Yellow more money to restructure its debt under DIP, Apollo is able to guide how Yellow liquidates and take the prime pieces of Yellow’s assets for itself.
Tom Goldsby, a professor of Logistics at the University of Tennessee’s Global Supply Chain Institute, said of the potential loan that “There appear to be all kinds of financial shenanigans going on around Yellow—none of which have anything to do with bolstering its potential as a viable trucking company into the future.”
Apollo has used bankruptcy to attack workers and restructure companies before. In the case of Warrior Met Coal, Apollo and other private equity firms used the company’s bankruptcy to erase pensions for workers and enforce massive pay cuts. And Apollo has reportedly been in talks to carry out a similar DIP program with Scandinavian airline SAS, which is also considering bankruptcy as it fails to force through concessions from airline workers. Apollo could be planning something similar at Yellow.
Regardless of Apollo’s plans, it is clear that the working class has been made to pay for Wall Street’s profits.
Effectively managed by Apollo, Yellow has carried out a major offensive against the working class on the behalf of finance capital and the US government. Worker resistance to exploitation was met with the annihilation of 30,000 jobs by Wall Street, which intends to use the collapse of Yellow to extract as much wealth from the working class as possible.
With the US government owning 27 percent of Yellow through its CARES Act bailout, the Biden administration has also played a critical role in the fall of Yellow. The US is fighting a two front war against Russia abroad and the working class at home. In order to pay for the war—which is costing as much as Yellow’s debt every week—and to enforce labor peace at home the Biden administration has relied on the trade union bureaucracy to enforce sell out contracts and has intervened against workers directly where necessary.
The Teamsters are willing participants in this effort. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien met with Biden several times ahead of the Congressional intervention against railroad workers last winter and was holding meetings with the Biden administration in the days before the announcement of a sellout contract at UPS this summer.
In response to the collapse of Yellow the Teamsters have hardly lifted a finger. It had canceled a strike at the last minute over the company’s non-payment of its pension obligations, and announced a deal which supposedly gave the company an extra 30 days to pay. Instead, the company predictably ceased operations and moved towards bankruptcy within only a few days..
In announcing that the company had ceased operations O’Brien simply stated that “Today’s news is unfortunate but not surprising.” In other words, nothing will be done to protect the livelihoods of 22,000 union members at Yellow. Instead of mobilizing the hundreds of thousands of Teamsters across the country to defend jobs, O’Brien and the union bureaucracy have allowed Yellow to lay off thousands of its members at one of the few remaining unionized trucking companies in the United States.
The idea that Yellow’s demise was an inevitable and unfortunate event is a farce and is aimed at disarming the working class. Yellow is partly owned by the United States government and its investors are some of the wealthiest and most powerful financial organizations in the world. Yellow did not destroy 30,000 jobs because it had no other choice, but because Wall Street and the entire capitalist class demanded that workers pay the price for corporate profits.
It is worth noting that Yellow controlled 10 percent of the LTL market with revenues near $5 billion. Its shuttering has shifted a mass volume of freight to other companies and prices have risen as a result. Rival companies and their investors will enjoy profiting from Yellow’s fall while 30,000 workers are now out of a job.
The collapse of Yellow and the vulture circling of Wall Street is a warning to the working class as a whole, especially as 340,000 UPS workers begin voting on a sell out contract that fails to meet their demands. The capitalist class is prepared to annihilate jobs on a mass scale to bolster their profits and suppress labor unrest.
