The Recent History Of The Porous Border

On Sunday, Rich Lowry posted an article at The New York Post about the decisions made early in the Biden administration that created the border crisis we have now. You might be able to convince some people that the crisis was simply the unintended consequence of bad decisions (not done deliberately), but the fact remains that those bad decisions were made.

The article recalls the decisions made almost immediately after President Biden took office:

The Feb. 2 order emphasized an effort to “enhance lawful pathways for migration to this country” and revoked a slew of Trump rules, executive orders, proclamations and memoranda.

The sense of it was that there’s nothing we can or should do on our own to control illegal immigration; rather, we had to fix deep-seated social, economic and political problems in Central America instead.

It called for getting more refugees into the United States, using parole to let more migrants join family members here, enhancing access to visa programs and reviewing whether the United States is doing enough for migrants fleeing domestic or gang violence, among other things. 

And it put on the chopping block numerous Trump policies that had helped establish order at the border, from Trump’s expansion of expedited removal, to his termination of a parole program for Central American minors, to his memorandum urging the relevant departments to work toward ending “catch and release.”

Most important, it targeted two of the pillars of Trump’s success at the border: the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as Remain in Mexico, and the safe-third-country agreements with the Northern Triangle countries that allowed us to divert asylum seekers to Central American countries other than their own to make asylum claims. 

 

When Facts Contradict The Narrative

On Thursday, The Federalist posted an article about the crisis at our southern border. For more than three years, President Biden has been complaining that he can’t do anything about the border unless Congress passes bills that fund Ukraine. He chooses to overlook the fact that on his first day in office he overturned the Executive Orders passed by President Trump that sealed the border. He also chooses to overlook the fact that he not only refused to build the wall–he sold the parts to build it for pennies on the dollar. (article here)

The Federalist reports:

President Joe Biden has vehemently denied any blame for the years-long U.S. southern border invasion with claims that Congress, not the president, must act to defend the nation.

“I’ve done all I can do,” Biden said last month on the White House lawn. “Just give me the power.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the same thing two weeks ago. “There is no executive action that the president can take,” she said, to reinforce the border.

But now Politico is reporting that the president does, in fact, recognize the authority at his disposal to address the border crisis. On Wednesday, the paper reported the administration is “considering a string of new executive actions and federal regulations in an effort to curb migration at the U.S. southern border.”

“Among the ideas under discussion include using a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act to bar migrants from seeking asylum in between U.S. ports of entry,” the report read. “The administration is also discussing tying that directive to a trigger — meaning that it would only come into effect after a certain number of illegal crossings took place.”

The article concludes:

Lies about presidential powerlessness, however, have become the standard response from Democrats on the border. The number of illegal crossings has approximately doubled under President Biden, with 1.7 million “gotaways” evading capture over the three years he’s been in office. Last week, House Republicans formally impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for failing to keep U.S. borders secure.

“It certainly is a crisis,” Mayorkas said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier this month, “But fundamentally, Congress is the only one who can fix it.”

Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill have made the same arguments. New York Rep. Dan Goldman called the House impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas an example of “taking the scalp” for “the MAGA base” to scapegoat blame for a crisis which can “only be addressed by legislation.”

While Democrats continue to say this on TV, Politico reports more executive orders for border action are in the pipeline, indicating the White House believes it can indeed address the border without the need for action from Congress.

The border remains open because country-club Republicans want cheap labor and Democrats want future voters. Meanwhile, Americans are being denied benefits and being forced out of jobs by illegal immigrants who are working outside the system. We need to close the border, and we need to enforce e-verify.

The Buck Stops Anywhere But Here

Most Americans are willing to admit that we have a crisis at our southern border. Most Americans are aware that the crisis began when newly-elected President Biden undid all of the Executive Orders President Trump had used to close the border. However, President Biden is still blaming President Trump for the border crisis. Evidently the fact that President Trump has been out of power for three plus years does not play into President Biden’s logic.

On Saturday, Breitbart posted a list of 64 ways that President Biden has opened America’s borders.

I will post part of the list. Please follow the link above to read the entire list and the details.

Here are some of the highlights:

  1. Jan 20, 2021: President Biden terminated the National Emergency at the Southwest border (Proclamation 9844), thereby halting emergency construction of a border wall.
  2. Jan 20, 2021: President Biden issued an Executive Order (EO) further entrenching the unlawful Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
  3. Jan 20, 2021: President Biden unveiled the U.S. Citizenship Act, which would provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., demonstrating intent to reward illegal border crossers with a path to citizenship.
  4. Jan 20, 2021: President Biden revoked Trump-era Executive Order that was designed to ensure there was meaningful enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.
  5. Jan 20, 2021: The Administration issued an Executive action ending limitations and restrictions against immigration from certain countries associated with terrorism.
  6. Jan 20, 2021: The Biden Administration announced a 100-day moratorium on deportations and immigration enforcement, effectively providing amnesty to criminal and other removable aliens and sending the signal the Biden Administration would not enforce the law. 
  7. Feb 1, 2021: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) implemented Acting Secretary Pekoske’s policy requiring a new “process [that] shall provide for assessments of alternatives to removal including, but not limited to, staying or reopening cases, alternative forms of detention, custodial detention, whether to grant temporary deferred action, or other appropriate action.”
  8. Feb 2, 2021: President Biden issued Executive Order (EO) 14010 and began processing asylum claims at the border.
  9. Feb 6, 2021: Secretary of State Antony Blinken suspended, and began termination procedures, for the Trump Administration’s Asylum Cooperative Agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
  10. Feb 2021: The Biden Administration voluntarily stopped applying Title 42 expulsions to children across the board, setting off a major wave of unaccompanied alien children, family units, and illegal aliens generally heading to the U.S. border.

That’s only the first ten. President Biden willingly ended the programs that were securing our southern border. He is responsible for the disaster that border has become. He is also responsible for any negative results of the large number of military-age men that are coming across that border.

The Danger Of An Open Border

America is a land of immigrants–legal immigrants who came here to build a better life and were vetted before they were allowed in. Currently we are being overrun by people seeking access to our welfare system and an easy life. I don’t begrudge anyone seeking a better life, but I do have a problem with seeking a better life at someone else’s expense. As American cities pour money into housing, feeding and providing medical care for people who are here illegally, our own citizens who are struggling economically are being ignored. Our homeless are on the streets–they are not getting hotel rooms and three meals a day. Aside from the misplaced priorities of our current border policy (or lack thereof), there is the national security aspect.

On Friday, The Daily Caller reported:

  • Federal immigration authorities released for one day a Pakistani man who illegally crossed the southern border into California whose name appeared on the terror watchlist, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
  • Border Patrol apprehended the Pakistani national on Nov. 10, 2023 in Tecate, California, according to the memo.
  • “Imagine how many cases like this one get through without us knowing,” a DHS official told the DCNF on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak publicly.

The article continues:

The Pakistani national entered the U.S. illegally on Nov. 9, 2023 and was nabbed by Border Patrol the next day in Tecate, California, according to a memo the DCNF received from two different Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sources. While in Border Patrol custody on Nov. 22, the Terrorism Screening Center (TSC) confirmed he was a positive match on the terror watchlist, according to the memo.

Despite this, the memo says the terror suspect was released from the custody of ICE San Diego on Jan. 23. ICE served him with an “Order of Release on Recognizance” with tracking technology through the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program during that time.

Border agents served him with an expedited removal order on Nov. 11, after which he expressed that he had a credible fear of going back to Pakistan, according to the memo.

On Jan. 24, however, the ICE office in San Diego informed the agency’s office in Los Angeles of his presence on the terror watchlist, along with his “mandatory detention requirement,” and had him report on his own to the ATD check-in office. ICE Los Angeles was able to arrest him when he showed up for the check-in.

Imagine how many cases like this one get through without us knowing,” a DHS official told the DCNF on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak publicly.

I fear we have reached the place where ordinary Americans are going to have to be responsible for their own safety. Terrorist do not generally value their own lives, and that fact makes them very dangerous. Because so many of the people who have crossed our southern border are military-age men, we may all have to be prepared to defend ourselves from a major attack within our country.

 

I Guess Everyone Doesn’t Want Transparency

On Monday, Just the News reported the following:

Forensic investigators hired by a Republican-led committee recovered more than 100 encrypted files that the Democratic-led House Jan. 6 Select Committee deleted days before the GOP took over the House majority, according to a new report released Monday.

House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chair Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., sent a letter to former Select Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., demanding he provide answers and passwords for the data, which was deleted against House rules, according to Fox News Digital

The Oversight Subcommittee, which is investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the former select committee, should have received four terabytes of archived data from the select committee after Republicans entered the majority in January 2023, but it obtained less than three terabytes of data.

The subcommittee hired a digital forensics team to determine what information was not handed over, and the team discovered 117 files that were encrypted and deleted on Jan. 1, 2023, two days before Republicans were sworn into the majority, according to the report. 

Loudermilk said in his letter to Thompson that the Mississippi Democrat acknowledged over the summer that the select committee “did not archive all Committee records as required by House Rules” and had “sent specific transcribed interviews and depositions to the White House and Department of Homeland Security but did not archive them with the Clerk of the House.”

One recovered file detailed an individual whose testimony was not archived, but “most of the recovered files are password-protected, preventing us from determining what they contain,” Loudermilk also said. 

It is (remotely) possible that this is totally innocent; however, people generally delete things for a reason. The fact that the deletions took place two days before the Republicans took control of the House really does not inspire confidence in the work of the January 6th Committee.

The article concludes:

“It’s obvious that Pelosi’s Select Committee went to great lengths to prevent Americans from seeing certain documents produced in their investigation,” Loudermilk (House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chair Barry Loudermilk) told the news network. “It also appears that Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney intended to obstruct our Subcommittee by failing to preserve critical information and videos as required by House rules.”

This is not the first report of missing data from the Jan. 6 select committee. Loudermilk told the Just the News, No Noise” TV show last year that all videotapes from select committee depositions are missing. 

The Whoppers Of 2023

On Thursday, The New York Post listed twelve of the most outrageous lies told by politicians and the media during 2023. Please follow the link to the article for the details, I will simply post the  list.

This is the list:

#1

“The Middle East . . . is quieter than it has been for decades.”

— National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Foreign Affairs, November/December (print edition)

#2

“We ended cancer as we know it.”

— President Biden, July 25

#3

“Age jokes can’t diminish Biden’s unrivaled experience and wisdom.”

— The Hill, Dec. 11

#4

“Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say

— The New York Times, Oct. 17

#5

“Let’s always take a moment to also see what we have achieved thus far, while we clearly see the moment that we are presently in. So we have achieved a lot.”

— VP Kamala Harris, June 23

#6

“In the Hanukkah story, the Jewish people were forced into hiding. No one thought they would survive.”

— Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Dec. 11

#7

“Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink.”

— The Washington Post, July 13

#8

“We have seen the effectiveness of our approach [to the border].”

— Homeland Security boss Alejandro Mayorkas, May 10 

#9

“We have been [in Israel] for more than 1.5 million years.”

— Palestinian National Council President Rawhi Fattouh, May 22

#10

“There would be no climate crisis if there was no racism.”

— Jane Fonda, May 27

#11

“People Are Getting Real Heated Over a Gas Stove Ban That Isn’t Even Happening.”

— The New Republic, Jan. 12

#12

“Biden is extremely well-liked.”

— MSNBC co-host Mika Brzezinski, Feb. 10

Reality is merely a state of mind.

 

Unfortunately, The Government Spying On Americans Isn’t New

On Wednesday, Just the News posted an article about our government spying on Americans. According to a whistleblower, this is not anything new.

The article reports:

The public-private efforts to restrict and suppress purported “mis-, dis- and malinformation” across tech platforms started almost immediately after the surprise election of Donald Trump in 2016, ramped up a year before the COVID-19 pandemic, and included U.S. and U.K. military contractors and plans to cut off financial services to dissenters and sue them.

That’s according to a “highly credible whistleblower” who says they were recruited to participate in the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL) “through monthly cybersecurity meetings hosted by” the Department of Homeland Security, independent journalists who reviewed the Twitter Files at new owner Elon Musk’s invitation said Tuesday.

We are at a point that if an American says that two plus two equals four and the government wants it to equal five, the American is charged with spreading misinformation or disinformation. That is not a good place to be–particularly for a representative republic.

The article concludes:

Breuer (U.S. military contractor Pablo Breuer) told a podcast the duo’s work involved getting “nontraditional partners into one room,” such as social media companies, “special forces operators” and DHS employees, “to talk in a non-attribution, open environment in an unclassified way.”

He explained how the “in-group and out-group messaging have to be often different” when trying to sell Americans on a domestic version of the “Great Firewall of China.”

While Chinese citizens believe this censorship is to “protect the citizenry,” Americans “would absolutely lose our minds” if the feds “tried to sell that narrative,” Breuer reportedly said.

The reporting trio said they would present the underlying documents from the whistleblower to congressional investigators in the coming weeks and “make public all of the documents we can while also protecting the identity of the whistleblower and other individuals who are not senior leaders or public figures.”

The FBI declined to comment on the report to Just the News, and DHS and CISA did not respond to queries. Neither did Terp (U.K. defense researcher Sara-Jayne Terp) and Breuer.

The Washington swamp is a danger to all free Americans.

When Our Government Works Against The Interests Of The Voters

On November, The Washington Examiner posted an article about the partnership between an agency in the Department of Homeland Security and several university centers to identify online content worthy of censorship. Why is our government working with universities to censor free speech? Might that be part of the reason our colleges have become indoctrination centers?

The article reports:

An agency within the Department of Homeland Security partnered with several university centers to identify online content worthy of censorship, according to a new report from the House Judiciary Committee.

The report, a project of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, detailed how the federal government formed a partnership with the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, and other groups. Titled the “Election Integrity Partnership,” the consortium aimed to identify election-related content that needed to be censored.

The report said the partnership was established in July 2020 by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a small agency within the Department of Homeland Security. The partnership then worked with social media companies to throttle content that questioned the integrity of the election process.

“The federal government and universities pressured social media companies to censor true information, jokes, and political opinions,” the report said. “This pressure was largely directed in a way that benefited one side of the political aisle: True information posted by Republicans and conservatives was labeled as ‘misinformation’ while false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors.”

The article also notes:

The report named several prominent politicians, people, and conservative news outlets that had been targeted for censorship, including former President Donald Trump, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the Babylon Bee satire site, and Newsmax.

“Stanford and others, in collaboration with the federal government, established the EIP for the express purpose of violating Americans’ civil liberties: Because no federal agency ‘has a focus on, or authority regarding, election misinformation originating from domestic sources within the United States,’ there is ‘a critical gap for non-governmental entities to fill.’ CISA and Stanford created the EIP to bridge this ‘critical gap’ — an unconstitutional workaround for unconstitutional censorship,” the report said.

The report contained numerous screenshots of emails between government officials and employees of Twitter, Facebook, and the university “misinformation” centers, many of which included direct requests to censor content.

One of the things that was censored was any reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Government agencies knew the laptop was real and probably anticipated the information on it being reported before the election. The letter from the retired intelligence agents came out in October 2020, just before the election. Any valid information on the laptop was censored. At some point, American voters are going to realize that they have been manipulated and lied to by their own government. That will be interesting to watch.

The Real Cost Of An Open Border

On Thursday, Fox News reported that the kidnapper charged with the murder of two children in Alabama was someone who had been deported from the United States before.

The article reports:

José Paulino Pascual-Reyes – charged with first-degree kidnapping, three counts of capital murder and two counts of abuse of a corpse in connection to the gruesome discovery — is considered a “re-entry nonimmigrant unlawful presence foreign national,” Tallapoosa County Sheriff Jimmy Abbett confirmed to Fox News Digital by phone on Thursday. 

That means, according to Abbett, that 37-year-old Pascual-Reyes was deported by Homeland Security to Mexico before, but the sheriff could not confirm that time frame or when he is believed to have reentered the United States and to have come to Alabama.

In case you are unfamiliar with the sequence of events:

The Tallapoosa County Sheriff’s Office first responded to the area of 3547 County Road 34 in Dadeville, Alabama, at approximately 8:30 a.m. on Monday to a 911 call from a driver who reported stopping to help a 12-year-old girl spotted wandering on the road. Pascual-Reyes, listed as living at that address, was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Auburn, Alabama.

Overnight investigation at the mobile home led to the discovery of two decomposing corpses. 

Abbett confirmed to Fox News Digital that those bodies were that of a woman – Sandra Vazquez Ceja – and her son, a boy under the age of 14. Ceja was on parole pending an asylum claim. Investigators believe the deceased woman was Pascual-Reyes’ girlfriend. 

Abbett praised the surviving 12-year-old girl as a “hero,” saying she endured almost a week of torture. 

The complaint says the girl is believed to have been tied to bed posts for at least a week, was assaulted and kept in a drug-like state by being plied with alcohol. She escaped by chewing through her restraints, according to court documents. 

That child will be traumatized for the rest of her life because the Biden administration couldn’t be bothered to secure our southern border. She represents the true cost of an open border.

 

Suing To Protect Americans

Newsmax is reporting the following today:

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is suing the Biden administration over its refusal to restore the Trump-era Remain in Mexico policy, saying that without it, fentanyl is flowing across the nation’s southern border and causing deaths in his state. 

“Ending the Remain in Mexico policy will undoubtedly lead to an increase in illegal drug trafficking and thus senseless deaths from fentanyl,” Morrisey said in a statement issued Thursday. “I’ve long believed that a lawsuit should not be necessary to force the government to secure our southern border.”
However, he said his office sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in June, but the administration has “failed to respond to our concerns. The border is more porous than ever. In the face of such silence and inaction, and because so many lives are at stake, litigation is the only remedy left to West Virginia.”

The article concludes:

Morrisey asks the court in the lawsuit to find that canceling the Remain in Mexico program was both rash and ill-considered, and to “remand the termination” of the policy and to order the defendants to “consider the impact the termination of MPP has on border security and the trafficking of fentanyl across the Southwest border into the United States.”

The mainstream media has been covering the crisis at our southern border as a humanitarian crisis (which it is) because of the thousands of immigrants coming into America, possibly with Covid, with no money and no place to go. They have chosen not to put a lot of emphasis on the fact that the drug smuggling and people smuggling are a financial windfall to the drug cartels. By refusing to finish the border wall, President Biden has essentially funded the Mexican drug cartels supplying the drugs that are destroying many of the youth in America. Hopefully this lawsuit will be successful.

This Seems Obscure, But Needs Watching

We have just experienced a month-plus shutdown of the American economy (along with many Americans experiencing cabin fever and many children abruptly being home-schooled). It will take a while for the economy to open back up and recover. However, what we are currently experiencing is nothing like the disruption that would be caused by an electromagnetic pulse attack (also by a particularly strong solar flare). The American power grid is very vulnerable to attack from many sources. Our power grid provides power for the computers that route trucking, support supply chains, guide airplanes, keep grocery store coolers cold, etc. The power grid is all interconnected and computerized. It is an attractive target.

On May 1, Just The News reported the following:

The Energy Department said Friday that President Trump has banned the purchasing and installation of specific types of foreign gear for power plants and the transmission system. The move is a strategic effort to block the U.S. grid from falling victim to attacks from Russia and China.

The president’s executive order increases the secretary of Energy’s ability to prevent the use of select equipment that creates a national security risk. It also allows the secretary to determine which parts of the grid system are at risk and therefore in need of replacement.

Officials leading the effort will assess recent threats from abroad based on information from the U.S. intelligence community. They will then make a judgment on which elements of the power system need replacing. Agencies have been warning for several years that America’s electrical grid is an attractive and vulnerable target to foreign hackers.

This is a great move, but somehow electromagnetic pulse protection seems to be left behind.

In November 2019, Politico reported the following:

Turnover in President Donald Trump’s national security staff may be having a little-noticed side effect: Worries about nuclear weapons zapping America’s electric grid will return to the fringe.

Warnings about electromagnetic pulse attacks have long inspired eye-rolls or outright guffaws among national security experts, but advocates of the issue briefly found a home on Trump’s National Security Council, and the president himself issued an executive order on the topic in March. That respectability boom shows signs of fading, however, as those advocates leave the administration.

On Sept. 13, controversial physicist, self-declared climate skeptic and backer of the fight against EMPs William Happer left the White House. Three days earlier, Trump had ousted national security adviser John Bolton, who according to people close to the congressional EMP effort was also a backer of hardening power plants and the electric grid against the threat.

“With Bolton gone and some of the people he had brought in … this has disrupted the process,” said Peter Pry, executive director of the now-disbanded congressional advisory board that studied EMPs.

Trump’s executive order on March 29 was meant to aid coordination between the departments of Homeland Security, Energy and Defense, as well as numerous other federal agencies, to address the long-debated risk. The utility industry has resisted hardening the grid to EMP attacks because of the high cost of addressing what it considers an unlikely threat.

“The bureaucracy does not want this executive order,” Pry added, referring to the president’s order on EMP resilience. “What they’re trying to do is lowball the EMP threat … to such a level that basically industry will have to do little or nothing.”

I really don’t know if I should credit this bad advice to the deep state or just to general ignorance, but we need to get the emp protection program back up and running. This is an area where we are truly vulnerable to attack (or a natural phenomina such as a giant solar flare).

No Scandals In The Obama Administration?

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about Charles K. Edwards, President Obama’s Acting Homeland Security Inspector General.

The article reports:

Obama’s Acting Homeland Security Inspector General and his subordinate were indicted on 16 counts of theft and fraud, the Justice Department announced on Friday.

“The indictment charges Charles K. Edwards, 59, of Sandy Spring, Maryland, and Murali Yamazula Venkata, 54, of Aldie, Virginia, with conspiracy to commit theft of government property and to defraud the United States, theft of government property, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. The indictment also charges Venkata with destruction of records.”

The charges allege that in addition to stealing government software and databases, Venkata helped Edwards by reconfiguring his laptop so that he could upload the stolen software.

“The indictment further alleges that, in addition to stealing DHS-OIG’s software and the sensitive government databases, Venkata and others also assisted Edwards by reconfiguring his laptop so that he could properly upload the stolen software and databases, provided troubleshooting support whenever Edwards required it, and helped him build a testing server at his residence with the stolen software and databases,” the Department of Justice said in a press release announcing the indictments. “As further part of the alleged scheme, Edwards retained software developers in India for the purpose of developing his commercial alternative of DHS-OIG’s software.”

Although Edwards left the DHS in 2013, according to the indictment he leveraged his relationship with Venkata to carry out the scheme which began in October of 2014 and continued to April of 2017.

Edwards was President Obama’s Acting Homeland Security Inspector General. It is a reflection on the Obama administration that an obviously dishonest person was put in that position. It is my hope that this is simply another step in draining the swamp and the people who have happily existed in the swamp.

Why A Secure Border Matters

Evidently China has been dealing with the coronavirus since December of last year. The virus has had a serious impact on the country in both economic and health areas. The restriction on Chinese citizens traveling to America that began in January has probably helped prevent a widespread epidemic in this country. However, the risk is still there.

The Daily Wire is reporting today:

“Some 328 illegal immigrants from China have been nabbed jumping the U.S.-Mexico border so far this year, according to Homeland Security data that raises the prospect a coronavirus carrier could sneak into the country via the border,” The Washington Times reported. “Three other people from South Korea — another country with rapidly spreading cases — have also been arrested at the border, as have 122 people from the Dominican Republican, where the coronavirus has now been detected.”

…Border Patrol agents told the Times that in addition to the 1,000 illegal aliens who are caught every day entering the United States through the southern border with Mexico, which is also dealing with an outbreak of the coronavirus, a significant number of illegal aliens are managing to sneak into the country undetected.

“The journey to the U.S. border puts migrants in poor conditions,” a Homeland Security official told The Washington Times. “We don’t know if they have come into contact with someone who has the flu, there is no passport, medical history, or travel manifest.”

The article concludes:

Another senior administration official told The Examiner, “We have a unique public health threat posed by individuals arriving unlawfully at the border. Any halting of MPP (Migrant Protection Protocols –the remain in Mexico policy) would exacerbate that threat.”

DHS acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told The Examiner that the department’s top objective was protecting the American people, and that Trump’s efforts have gone a long way toward achieving that goal.

“The American people can be assured that we’re doing everything we can to protect our homeland. While the general risk to the American public remains low, DHS has mobilized a departmentwide response to keep Americans safe, secure, and informed,” Cuccinelli said. “Fortunately, we were able to engage DHS assistance early to prevent the spread of this virus in the U.S. We remain locked arm-in-arm with our interagency partners, HHS and CDC health professionals, and state and local officials acting as one to safeguard the health and safety of the American people.”

An open border represents both a security risk and a health risk. It is time to stop playing politics with the lives of American people and secure the border.

A Total Misuse Of Taxpayers’ Money

Yesterday The Middle East Forum reported that in October, the Trump administration handed out $100,000 of federal government money to the terror-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Middle East Forum has found.

The article reports:

To fund CAIR, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) first awarded monies to the Washington D.C. government, which then selected CAIR and a number of other extremist organizations as suitable sub-recipients. The federal government would likely have been aware, however, that CAIR was a grantee – according to government documentation, it seems sub-grantees must be approved by DHS before funds are distributed.

The administration’s funding of CAIR was the product of the DHS’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program. As my colleague David Swindle recently wrote in the Daily Wire, Congress’s current proposed expansion of the program’s budget, however “well-meaning,” carries enormous “potential for abuse” and will end up providing “millions of taxpayer dollars” to “pro-jihadist Islamist groups.”

CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Trial in 2008. The Holy Land Foundation was convicted of providing material support to terrorists.

The article notes:

In 2014, the United Arab Emirates designated CAIR as a terrorist organization. And today, its officials continue to promote and excuse violently anti-American and anti-Semitic rhetoric.

The article concludes:

Surprisingly, under the Trump administration, grants to extremist organizations have actually increased. As we noted last year, “between 2017 and 2018, the amount of taxpayers’ money given to organizations either influenced or controlled by Islamist activists more than tripled from $4 million to $13.5 million. Under the Obama administration, the amount given to Islamist-linked organizations averaged a mere $1.7 million each year.”

In August 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau quickly cancelled a proposed partnership with CAIR after a number of Conservative media outlets started investigating the decision. But why this was not enough to stop the federal government from subsequently funding the very group it had previously conceded was beyond the pale?

Over the last few months, some supporters of the administration have reacted to our research into public subsidy and political support for these theocratic groups by acknowledging the problem but arguing that, in many instances, the federal government’s embrace of Islamists and its failure to work instead with moderate Muslims, is an enduring legacy of extant Obama administration policies.

Given the long-standing programs behind many of these grants, this may well be true. If only there were someone to drain the swamp.

President Trump will need four more years to get to the bottom of the seemingly endless swamp that is Washington, D.C.

Interesting Bit Of History

I just got an email from a friend that reported the following:

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Jack Prosobic interview with Brad Johnson on OAN

Brad Johnson, a former CIA employee who is currently working via the IntelReform.org website, was asked about the so-called “whistleblower,” Eric Ciamarella, and he revealed some interesting information including…

Eric Ciamarella protested in favor of a Muslim professor when he was in college.

Eric Ciamarella was recruited to join the CIA, was placed on the National Security Council, and then was hand-picked by former CIA Director, John Brennan, to work in the White House.

When Joe Biden was Vice-President and was President Obama’s point person for Ukraine, Eric Ciamarella traveled with Biden to Ukraine.

Brad Johnson said that it appears that Eric Ciamarella may have helped set up payment to Joe Biden through his son, Hunter Biden’s being employed by Barisma at a very large salary when Hunter had no background or aptitude for the work. So it appears that Eric Ciamarella may have been active in a quid pro quo arrangement Joe Biden set up for personal gain (not for the good of the USA), and this same Eric Ciamarella is the so-called “whistleblower???”

It’s also clear that Adam Schiff coordinated with Eric Ciamarella behind the scenes and at first denied it.

No wonder the Republicans want to interview Eric Ciamarella during the impeachment hearing Witch Hunt !!!

I replied to my friend with some information on John Brennan:

This gets even more interesting when you consider that John Brennan, as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, in October 2011, agreed to a request by Farhana Khera, President and Executive Director of Muslim Advocates (an element of the Muslim Brotherhood), to immediately create an interagency task force to address the problem of information and materials relating to Islamic-based terrorism used by those training our military, diplomats and security forces. The FBI then proceeded to purge the documents that the Muslim Brotherhood wanted purged. At that point the individuals doing the briefings that detailed Islamic terrorism were fired, among them Stephen Coughlin and Clare Lopez.

Many of Stephen Coughlin’s videos are posted on YouTube. Stephen Coughlin’s book Catastrophic Failure details the events described in my reply to my friend posted above. I have met Clare Lopez; she was also fired during the Obama administration for telling the truth about Islamic terrorism.

 

Some Politicians Are Playing With Fire

On June 25th Reuters reported:

Four men with suspected ties to the Islamic State militant group were captured on Tuesday by members of the Nicaraguan armed forces after entering the country illegally from Costa Rica, Nicaraguan police said.

The identities of three of the men matched those of suspects featured in an alert attributed to U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) warning that three possible terrorists had recently arrived in Central America.

In a statement, Nicaraguan police said two of the men were Egyptian nationals and the other two were Iraqi. The four were due to be deported back to Costa Rica, it added.

The Egyptians were named as Mohamed Ibrahim, 33, and Mahmoud Samy Eissa, 26, while the Iraqis were Ahmed Ghanim Mohamed Al Jubury, 41 and Mustafa Ali Mohamed Yaoob, 29.

The first three men were named in the HSI alert published by Mexican media on Monday, which identified them as possible members of Islamic State headed for the United States.

They were not coming here to improve their economic status.

Yes, The President’s Border Policies Have Changed Things

One America News posted an article today with the following title, “Border apprehensions nosedive after President Trump’s Mexico deal.”

The article reports:

Apprehensions on the southern border have plummeted, following President Trump’s historic deal with Mexico. According to leaked Department of Homeland Security data, apprehensions at the southern border dropped by 25-percent between May and June.

This drop was corroborated by acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan on Friday, who attributed the change to President Trump’s deal with Mexico in June. The deal called on Mexican officials to do more to stop the flow of illegal migration to the U.S. southern border.

“It’s become clear that over the past three weeks, since the administration reached a new agreement with Mexico, that we’ve seen a substantial increase in the number of interdictions on the Mexican southern border and a sincere effort to address the transportation networks coming through Mexico,” stated McAleenan.

While the month of June typically sees a decline in border apprehensions, a 25-percent decrease is unprecedented compared to previous years.

The article concludes:

“While it’s been many weeks coming, I think we should pause to note the significance of the strong bipartisan votes to respond the administrations request and provide the over $4.5 billion in total to support these humanitarian missions,” said the DHS secretary. “Although we did not get everything we asked for, including — importantly — additional ICE beds for single adults, the bill substantially addresses our request.”

Despite the decline, McAleenan admited there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to stop the flow of migrants from central America. He also said he believes we should wait to see if the drop in apprehensions continues in the coming months to assess just how much more work needs to be done to combat the migrant crisis.

One of the advantages of having a businessman as President, is that President Trump understands that money (tariffs) can be used as leverage. The change in the situation at our southern border is an example of that. Hopefully, the decrease in illegal immigrants attempting to enter America illegally will continue.

Are We Really All On The Same Team?

On Saturday The Washington Examiner posted an article with the following headline, “Officials accuse DHS chief Kevin McAleenan of leaking ICE raids plan to sabotage operation.”

The leak was to the Washington Post.

The article reports:

This week’s big leak about a major Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation was orchestrated by acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan in an effort to sabotage the raids before they were scheduled to take place, according to three current and two former senior administration officials.

In a move he said was to placate Democrats, President Trump announced on Saturday that the nationwide immigration enforcement operation planned to start Sunday — aimed at migrant families who illegally remain in the country despite being denied asylum — was called off to give lawmakers two weeks to work on a plan to fix legal “loopholes” he said have enticed migrants to come to the U.S.

However, all five officials who spoke with the Washington Examiner confirmed McAleenan’s decision to go rogue and stymie the operation was what prompted the White House to call off the 10-city operation.

I have a few comments on this. First of all, if you are going to deport illegal immigrants, there needs to be a hierarchy in doing it. Most Americans would not object if the deportations began with members of MS-13. They need to go back to the countries they left. Even if they are here legally, they need to go back to the countries they left. Next, anyone convicted of a criminal offense–dealing drugs, drunk driving, illegally possessing firearms, etc., needs to be given a ticket out of the country. I would hope that the issue of deporting family members when only part of the family is here illegally would be put at the bottom of the priority list. It also might be better to deny welfare benefits to illegals in order to encourage them to leave on their own.

The article concludes:

Following the Post report Friday, ICE advised the White House not to go forward with the raids, in part because those who were the targets might have fled the locations Enforcement and Removal Operations officers had expected to find them.

“Leaking the locations and details to stop the operation from happening not only harmed operational integrity, but it put the safety and well-being of his own officers in jeopardy,” the third official wrote.

“That’s law enforcement sensitive information. You just don’t reveal that,” the second official said. “It gets people hyped up. It gets the NGOs activated, and then anyone wearing a jacket with the ICE name on it is really chastised. Cities are coming out saying, ‘Here’s how you can protect yourself against it.’”

That same official said the “worst” consequence of the leak, especially if it was directed by the department’s leader, was how it endangered personnel.

“It really jeopardized the safety of law enforcement officers — that’s the part that’s really detrimental,” the official said.

Whoever the leaker is, he needs to be fired.

It Is Becoming Very Obvious That Common Sense And Government Just Don’t Mix

Yesterday The Washington Examiner reported that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has allowed migrants released from the custody of other Homeland Security agencies to board flights to other parts of the country despite the passengers lacking any of the 15 documents it states are the only acceptable forms of identification. This has been going on for six months. Didn’t we learn our lesson on September 11th?

The article reports:

A TSA spokesperson initially told the Washington Examiner migrants were allowed to board flights if they could present the document they are given when they apply for asylum. The Notice To Appear, known by DHS as Form I-862, is a paper that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will give to a person who has passed a credible fear screening and will have his or her asylum case decided by a federal judge as many as five years down the road.

TSA said the court order served as the individual’s identification because that person had already gone through a background check while in custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

However, a USCIS official said TSA’s knowledge of protocol was wrong and that the latter agency would not provide any type of travel authorization document to a person who has passed a credible fear screening. The official said the NTA has one purpose and that was to tell recipients when to show up for court.

With the pushback from USCIS, TSA said another possible document that might be used would be the USCIS employment card.

However, asylum seekers who have been released from custody cannot attain that paper until 180 days after a credible fear claim has been approved.

In its initial statement to the Washington Examiner on its own policy violation, the agency said “TSA accepts identification documentation issued by other government agencies, which is validated through the issuing agency. All passengers are then subject to appropriate screening measures.”

TSA then referred the Washington Examiner to a webpage, which still states, “You will not be allowed to enter the security checkpoint if your identity cannot be confirmed, you chose to not provide proper identification or you decline to cooperate with the identity verification process.”

So I guess it is easier to get on a plane as an illegal alien than as an American citizen. What a mess. It would be considerably easier just to get control of our southern border.

Illegal Immigrants Can’t Reach The Southern Border Of The United States Without Traveling Through Mexico

It seems a rather obvious point, but illegal immigrants entering America through our porous southern border have to go through Mexico to get to that border. That is the reason it makes sense to involve Mexico in the process of securing our southern border.

First of all, let’s look at the increase in the number of people attempting to cross our southern border. The chart below is from U.S. Customs and Border Protection:

As you can see, the total apprehensions have increased dramatically in the past two years.

On June 1st, American Greatness posted an article with some suggested solutions to the problem. The article includes a list of how Mexico can become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

The article reports:

On Thursday, the administration rolled out a new policy aimed at encouraging Mexico to do more to crack down on the thousands of Central American migrants passing through their country on the way to the United States to claim asylum.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan described the three efforts the United States wants to see from Mexico:

    • More vigorous efforts by Mexico to secure the border between Guatemala and the Mexican state of Chiapas. The Guatemala-Chiapas border is approximately 500 miles—small as borders go. For comparison, the U.S.-Mexico border is close to 2,000 miles.
    • A crackdown on the organizations that help migrants travel through Mexico to the United States. These organizations range from the criminal—a RAND corporation study estimates that Central American cartels made $2.3 billion on human trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017—to the activist groups organizing massive surges toward the U.S., to the bus lines that have arisen to facilitate entrance to the U.S. There’s a reason why more migrants are appearing in large groups—Customs and Border Enforcement report that they’ve found 180 groups of more than 100 people since October, compared to only 13 in the previous 12-month period, and only two the year before.
    • Finally, McAleenan says he wants “align with Mexico on asylum.” This is a reference to the “safe third country” agreement that is common practice throughout the rest of the world, but with which Mexico refuses to engage.

The article notes the rules on aslyum:

This is where the “safe third country” doctrine comes in. Under international law known as the Dublin Regulation, migrants seeking asylum are required to claim it in the first safe country they enter. The theory behind this is that if migrants are truly seeking shelter from persecution, rather than simply trying to use the system to reach a specific destination, they will stop in the first place they find relief.

One interesting aspect of this is that the migrants would be more culturally compatible with Mexico than America. Mexico speaks Spanish, their native language. America speaks English (or some form of it).

At any rate, it is time for a solution. I hope the tariffs the Trump administration is threatening to impose provide an incentive for Mexico to help stop the flow of illegal drugs and immigrants at our southern border.

Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Testimony

An article posted at The Federalist on Thursday includes the testimony of Federalist senior correspondent John Daniel Davidson, delivered before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Some highlights of his testimony:

McAllen, a city of fewer than 150,000 residents, is now facing the prospect of thousands of migrants discharged from ICE custody, wandering the streets and sleeping in doorways and on park benches—the city’s mayor has said as much. What’s more, in February the city ordered Catholic Charities to vacate the former nursing home and find a new location within 90 days, citing complaints from neighbors about constant traffic and strangers wandering nearby streets where children play. By any measure, the situation in McAllen is an emergency.

This is just one border town in Texas. Something similar is playing out all up and down the U.S.-Mexico border. In El Paso, hundreds of migrant families are turning themselves in to Border Patrol every day, overwhelming federal facilities and personnel. In a five-minute stretch one day in late March, Border Patrol apprehended two different groups totaling 400 people. On the night of President Trump’s rally in El Paso in February, a group of 300 turned themselves in to the Santa Teresa Border Patrol station, which sits on an empty stretch of New Mexico scrubland 22 miles west of El Paso. Agents had to move all the ATVs out of the garage just so a hundred or so migrants would have someplace warm to sleep that night. Since then, things have been getting worse.

The testimony states:

If you spend enough time talking to migrants themselves, a pattern begins to emerge. Most of them have similar stories about why they left their home countries in Central America, and they report similar experiences of how they made their way through Mexico to the southern U.S. border. A few common characteristics stand out:

  • A majority of the “family units” are men traveling with one or more children;
  • Many of these men say they have a wife and other children back in their home country and that they intend to secure work in the U.S. and send money back to support them;
  • They are headed for all points across the U.S. and have family members or friends in those places. Many of them also have jobs already lined up;
  • Nearly all of them say they left their homes because it is dangerous, citing gang violence, threats, extortion, etc.; they are all claiming asylum.
  • At the same time, many of them will admit that they don’t plan to remain in the U.S. permanently, and in fact have a set amount of time they plan to live and work here before returning home;
  • All of them say they paid a smuggler to secure safe passage to the border (the amount varies from $2,000 to $6,000 per person, sometimes more). Generally, they say they took cars or buses for transit through Mexico.

The testimony concludes:

Without a doubt, there is a crisis at the southern border. But it’s a deeply misunderstood crisis that’s being driven by specific factors and disproportionately affecting specific regions of the border, primarily the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso. In general, the growing numbers of migrants now crossing the border are being driven by three major factors:

  • If you’re a minor or a family, it’s even easier to enter the U.S. now than it was during the Obama administration for the simple reason that there is no capacity at federal detention facilities and families can expect to be released soon after being detained by Border Patrol.
  • Smugglers are now marketing to people —women, families—who don’t want to undertake an arduous or dangerous journey. They have created a sophisticated and efficient busing package that has proven very popular with families, and word has gotten back to communities in Central America that, if they pay, the journey will be short, safe, and they will not be detained for long once inside the U.S.
  • Conditions in Central America have not improved enough to induce people to remain in their home countries. Persistent poverty, violence, and corruption, combined with the fear that it’s not going to be this easy to get into the U.S. forever, is prompting families to come now.

There is no easy solution to this crisis. Border security is part of the solution, but so is congressional action.

As long as Central American families know they can gain entry to the U.S. by initiating asylum proceedings upon crossing the border, the crisis will continue. As long as cartels and criminal networks know they can profit from trafficking migrant families to the border, they will do so. And as long as conditions in Central America continue to fester, families who can afford it will seek a better life for their children by traveling north.

The crisis on our southern border is not the result of anything President Trump has done. It is the result of years of inaction by Congress and previous administrations. As previously stated–Democrats see illegal immigrants as future Democrat voters; Republicans see illegal immigrants as cheap labor. Neither party sees them as desperate people. President Trump is at least trying to discourage them from making a long, dangerous trip. President Trump is also trying to protect America from being overwhelmed. If you doubt what this is about, look up the Cloward-Piven strategy. It explains what is currently happening (and illustrates why it must be stopped).

Why We Need To Keep Track Of Illegal Aliens Who Come To America And Commit Crimes

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about Carlos Eduardo Arevalo from El Salvador, an illegal alien who brutally murdered a 59-year-old woman, Bambi Larson, in California.

The article reports:

Arevalo has a long criminal record of arrests for violent crimes, but the State of California refused to turn him over to ICE because California is a far-left “Sanctuary State” for criminal illegal aliens.

CBS Local reported:

“Carlos Eduardo Arevalo Carranza stalked this San Jose neighborhood and his victim,” said San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia. “He is a self-admitted gang member.”

Garcia then detailed his lengthy criminal record.

“His criminal history convictions consist of in Feb. 2013 he was detained by the Department of Homeland Security at the border near McAllen, Texas, and deported.”

“In 2015, he was arrested for drug paraphernalia. In 2015 he was convicted of burglary in San Jose. In 2016, battery of an officer, resisting arrest and entering a property. In 2016, he was arrested for battery in Los Angeles. In 2017, he was arrested and convicted of false imprisonment in San Jose. On April of 2018, arrested for paraphernalia again. In May, he was arrested for possession of methamphetamine.”

“In August of 2018, he was arrested for prowling. On October 2018, he was arrested for false identification and paraphernalia once again.”

Garcia said Carranza was currently on probation for the possession of methamphetamine, paraphernalia, false imprisonment and burglary.

“Unfortunately, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) placed detainers on this individual six separate times. Two in the Los Angeles area and four in the County of Santa Clara,” he said.

…Mayor Sam Liccardo took aim at the Santa Clara County sanctuary policy in a statement following the police press conference:

“It is long overdue for the County to reconsider its current policy of ignoring ICE hold requests for predatory felons, which undermines the safety of the very immigrant communities we collectively seek to protect,” said Liccardo. “The County’s policy has nothing to do with the City’s decades-long policy of declining to have police engage in federal immigration enforcement, which was implemented to protect public safety. In contrast, the current County policy of ignoring detainer requests for individuals arrested for strike offenses and convicted of multiple felonies undermines public safety, and violates common sense. I hope we can restart this conversation to make progress where we all agree: we can both keep our City safe from violent criminals and protect our law-abiding immigrant community.”

We need a wall, and we need to arrest and deport illegal aliens who break the law–the first time they break the law. If there is a wall, it will be more difficult for them to sneak back into the country.

A Border Will Will Save Taxpayers Billions

Betsy McCaughey posted an article at Townhall today about the cost of not having a border wall.

The article reports:

Look what it costs us when a Central American teen crosses the border illegally without an adult. Uncle Sam spends a staggering $775 per day for each child housed at a shelter near Florida’s Homestead Air Reserve Base. There they have access to medical care, school and recreation. They stay, on average, 67 days at the Homestead shelter before being released to a sponsor. Do the math. That’s almost $52,000 per child. American parents would appreciate the government spending that money on their kids. Imagine the government handing you a check for $52,000 for your teenager.

However, there are bigger costs ahead. The number of illegal border crossers just hit an 11-year high with a total of more than 76,000 during the month of February alone. U.S. and Mexican officials predict hundreds of thousands more in the coming months.

The migrants use the word “asylum” as their get-in-free card. When they say it to a border agent, they gain entry to the U.S. 80 percent of the time according to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. They are temporarily housed and eventually released with an immigration court date. But half never go on to file an asylum claim, disappearing into the U.S., said former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Asylum is supposed to be reserved for people facing persecution and danger in their home country whose safety depends upon their leaving that country. People who simply want better lives are asked to go through the legal process. Unfortunately our southern border is so porous that it is very easy for people to come here illegally and then simply disappear. We need a wall. It is sad that Congress is playing political games in order to avoid building one. Congress has never wanted a secure southern border–the Democrats see future voters and the Republicans see cheap labor for the corporate sponsors. No one is looking at the security of America right now except the President and very few members of Congress.

Our Southern Border

CNS News posted an article yesterday detailing what is happening at the southern border of America.

The article reports:

Rodolfo Karisch, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector, told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Management and Accountability on Thursday, that the Border Patrol in his sector has intercepted illegal aliens trying to enter the United States “from 40 different countries, including Bangladesh, Turkey, Romania and China.”

“I want to provide some perspective on the challenges facing our men and women at the Southwest border,” Karisch told the committee in his opening statement. “Though I cannot speak for all of the components of Customs and Border Protection, I can provide a first-hand account of the complex border-security environment and ask for your assistance in helping our frontline men and women.

The article includes some statistics to illustrate what is happening at our southern border:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has published a spread sheet listing the number of illegal aliens apprehended in each border sector in 2017 by their nation of citizenship.

Of the 303,916 who were apprehended that year along the U.S.-Mexico border, only 127,938—or approximately 42.1 percent—were from Mexico.

1,364 of the deportable aliens intercepted on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017 were from the People’s Republic of China. Of these, 702 were intercepted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

564 deportable aliens from Bangladesh were intercepted on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017. Of these, 304 were intercepted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

433 deportable aliens from Romania were intercepted on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017. Of these, 94 were intercepted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

35 deportable aliens from Turkey were intercepted on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017. Of these, 21 were intercepted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

It’s time to build a wall so that we know who is coming in.

This Explains A Lot

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article that explains a few things that were curious at the time. When viewing these events, it’s a good idea to consider the underlying currents–establishment Republicans don’t want the wall any more than the Democrats. Their reasons are different, but the goal is the same. That is why the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was never actually carried out.

100 percent fed up detailed the timeline of events following the passage of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 in an article posted on August 16, 2015.

Here are some highlights from that timeline:

In his speech in El Paso on immigration reform on May 10, 2011, Obama declared that the fence along the border with Mexico is “now basically complete.” Like much of what comes out of the Obama administration, that was a lie. What was supposed to be built was a double-layered fence with barbed wire on top, and room for a security vehicle to patrol between the layers. Except for 36 of the seven-hundred-mile fence, what was built looks like the picture above or the one below.

This is the above picture:

This is the below picture:

Somehow the two pictures do not appear to be the same.

So what happened? The article reports:

The first blow against the promised fence was made by Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican Senator from Texas, at the urging of DHS she proposed an amendment to give the Department discretion to decide what type of fence was appropriate in different areas. The law was amended to read,
“Nothing in this paragraph shall require the Secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location.”
Hutchison’s amendment was included in a federal budget bill in late 2007 despite the fact that Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., had a cow…he argued the amendment effectively killed the border fence promised in the 2006 bill, he was right. Hutchison’s intentions may have been honorable, but she didn’t foresee Barack Obama being the next president.

The article concludes:

Here’s the bottom line. Back in 2006, the people of the U.S. were promised a border fence. Since then thanks to Kay Bailey Hutchison and Barack Obama 95% of the fence wasn’t built. The arguments against the fence are bogus especially if you look at Israel’s history. It’s time for America to demand that its leaders build the fence they promised. No one can honestly say it wont work, after all, it hasn’t been tried.

Yesterday after an interview with President Trump, The Daily Caller reported:

President Donald Trump says former House Speaker Paul Ryan promised to secure wall funding while Republicans controlled both Houses in exchange for the president’s signature on the 2018 omnibus spending bill.

But after the president signed the massive, $1.3 trillion spending package, Ryan reneged on his commitment.

“Well, I was going to veto the omnibus bill and Paul told me in the strongest of language, ‘Please don’t do that, we’ll get you the wall.’ And I said, ‘I hope you mean that, because I don’t like this bill,’” the president recounted in an exclusive Wednesday interview with The Daily Caller.

“Paul told me in the strongest of terms that, ‘please sign this and if you sign this we will get you that wall.’ Which is desperately needed by our country. Humanitarian crisis, trafficking, drugs, you know, everything — people, criminals, gangs, so, you know, we need the wall.”

“And then he went lame duck,” Trump said.

“And once he went lame duck, it was just really an exercise in waving to people and the power was gone so I was very disappointed. I was very disappointed in Paul because the wall was so desperately needed. And I’ll get the wall.”

Paul Ryan began well. He stood up to President Obama on various issues (without actually accomplishing anything). He began as a budget hawk, trying to keep spending under control. However, he somehow became part of the Republican establishment and went down the wrong path. I seriously doubt that he ever had any intention of building the wall.