Failure To Provide Public Safety

On Monday, The Daily Caller reported the following:

Federal authorities caught a terrorist at the U.S. southern border and released him into the country, where he roamed freely for nearly a year before being arrested in Minnesota just days ago, according to an internal federal memo exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The unnamed individual, who the memo only identifies as a member of the Somali terror group al-Shabaab, was released shortly after being caught illegally crossing the southern border near San Ysidro, California on March 13, 2023, according to the memo, which the DCNF is not publishing in order to protect the identity of a confidential source. The Terrorist Screening Center “deemed him a ‘mismatch’” after running his name through the terror watchlist, according to the memo, which was sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

However, on January 18, 2024, the Terrorist Screening Center “made a redetermination” that the individual was “a confirmed member of al-Shabaab” and was involved in the use, manufacture or transport of explosives or firearms, the memo states. Two days later, ICE nabbed the al-Shabaab member in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The article concludes:

The U.S. government has considered Al-Shabaab a foreign terrorist organization since 2008. The terrorist group operates in Somalia and has also committed attacks in Kenya and Uganda, according to the National Counterterrorism Center.

U.S. forces killed three al-Shabaab terrorists in a self defense air strike on Jan. 21 at the request of the Somali government

Al-Shabaab has carried out bombings, including suicide attacks, and the group has assassinated Somali peace activists, international aid workers, journalists and numerous civil society figures, according to the National Counterterrorism Center. The terror group carried out a 2013 attack on Westgate mall in Nairobi, killing 67 people, and in 2017 killed hundreds of civilians in Mogadishu through two suicide attacks.

After Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, federal authorities warned Border Patrol to be on alert for Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah terrorists attempting to illegally cross the southern border, according to an internal memo exclusively obtained by the DCNF at the time.

“It is clear that our safety is dependent on enforcing our immigration laws and securing the border,” Fabbricatore said.

ICE didn’t respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

It is probably time for every American to take the class to get their concealed carry license. It is becoming very obvious that our government does not have our backs. We need to be responsible for our own safety.

An Odd Shift In Reporting By The Mainstream Media

Some of us who watch the mainstream media closely are often suspicious when the media starts covering a story that they have purposely ignored. Generally there is a political motive behind the sudden coverage.

On January 3rd, Issues & Insights posted an article wondering why the mainstream media was all of a sudden concerned about the number of illegal aliens coming into America every day.

The article notes:

After spending three years largely ignoring the border, the mainstream press is suddenly all over it, with headlines blaring about a “surge,” “crisis” and “call for action.” Why now?

…Weirdly, the press is even exaggerating the current “surge.” Consider that CNN story, which says:

“Border authorities encountered more than 225,000 migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border this month, marking the highest monthly total recorded since 2000, according to preliminary Homeland Security statistics shared with CNN.”

Except that’s not true. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, illegal crossings exceeded 225,000 in August, September, October, and November of this year, and in six previous months since President Joe Biden took office.

As a matter of fact, illegal crossings have averaged more than 200,000 since Biden moved into the White House.

Also weird is the fact that the Department of Homeland Security is leaking these numbers for maximum effect, given that Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has spent the past three years insisting that the “border is secure.”

The article points out when the crisis began:

So again, we ask, why now? This is a crisis that began the moment Biden took the keys to the White House.

The Financial Times – in an article headlined “Surge in border crossings creates political upheaval in the U.S.” – offers a clue. It notes that “the migration issue is gaining salience among Democrat voters” and quotes Houston immigration lawyer Charles Foster saying: “It’s gotten to the point that the vast majority of Republicans and a growing percentage of Democrats agree with this concept that the border is wide open now.” 

A December Wall Street Journal poll finds that Biden trails Trump by 30 points on voter confidence in securing the border.

Is this part of the effort on the part of the Democrat party (in conjunction with the mainstream media) to force President Biden not to run again? I believe we will know the answer to that question sometime in March.

Stopping The Invasion

Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D    

I support the Republican effort to investigate Joe Biden for influence peddling.  However, they also need to impeach him for failure to enforce the immigration laws that he swore to uphold. Not only has he failed to enforce the law, but he has intentionally encouraged what amounts to an invasion of this country. It is realistic to assume that our country may ultimately be destroyed if this invasion is allowed to continue. No country can survive when it is over-run by unvetted people many of whom do not share its values and beliefs. Rome was not destroyed by a stronger military force but by the invasion of so-called barbarians who disrupted their system of government. We are facing the same threat.   

The Washington Examiner estimates that over 10 million illegals have flooded this country since Biden took office. This is more people than the total population of 40 states.  This amounts to about 7,000 per day, and since Biden has about 400 days left to his term of office we can expect a minimum of another 2.8 million. The Heritage Foundation reported that 60% of these illegals are receiving some form of social services support further burdening the taxpayers. The immigration policy used to be that an immigrant would not be admitted unless they could prove they had a means of their own support. We are actually paying them to invade.   Unbelievable! It should also be remembered that most come seeking so-called asylum and if admitted are then able to bring in members of their families. 

The Biden regime has encouraged the abuse of the asylum law. Essentially, the asylum law allows anyone to be admitted to this country who claims that they are being persecuted (or fear persecution) in their home country as a result of their race, religion, nationality, or membership in a particular group. According to recent data, only 14% of these asylum claims that make it to a hearing are declared to be valid. Most of those admitted never show up for their asylum hearing–currently there is an 8 to 9 year backlog.  It should be noted that the asylum law wording follows almost exactly the wording of a United Nations Declaration that encourages the elimination of national borders.   

Here are some reasonable solutions to this crisis: 

  1. Place a cap on the total number of asylum cases per year.
  2. Remove the category of “ …membership in a particular social group” from the asylum law. It is too vague and limitless in scope. 
  3. Remove the so-called “anchor baby” rule that makes the children of illegals citizens if they are born in this country.
  4. Reinstate President Trump’s policy of remaining in country of origin or intervening country when applying for asylum. Crossing the border illegally should preclude any asylum claim. 
  5. Stop any and all illegals from receiving any form of social services. 
  6. Identify and deport anyone here illegally. 

Of course Biden will never voluntarily agree to any of the above. This is where the rubber hits the road. The House of Representatives should identify key spending budget line items important to Biden and cease/cut funding them until the above items are agreed to. Start with green energy incentives, electric car incentives and funding for aspects the federal Department of Education, the FBI and Department of Justice.  

The House has the so-called “power of the purse”.  Now let’s see if they have the courage to use it.    

A Toxic Website

The Federalist posted an article yesterday about some additions to The National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) website that I would consider toxic. The NMAAHC is part of the Smithsonian museum group.

The article includes a screenshot of “Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness.”

Some of the traits listed on this chart are negative traits. However, some of the traits listed on the chart are traits needed to become a contributing member of society and avoid poverty. For instance, a two-parent family is less likely to be poor than a nuclear family. Delayed gratification is often the key to success and stability–it can also be called self-discipline. That is not a racist concept. Being polite should not be considered a racist concept. Respecting authority is also a key to an ordered society–it is not a racist concept. The chart notes that our aesthetics are based on European culture. That is because up until Ted Kennedy changed the immigration laws in 1965, we were a country of European immigrants. In 1860, slaves made up 12.8 percent of America’s population (article here). In a time that did not have mass communication, they were not going to have a lot of influence on the culture regardless of their status.

What this chart does is undermine the foundations of a civilized society. The foundations of America are Judeo-Christian. They include such things as two-parent families, a work ethic, manners, respect for authority, and all the things that make living together possible. Without those things society would devolve into chaos. I am sorry that the Smithsonian considers those things ‘white.’ I consider them civilized. Categorizing these values as ‘white’ places an obstacle in front of people of color if they want to be successful. Calling those things that result in success ‘white’ discourages others from doing the things necessary to succeed.  If someone considers the foundations of our society ‘white’ and thus racist, I suggest they find a country whose foundations and expectations are more to their liking and emigrate there.

Making It Easier To Deport Criminals

Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about a decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday.

The article reports:

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled to make it easier for the federal government to deport lawful permanent residents (LPRs) who have been convicted of serious crimes.

In a 5-4 decision, the top court justices sided against a man who was seeking to cancel deportation orders stemming from firearm and drug offenses. LPRs who are subject to deportation orders can apply to have their removal canceled under a federal immigration law if they meet strict eligibility requirements.

That law gives the attorney general power to cancel the removal of an applicant who has been an LPR for five years and has resided continuously in the United States for seven years, during which time he or she must not have been convicted of an aggravated felony. If an LPR is found to have committed such felonies, a rule called the “stop-time rule” would be triggered. This rule would cause the accrual of the seven-year requirement to pause from the time when the individual commits a crime that renders them “inadmissible.”

The court on Thursday ruled to uphold a lower court decision that found the man ineligible for the discretionary cancellation of his removal because he had committed aggravated assault offenses within the initial seven years of his residency, even though those crimes were not grounds for his deportation.

The ruling is widely viewed as a victory for the Trump administration. President Donald Trump has been running on a platform that pushes for stronger enforcement of national immigration laws.

There is no reason for us to allow criminals who are not Americans to remain in this country. We are perfectly capable of creating enough criminals on our own–we don’t need to take anyone else’s.

About That Oft Repeated Concern For The Constitution…

Yesterday PJMedia posted an article about constitutional violations under President Obama. Somehow I don’t remember the Democrats being very upset about those violations.

The article lists the violations:

5. Illegally firing an inspector general

In 2009, Barack Obama illegally fired Gerald Walpin, the inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service,  without notice or providing the legally mandated explanation for the firing to Congress. Obama did this to protect Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, an ally of his, whom Walpin had been investigating for misusing federal funds Walpin had discovered a cover-up of sexual assault allegations by minors against Johnson.

4. Giving “green energy” loans to donor companies

If you want to talk about an abuse of power, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were both personally involved in the decision-making process to determine who got $80 billion for clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits for green energy companies, in a highly politicized process that favored companies that supported the Obama-Biden campaign over those that didn’t. It was no coincidence that the companies that got all the cash were donors to their campaign. In fact, DOE officials expressed concerned that Obama and Biden’s involvement was putting taxpayer dollars at risk. Not only did they give all this money to green energy companies that donated to their campaign, but the Obama administration also stole proprietary technology from companies that didn’t get the loans to the Obama cronies who got them. This scandal was much bigger than Solyndra, but the calls for Obama’s impeachment weren’t there.

3. Unconstitutional recess appointments

When Obama made a number of controversial picks for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), he was unable to get them through the Senate. So, in January 2012, he declared his nominees appointed to the Senate via recess appointments. Except the Senate wasn’t even in recess at the time. Obama’s actions were such a blatant abuse of power that experts on both sides of the aisle blasted Obama for what he did and a federal appeals court overturned the appointments a few days after his second inauguration, declaring, “Allowing the president to define the scope of his own appointments power would eviscerate the Constitution’s separation of powers.” The United States Supreme Court ultimately took up the case, and unanimously agreed Obama abused his power.

2. Illegally reinterpreting Title IX

When Title IX was written, the goal was to protect people from discrimination based on sex in education. The notion of “gender identity” or “gender expression” wasn’t even a thing back in 1972 when it was passed. Nevertheless, Obama unilaterally decided that “sex” meant “gender identity” and threatened to enforce this bizarre idea. This was a huge violation of the rights and privacy of women and girls nationwide without so much as a national debate in Congress, where this issue needed to be worked out. Instead of going to Congress, Obama simply threatened educational institutions at all levels with the loss of Title IX funding if they didn’t comply and allow boys to share bathrooms, locker rooms, and dorm rooms with girls, as well as allow boys to play on girls sports teams. Obama’s going around Congress on this issue was a huge violation of power.

1. Changing immigration law via executive order

The truth is, Obama spent most of his presidency with a divided Congress or a GOP-controlled Congress. His radical left-wing agenda was mostly DOA because rather than work toward compromise legislation, his default position was to act on his own, assuming the executive authority to change laws via executive fiat. Anyone who’s familiar with the Constitution knows he had no such authority.

Still, when the DREAM Act failed to pass, Obama issued an executive order creating DACA, an executive-branch version of the DREAM Act. Obama literally bypassed Congress, changing U.S. immigration law via executive pen to appease his pro-open-borders base.

There seems to be something of a double standard here. The Democrats are not able to name one instance where President Trump abused his power or violated the Constitution, yet there was not a peep out of them when President Obama openly violated the Constitution.

Today At The Supreme Court

Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments about DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). It is interesting that the case has taken so long to get to the Supreme Court.

In September 2017, the Heritage Foundation reminded us of the following statement by former President Obama:

Responding in October 2010 to demands that he implement immigration reforms unilaterally, Obama declared, “I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself.” In March 2011, he said that with “respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case.” In May 2011, he acknowledged that he couldn’t “just bypass Congress and change the (immigration) law myself. … That’s not how a democracy works.”

I guess he changed his mind. Also, just for the record, former President Obama was supposed to be a Constitutional Law Professor. We are not a democracy–we are a representative republic. Did he know that?

At any rate, DACA is now at the Supreme Court. Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the coming hearings.

The article notes:

The long-running battle over the Trump administration’s bid to end the Obama-era program for young undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers” will land before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
***
“The administration has basically chalked up the fact that they are going to lose a lot of these cases in the lower courts,” said Thomas Dupree, a former top Bush Justice Department official and now an appellate attorney.

“But they’re playing the long game. I think that there are those in the White House and the Justice Department who have made a calculation saying, ‘Look we can absorb all these losses in the lower courts because we are going to win the endgame when this case gets into the Supreme Court.’”

It remains to be seen how the court will rule, however, on this complicated issue — which concerns the limits of one president trying to rescind the policies of his predecessor.

The article concludes:

I haven’t studied the briefs so as to be up to speed on the technical arguments that will be presented to the Court tomorrow. But at the end of the day, it is hard to see how the courts can hold that the president is legally barred from carrying out his constitutional duty to see that the laws–including the immigration laws–are faithfully executed.

Stay tuned.

How Much Are American Lives Worth?

Most of the people attempting to break into America are people simply looking for a way out of economic and political oppression. However, there are some seriously rotten apples in the bunch. Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about one group of rotten apples.

The article reports:

22 members of the violent El Salvadoran gang MS-13 were charged with enforcing a criminal racketeering enterprise by murdering people in ‘medieval style’ killing sprees.

A 12-count indictment was handed down Monday by prosecutors in Los Angeles who charged the MS-13 gang members with killing 7 people with machetes.

A rival gang member was dismembered and his heart cut out of his chest and thrown into canyon in Los Angeles.

 Now we know 19 of the 22 arrested gang members were here in the US illegally.

In February, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed a resolution giving Los Angeles sanctuary status for immigrants. In a 12-0 vote, the council reaffirmed laws limiting cooperation with federal authorities regarding immigration enforcement policies. Loosely translated that means that law enforcement in the city will not cooperate with the federal government to enforce immigration laws. Had immigration laws been enforced, 19 of the 22 gang members would not have been here to commit the horrendous crimes they committed.

When Reality Meets Spin

Yesterday Zero Hedge posted an article about how the crisis at the southern United States border is impacting New Mexico. Actually it is impacting both the State of New Mexico and the politics of New Mexico.

The article reports:

The radical-leftist governor of New Mexico, who sent National Guard troops packing in February, needs federal help now, it seems. She’s in the Swamp to beg for funding as illegal immigrants overwhelm the state. After months of neglecting the border cities and towns, toeing the DC elite party line of no “crisis” here, and facing a veritable citizens’ revolt in the Land of Enchantment, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is demanding federal government assistance for the dire situation – one she exacerbated through indifference to constituents.

And it comes on the heels of yet another county drawing a line in the sand and refusing any further influx of illegal immigrants seeking asylum. Sierra County, boasting a population 11,116 and a 21% poverty rate, joined Otero and Lincoln counties in passing resolutions opposing the relocation of migrants to their communities.

This isn’t just happening in these three counties, either – it’s an untenable and cruel situation being thrust on an impoverished state by government officials who seem to be mere puppets for the Democratic Party.

According to Deming City Administrator Aaron Sera, in Luna County, buses unload between 300 and 500 immigrants each day. As a town of a 14,183, it has been mercilessly overwhelmed by the governor’s dangerous game of partisan politics. Even larger enclaves, such as Las Cruces, have been overrun with illegal aliens, completely depleting community and local government resources as they’re  forced to house and care for 6,000 asylum seekers – and all in a matter of four short weeks.

The purpose of political asylum is to provide refuge for those people whose lives are in danger in their home countries–either for political, religious, or other reasons. Political asylum does not mean that you can simply enter another country illegally in hopes of either working there or living off of the largess of the people who live there.

America needs to redo its immigration policies. We need to help people in poor countries, but we also need to bring in people who will contribute to America, not take from it. There has to be a balance of those two things if America is to survive. This crisis is the result of Congressional inaction. How many bills have you seen come out of the current House of Representatives that included a common-sense approach to immigration? How many immigration bills in recent years have reflected common sense?

We need to seal the border and enact sane immigration laws. Let’s cut the cost of legal immigration and welcome those who want to help grow America.

If It Walks Like A Duck And Quacks Like A Duck…

The New York Post posted an article about the crisis at our southern border yesterday written by its editorial board. The Democrats are saying that there is no emergency at the border and that it is a ‘made up crisis.’ The facts show otherwise.

The article reports:

More than 76,000 migrants crossed the southern border illegally last month, the highest number in 12 years. So much for all those media “fact checks” arguing that there’s no emergency to justify President Trump’s wall.

Immigration officials say the number is only going to increase, creating what Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan warns is “a border security and a humanitarian crisis.”

Why are they coming in such vast numbers? Because smugglers have put them wise to how to take advantage of recent court decisions to claim asylum and remain here indefinitely.

They’re coming (mainly from Guatemala) in ever-larger groups, mostly families as opposed to individuals. They’ve been told that if they cross the border illegally, they only need cry “asylum.” And adults traveling with children have a better chance to stay.

The article explains why the migrants are coming:

Consider: Officials say the biggest “pull factors” for migrant families are court settlements that not only bar deportations without lengthy proceedings, but also prevent the detainment of families for more than 20 days.

After that period, families must be allowed to settle here while their cases wind their way through immigration court.

In other words, once they make it across the border, we can’t reject them and we can’t hold them. That situation, McAleenan warns, is “unsustainable.”

The article then reminds us that it is up to Congress to fix the broken immigration laws. As much as Congress may resent the President using his emergency power to build the wall, the blame for the crisis falls on Congress. The blame falls on those Republicans, bought and paid-for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in search of cheap labor, and the Democrats, who want illegal aliens to vote. Both sides need to be voted out of office. Otherwise we will lose what is America. We cannot sustain this level of immigration and remain the republic our Founding Fathers created. We have only to look to Europe to see the consequences of allowing mass migration.

 

The Numbers–Do They Actually Matter?

On January 6th, The Conservative Tribune posted an article about illegal immigration.

The article reported:

According to an Economist/YouGov survey, a jaw-dropping 93 percent of Americans believe that illegal immigration is a problem.

“A wide-ranging Economist/YouGov survey gauged the level of concern Americans have on the issue to find that only 7 percent of the overall public say illegal immigration is ‘not a problem’; 2 percent of Republicans, 7 percent of independents and even 12 percent of Democrats agree with the statement,” The Washington Times reported.

There are differences in how serious people believe the immigration problem is, but those who shrug off illegal immigration are few and far between.

“40 percent of Americans overall say illegal immigration in the U.S. is a ‘very serious problem’; 73 percent of Republicans, 38 percent of independents and 15 percent of Democrats agree,” The Times explained.

“22 percent overall say illegal immigration is a ‘somewhat serious problem’; 19 percent of Republicans, 21 percent of independents and 26 percent of Democrats agree,” the paper summarized. Another 24 percent of Americans said that it was a “minor problem.”

At the same time, the Economist/YouGov survey revealed some inconvenient results for liberals.

When respondents were asked if they trusted Republicans or Democrats to deal with border security, a higher percentage — 31 percent — said “Republicans.” Meanwhile, 62 percent thought Congress should compromise with the president to end the government shutdown.

It seems as if most Americans are aware of the problems associated with illegal immigration regardless of what the media is trying to tell us. A border wall is a good idea. However, we also need to do something about America’s very broken immigration system. Our current immigration laws have been exploited by major corporations to replace American workers with cheaper workers. This has been done not only on the low end of the pay scale, but also on the higher end.

On June 3, 2015, The New York Times reported:

Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

Of course that was legal immigration, but it was a typical case of a corporation using a bad law to its advantage.

I don’t know if the wall will actually be built. It should be. The wall is opposed by Democrats (present and future voters–many illegals are currently voting in our elections) and Republicans (U.S. Chamber of Commerce members who support illegal immigration because it depresses wages in the lower sectors of the economy and increases their profits). We have reached a point where our representatives not only do not represent us–they have forgotten to represent the best interests of America.

Taking A Stand For America

Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about a successful policy President Trump has instituted to deal with the problem of illegal immigrants.

The article reports:

Sierra Leone for years had thumbed its nose at U.S. officials, slow-walking deportations so badly that it earned its way onto Homeland Security’s “recalcitrant country” naughty list. Over the last two years of the Obama administration, Sierra Leone took back just 21 deportees.

President Trump took office vowing action, and one of his first executive orders instructed his administration to stop issuing visas to the worst-offending countries. The Sierra Leone government was targeted with sanctions in August 2017, and the change came quickly, with 44 deportees sent back that year, and 79 shipped back in fiscal 2018.

While much of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda remains tied up in the federal courts or stalemated in Congress, he has made extraordinary progress on recalcitrant countries like Sierra Leone, cutting the number of deadbeat countries from a peak of 23 in 2015 down to just nine as of last month.

The number of countries on the at-risk list, or close to recalcitrant, also has been slashed, from 62 to just 24 as of May.

Long-time deadbeats such as Cuba, China and Vietnam are taking back hundreds more people, even though they remain on the naughty list.

Guinea earned its way off the list by increasing its acceptance of deportees by more than 1,200 percent from 2016 to 2018, while Eritrea went from 13 deportees in Mr. Obama’s final year to 62 last year. Myanmar rose from three to 40.

This is what protecting America looks like.

The article states:

Under Mr. Trump, six countries have already been slapped with deportee-related sanctions.

In each of those cases, the U.S. government said it would no longer issue business or tourist visas to government officials and their families — and warned that even broader sanctions could follow.

That got the attention of diplomats in the target countries, and elsewhere.

“Now these countries understand that the party is over and they — government officials in particular — will face consequences for blocking deportations,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies. “The sanctions work.”

Even still, a massive backlog has built up of people waiting to be deported. China is the worst offender with more than 40,000 in the deportation queue, followed by Cuba with nearly 38,000.

More troubling is that almost all of them have been set free into U.S. communities, thanks to a 2001 Supreme Court ruling limiting detention to just six months in cases when the government doesn’t appear likely to be able to get the other countries to take them back.

That means convicted criminals are often released, including more than 30,000 of the Cubans, nearly 8,000 Vietnamese, nearly 4,000 Laotians and more than 2,000 Chinese.

Ms. Waldman called that a “remarkable public safety risk” that requires action by Congress.

Illegal aliens do not add to our country’s economy. We do need to change the immigration laws to make legal immigration to America more accessible to those people who want to come her and contribute to the American economy. We don’t need to have an open door for people who want to come here and take advantage of our generosity.

Who’s In The Caravan?

On October 25th, Judicial Watch posted an article about the caravan heading for the southern border of America. The title of the article is, “Guatemalan Authorities Rescue Group of Minors from Human Smugglers in Caravan.”

The article reports:

Judicial Watch has obtained exclusive information and photos from Guatemalan authorities revealing that they have recovered seven unaccompanied minors from human smugglers working inside the caravan. The children have been taken into custody and they are being provided with food, water and medical attention, according to a high-level Guatemalan government official. The smugglers have been arrested and the broader investigation into criminal activity in the caravan is ongoing.

A Judicial Watch team, headed by Director of Investigations Chris Farrell, spent several days on the Guatemala-Honduras border covering the illegal alien caravan, which originated in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. The team filed a number of exclusive reports and videos and met with Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales and other top government officials.

“Judicial Watch has been at the forefront of this top news story, reporting exclusive information from inside that no other news organization is reporting,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Chris Farrell and Irene Garcia put themselves in harm’s way to get this material, and Judicial Watch supporters nationwide are highly grateful for their sacrifices.”

In articles posted October 26th, Judicial Watch reported:

The migrant caravan marching northbound through Central America is an “elaborately planned” movement that’s benefiting human smugglers and bringing disturbing numbers of violent gang members and other criminal elements through Guatemala, according to government sources in the capital city.

“MS-13 gang members have been detained and coyotes (human smugglers) are joining the march with clients who pay to get smuggled into the United States,” a Guatemalan official told Judicial Watch. People from Asian countries waiting to get smuggled into the U.S. through Central America are also integrating with poor Hondurans in the caravan, a high-level Guatemalan government source confirmed. Among them are nationals of Bangladesh, a south Asian Islamic country that’s well known as a recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). “There are lots of dirty businesses associated with this,” Guatemalan authorities told Judicial Watch. “There’s lots of human trafficking.”

Sandwiched between Honduras and Mexico, Guatemala has been overrun with the onslaught of migrants that began their journey last week in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. At last count around 7,000 have participated in the trek, a great deal of them rowdy, angry men ages 17 to 40. President Jimmy Morales has ordered the military and police to detain all of the migrants and facilitate their safe return back to Honduras, though thousands have already reached the Mexican border. In a morning interview with Judicial Watch at the Guatemalan Ministry of Defense, Secretary of Defense General Luis Miguel Ralda Moreno said more than 2,000 Hondurans have been sent back home on buses. “We’re doing everything possible to stop the caravan while still respecting human rights,” General Moreno said.

During an afternoon interview at the National Palace, President Morales said that Guatemala has absorbed the huge cost of mobilizing police and military to return thousands of people to Honduras. He would like the United States to help him find the organizers of the caravan so they can face legal consequences. “Mass immigration like this endangers lives,” Morales said. “This is unprecedented. We are in the process of investigating who is behind the caravan.” Morales assures that Guatemala is doing everything possible to curb illegal immigration and asked for cooperation from the United States.

It has been a delicate and complicated task, Guatemalan officials say, because the caravan is a very organized movement that has been well orchestrated. There are rest points along the route with food, water and shelter for the migrants as well as medical care in some areas. “It’s very strategic and extremely organized,” a Guatemalan government source told Judicial Watch. “It is very complex, not a simple march. There is nothing spontaneous about it.” During a visit to the Guatemalan-Honduran border this week Judicial Watch interviewed multiple migrants who repeated the same rehearsed line when asked who organized the caravan, insisting it was a spontaneous event even though there were clearly organizers shouting instructions in Spanish and putting select persons in front of cameras for interviews. All of them said the caravan was not about politics but rather poverty.

Guatemalan officials disagree, estimating that the caravan is a movement of radicalized forces to destabilize Central American countries. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, a conservative, echoes that assessment. In a local newspaper report published last week Hernández asserted that leftist interests seeking to destabilize the country are manipulating migrants. Women and children are being used without regard to the risks to their lives, Hernández said. “The irregular mobilization was organized for political reasons to negatively affect the governance and image of Honduras and to destabilize the peace of neighboring countries,” the president said, adding that many have returned to the country after realizing they’ve been fooled.

We need to use whatever force is necessary to keep the people in the caravan from illegally entering America. If they are economic migrants, they need to come here legally through our immigration system. What we see happening is an illustration of the fact that Congress is unwilling to deal with this issue. Congress is responsible for making laws in the United States. They have not put in place sane immigration laws because the Democrats believe that the illegals will eventually become legalized and be a Democrat voting bloc and the Republican big money wants cheap labor. Meanwhile ordinary Americans are caught in the middle.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

America is one of the most generous countries in the world. When natural disasters occur, we send aid. When Americans are in need, we help them. Sometimes we are taken advantage of because of our generosity, and Americans have accumulated a lot of debt because of our generosity. Some aspects of that generosity may be beginning to change.

The American Thinker posted an article today about impact of some of President Trump’s policies on welfare programs.

The article reports:

Welfare bureaucrats are putting the scream on, with news that President Trump’s efforts to enforce U.S. immigration law are incentivizing illegal aliens to drop out of assorted welfare programs.

Get a load of this alarmism from the welfare administrative mafias quoted by Politico:

Immigrants [sic] are turning down government help to buy infant formula and healthy food for their young children because they’re afraid the Trump administration could bar them from getting a green card if they take federal aid.

The article concludes:

The bureaucrats and do-gooders quoted all admit that they aren’t actually entirely sure why the Women, Infants, and Children program has seen its numbers drop from 7.4 million to 6.8 million since President Trump took office.  There is a dismissive note about the “improving economy” but no recognition that the sudden availability of jobs in the Trump economy tends to have a large effect on whether people (legal and illegal) stay on welfare rolls.  For a lot of the poor, the promise of a job with the prospect of higher wages and an improved standard of living – and no government supervision, no need to keep heads down and incomes low – is preferable to any state welfare, so they’re taking the jobs and running.  Jobs in that much dismissed “improving economy” are likely the biggest reason the numbers of welfare recipients, both legal and illegal, are going down.  This, by the way, is correlated with falling food stamp rolls (illegals supposedly can’t get those) and declines in other welfare populations in the Trump economy.

The quoted bureaucrats do say that, because they have fielded inquiries from illegals, those same people who supposedly aren’t bright enough to manage a voter ID card yet are amazingly cognizant on the minutiae of maintaining the exact qualifications for welfare, and who want to make sure that being a public charge won’t hurt their green card chances.

What this shows is that the open borders lobby and the welfare industrial complex are amazingly integrated, and President Trump’s effort to restore rule of law at the border and protect taxpayer assets is a threat to their money interests and raison d’être.  What it also shows is that President Trump can’t keep pushing hard enough on this.  Striking out at the money trail has always been a surefire effort to end corrupt regimes and, by extension, corrupt bureaucratic empires.

I don’t want to see anyone’s child go hungry or not get the medical services they need, but there is a message in this. People are coming to America to take advantage of our welfare programs–they want to take from America, not contribute to America. Preferential treatment should be given to people who want to contribute to America. We need to remember that although we are a nation of immigrants, early immigrants did not have welfare programs they could join. They were expected to work hard to achieve the American Dream. That was the vision of America–it was a land of opportunity, not a land of the free lunch.

The “Dreamer” Spin

If your news sources are limited to the mainstream media, you may have the impression that President Trump is randomly breaking up families and deporting illegal immigrants. Stories in the mainstream show crying children whose parent or parents are being deported, and these stories just reek of sympathetic angles. However, when you look past the obvious, you often find out that what you are being told may not be the entire story.

Hot Air posted an article today about one such story about a deported illegal alien.

The article reports:

ICE agents took Armando Nunez Salgado into custody outside his home. According to family members, he was in the backyard when agents walked right in through the side gate. His 14-year-old daughter Isabel Salgado dissolved into tears.

“I cried. I got very emotional, I was really sad,” said Isabel. “I mean to watch someone who is part of your everyday life and then you just have to watch him leave without saying goodbye. It kind of hurts.”

Armando is a construction worker who has been in America more than 30 years. His wife Elena Ponce said his parents brought him to the U.S. when he was only four years old.

The article at Hot Air begins to tell us more of the story:

But it turns out, Armando does have a dangerous past. After our interview, his family members told KPIX 5 he was involved in gangs and drugs for a long time.

In fact, at one point, he was on ICE’s most wanted list for charges of felony force and assault with a deadly weapon.

…“On Sunday, Feb. 25, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) San Francisco Fugitive Operations Team arrested ICE fugitive Armando Nuñez-Salgado, 38, a citizen of Mexico and documented Sureño gang member, who has been previously removed by ICE on four prior occasions. Over the past 18 years he has accumulated criminal convictions in California that have resulted in more than 15 years of prison sentencings. His criminal convictions include assault with a deadly weapon (statutorily enhanced because of his gang member status), burglary, hit-and-run causing injury and evading a peace officer.”

The man had been deported four times and done fifteen years in prison! This is not an innocent man who is an asset to America.

Americans Have Common Sense, Do Our Leaders?

Yesterday The Hill posted an article about sanctuary cities. There is a surprising amount of public support for President Trump’s deportation of criminal aliens.

The article reports:

The poll shows that President Trump has broad public support in his effort to crack down on sanctuary cities.

A survey from HarvardHarris Poll provided exclusively to The Hill found that 80 percent of voters say local authorities should have to comply with the law by reporting to federal agents the illegal immigrants they come into contact with.

As it stands, hundreds of cities across the nation — many with Democratic mayors or city councils — are refusing to do so.

Trump has signed an executive order directing Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to find ways to starve these sanctuary cities of federal funding. A Reuters analysis found the top 10 sanctuary cities in the U.S. receive $2.27 billion in federal funding for programs ranging from public health services to early childhood education.

We need to deal with our own citizens who are living in poverty before we open our borders to more dependents.

The article includes the following graph:

If we are to be a nation of laws, we need to enforce our laws.

Borders Matter

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about the crimes committed by immigrants legally and illegally entering America with nefarious intentions.

The article reports:

In the month of September alone, a Turkish immigrant allegedly shot and killed five people in a Washington State mall; an Afghan immigrant allegedly planted bombs in New York and New Jersey injuring roughly 30 innocent people; a Somali immigrant allegedly stabbed nine people at a Minnesota mall; a twice-arrested illegal alien with a prior DUI conviction allegedly murdered a Kansas sheriff’s deputy; an illegal alien and convicted child rapist allegedly shot two California corrections officers; an illegal alien with a prior drug arrest, who had been a recipient of Obama’s executive amnesty, allegedly engaged in reckless driving killing a 12-year-old girl; a three-time deported illegal alien allegedly killed two people on what was described as a crime “rampage;” and a Mexican immigrant and Arizona pastor was arrested after it was revealed that he had allegedly molested children for years, many of whom are believed to belong to his church, and for impregnating one of his victims when she was 13 years old.

At the same time, a Department of Homeland Security audit revealed that over 1,800 foreign nationals who were slated to be deported were instead awarded U.S. citizenship.

In football, when you see an extremely long running or pass play, you can usually assume that someone on the defense missed his assignment. I think it is safe to say that somewhere in our immigration process, someone (or someones) has missed his assignment.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. The people who are in charge of our safety are not doing their job. They are either incompetent or have intentionally closed their eyes to the threat. Either way, they have missed their assignment.