Tag Archives: Homeland Security

The Real Cost Of An Open Border

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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

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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

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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?

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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?

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Do The Statements Line Up With The Actions?

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Yesterday CNS News posted an article that reported the following:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday reiterated that “Democrats are committed to border security” after President Donald Trump agreed to a deal to re-open the government for three weeks while the White House and Democratic congressional leaders negotiate over Trump’s proposed border wall.

“And we have no complaint,” Pelosi said on Friday.

The article continues:

“We look forward to Congresswoman Roybal-Allard [D.-Calif.] taking the lead in terms of the substance from her standpoint as Chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee and commend, again, our Chair of the Appropriations Committee [Nita Lowey (D.-N.Y.] for her leadership on this,” Pelosi said. “They bring knowledge, they bring perspective, they bring the enthusiasm of the consensus of our Caucus to that conference.”

So let’s take a look at Congresswoman Roybal-Allard for a minute. The Center for Security Policy put her on a list of “national security failures” – legislators who scored a total of less than 25%, based on all scored votes for which they were present. The Center’s findings indicate 149 Members of the House of Representatives and 46 Senators are national security failures based on their voting record in the 111th Congress.

It gets better. Opensecrets.org listed the details of the Congresswoman’s campaign contributions:

I am not sure that this is the most qualified person to put on the committee. California has been something of a shining example of the negative impact of unchecked immigration on a state’s finances and quality of life.

Somehow I am not looking forward to rational solutions to the problem at our southern border from the Democrats on the Homeland Security Subcommittee.

When You Are Convinced You Know It All

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Power can do strange things to people. Some people handle it well, and some people are so impressed that they have some power that they decide they are all-powerful. Nancy Pelosi is a good example of the latter.

The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about one of Speaker of the House Pelosi’s recent statements.

The article reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Wednesday night she “doesn’t care” if the Secret Service said it was prepared to appropriately secure the State of the Union address despite the partial government shutdown.

Instead, she stood firm in her resolve to delay the January 29 event until the government completely re-opens.

In a letter to President Trump, Pelosi claimed the lack of funds to Homeland Security posed a risk to the White House and the Congress during the event, but the Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen released a statement refuting that.

So Speaker Pelosi knows more about security than the Department of Homeland Security?

The article concludes:

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise called Democrats’ security concerns nonsense, telling reporters on Wednesday, “There are no security concerns that have been raised and that has nothing to do with that. Ironically, it seems like she’s only concerned about security when it’s a State of the Union that will expose what this fight is all about.”

It may be that the Democrat focus groups are starting to indicate that the shutdown isn’t going exactly the way the Democrats thought it would. Meanwhile there is another caravan headed our way. I wonder what the impact of that will be on public opinion.

The Coast Guard Will Get Paid

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner reported the following:

Concerned about U.S. Coast Guard forces losing a paycheck in the partial government shutdown, President Trump personally urged his team to find a solution that would allow the administration to make this week’s $75 million payroll, according to officials.

Trump stepped in on Wednesday, calling on top lawyers and staffers to determine if the Coast Guard could make payroll despite being included in the shutdown that has impacted about 25 percent of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, which houses the Coast Guard.

Military personnel under the Department of Defense are not included in the shutdown, because their appropriations were approved earlier in Congress.

Officials said that Trump was keen to find a “way we can fix this” as news media stories about the Coast Guardsmen’s plight started to pile up.

At his urging, the Office of Management and Budget, DHS and the Coast Guard determined that the rules governing pay to Coast Guard forces requires it be made through the end of the year. To make it, the lawyers said that unused funding could be tapped for pay. The service had a bit more than the needed $75 million left over from its past continuing resolution appropriation, enough to make this month’s last payroll check.

“The president is trying to make the shutdown as painless as possible for workers, and this case proved it,” said an official.

Remember that only 1/4 of the government is shut down because President Trump had the forethought to get the rest of the budget passed previously. The Democrats (who in the past voted for a fence (a.k.a. wall) have changed their minds and shut down the government because President Trump wants a wall. At least President Trump is attempting to make the shutdown as painless as possible while Representative Nancy Pelosi (who should be in Washington negotiating) vacations in Hawaii.

The Holy Land Foundation Trial

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I have been doing a short segment on a local talk show on Fridays. The segment airs sometime between 6 and 7 pm. The station is 107.1 WTKF out of Morehead City, North Carolina. This week Lockwood Phillps and I discussed the Holy Land Foundation Trial, a subject that does not get a lot of press. He asked me to share the information we discussed at rightwinggranny.com. This post is the result of that request.

The following information comes from two books—Catastrophic Failure by Stephen Coughlin and Sharia The Threat To America Report of Team B2. Some of the members of Team B2 were General Jerry Boykin, Major Stephen Coughlin, Frank Gaffney, Jr., John Guandolo, Clare Lopez, Andrew McCarthy, Tom Trento, Diana West, and James Woolsey.

In August 2004 Maryland Transportation Authority Police Office observed a woman wearing traditional Islamic garb videotaping the support structures of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and conducted a traffic stop. The driver of the vehicle was identified as Ismail Elbarasse and detained on an outstanding material witness warrant issued in Chicago in a Hamas case.

The FBI’s Washington Field Office raided Elbarasse’s residence in Annandale, Virginia, and in the basement of his home they found a hidden sub-basement. In that sub-basement, they found the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America. The documents showed the connections between many of the Muslim-American groups in America and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Between July and September 2007, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, along with attorneys from the main Department of Justice in Washington, working with FBI case agents and analysts from the FBI Dallas Field Office, tried the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and its senior leadership in U.S. Federal Court. The HLF was funneling money overseas to Hamas.

The exhibits in that trial included “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in America.” This is the document that outlines the Muslim Brotherhood plan to undermine the government of the U.S. and create a sharia state in America.

In this memorandum is a list of organizations that the Muslim Brotherhood considers its ‘friends.’ Some of these groups still have access to our government at the highest levels.

 The first trial resulted in a mistrial. The second trial resulted in five convictions with sentences ranging from 15 to 65 years.

It gets worse:

In 2011 elements of the American Muslim Brotherhood wrote the White House demanding an embargo or discontinuation of information and materials relating to Islamic-based terrorism—even insisting on firings, “re-training,” and “purges” of officers, analysts, special agents, and decision-makers who created or made such materials available. The letter was drafted by Farhana Khera, President and Executive Director of Muslim Advocates, and addressed to John Brennan, then Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (later director of the CIA). Days later, Brennan responded by agreeing on the necessity for the “White House [to] immediately create an interagency task force to address the problem’ by removing personnel and products that the Muslim Brotherhood deemed “biased, false, and highly offensive.”

…Talks between the administration and the Brotherhood took place at high levels, with the Director of the FBI going so far as to meet with the Brotherhood in February 2012 against the expressed directives of Congress. More alarming, however, is that the FBI then proceeded to undertake the very purging of documents that the Brotherhood had demanded. The Department of Defense followed shortly thereafter with a Soviet-style purge of individuals along with disciplinary actions and re-education.

Not only did the Secretary of State endorse such curbs on speech, the Assistant Attorney General seemed eager to enforce them.

Just for the record, the Secretary of State in 2011 was Hillary Clinton.

The following is from an article posted at the Center for Security Policy on March 25, 2014:

Virtually every country there has found itself under siege from Muslims seeking to impose the supremacist Islamic doctrine they call shariah on everyone else.  The preeminent organization promoting this agenda is the Muslim Brotherhood, now banned as a terrorist group in its home country of Egypt, but prospering in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in what has been known as the Free World.  In fact, as Egyptian courts hand down death sentences to those engaged with the Brotherhood’s violent efforts to overthrow the government there, ours is opening the door to asylum for those who have only engaged in “limited” material support for terrorism.

More insidious than the Muslim Brotherhood’s violence, however, is its stealthy subversion.  In a 1991 strategic plan introduced into evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial, a senior Brother named Mohammed Akram described this form of warfare as “civilization jihad.”

In Akram’s words, the goal of the Brotherhood’s civilization jihadists is “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within…so that God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”  His “Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America” lays out how this ambitious goal is to be achieved under our noses by penetrating and subverting “from within” the West’s civil society and governing institutions.

The London Telegraph reports that this campaign has just scored a major success in Great Britain. That country’s trade association for lawyers, the Law Society, has declared its members can begin drawing up shariah-compliant wills that will be enforceable in British common law courts.

 The fight to preserve our republic is far from over. The deep state has many forms. I have met some of the analysts who were fired in the 2011 purge. As far as I know, they do not have their jobs back. The threat is still there, and most Americans have never heard of the Holy Land Foundation Trial or the government exhibits from the trial. You can find the exhibits on the Internet and read them for yourself. They include a list of groups in America that work closely with the Muslim Brotherhood.

A District Court Is Not More Powerful Than The President

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A District Court does not have authority over the President. However, that doesn’t stop some judges from trying to exercise that authority. Part of the President’s job is to defend the country. The courts do not have the right to interfere with that defense. However, one court is doing just that.

The Conservative Treehouse is reporting today that U.S. District Judge Jon Steven Tigar in San Francisco has issued a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration’s modified emergency asylum policy which barred asylum for aliens who enter the country illegally. Note that the President’s modified policy only applies to those who enter the country illegally. Since when did people breaking the law to come here have rights?

The article reports:

While a challenge was predictable, frustrating and likely to be spun up by media, the ruling only applies to aliens who gain illegal entry and request asylum.

Nothing in the ruling stops the hardened border enforcement and/or current expedited review and deportation program. In essence, keep the illegal aliens out and the judicial ruling is moot (until defeated in higher courts).

Though it might frustrate the left-wing media and the open borders crowd, no court can successfully demand the President of the United States to stop border enforcement.  This is why it is critical to have a strong DHS Secretary focused on stopping illegal entry.

This ruling will obviously be appealed by the DOJ; and politically the Democrats realize, in the bigger picture, this ‘open-border’ narrative is not good for them.  On its face this ruling is ridiculous as it eliminates/undermines the legal process for asylum requests by removing the distinction of illegal or unlawful conduct in the application process.

Yesterday Fox News reported:

More than 500 criminals are traveling with the migrant caravan that’s massed on the other side of a San Diego border crossing, homeland security officials said Monday afternoon.

The revelation was made during a conference call with reporters, with officials asserting that “most of the caravan members are not women and children”. They claimed the group is mostly made up of single adult or teen males and that the women and children have been pushed to the front of the line in a bid to garner sympathetic media coverage.

I am sorry that conditions in the home countries of the migrants are so awful, but why don’t the young men in the caravan stay behind and attempt to change things? I am reminded that many Americans lost their lives in the Eighteenth Century fighting for the freedom of America. Where is that spirit among the migrants in the caravan? Do they love their homeland enough to fight for it?

 

Why Border Security Matters

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The Daily Caller reported yesterday that a Jordanian national who allegedly smuggled six Yemeni citizens into the U.S. from Mexico was arrested Saturday. Yemen is know to be a hotbed of terrorism.

The article reports:

Moayad Heider Mohammad Aldairi, 31, was given an arrest warrant followed by a criminal complaint on May 29 for the supposed smuggling trips through the Texas border between July 1, 2017 and December 12, 2017, the DOJ reported Monday.

Aldairi was also a Mexican citizen and conspired with others who wanted to smuggle “Special Interest Aliens” across the border, according to the complaint.

…“The HSI (Homeland Security Investigations) interviews with the six (6) detained Yemenis revealed that each of them paid ALDAIRI varying amounts to be smuggled into the United States from Mexico,” the complaint said.

“Alien smuggling puts our national security at risk, and the Criminal Division is dedicated to enforcing our immigration laws and disrupting the flow of illegal aliens into the United States,” Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski said, according to the DOJ press release.

Does any thinking person believe that potential terrorists are not taking advantage of our porous borders–both north and south?

 

Funding Terrorism Because You Don’t Think You Will Get Caught

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Iran is known to be one of the major suppliers for weapons and terrorists around the world. The IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices) American troops encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan generally originated in Iran. This is not a country that we want to give a lot of money to–the  money doesn’t go to the people–it goes to the military and to fund terrorism. So what in the world was President Obama thinking when he made a deal with Iran that gave them a boatload of money? It gets worse.

The Washington Times posted an article today about an attempt by President Obama to give Tehran access to American banks to convert the large amount of money Iran received after the nuclear agreement into American dollars.

The article reports:

The Obama administration — despite repeatedly assuring Congress that Iran would remain barred from the U.S. financial system — secretly mobilized to give Tehran access to American banks to convert the windfall of cash it received from sanctions relief under the 2015 nuclear deal into dollars, an investigative report by the Senate has revealed.

A copy of the report, obtained by The Washington Times, outlines how Obama-era State and Treasury Department officials discreetly issued a special license for the conversion to a major Omani bank and unsuccessfully pressured two U.S. banks to partake in the transaction, all while misleading lawmakers about the activities.

The document, compiled by the Senate’s Republican-led chief investigative subcommittee, began circulating Tuesday, just as the Trump administration issued its harshest warnings to date to foreign governments and companies to avoid doing business with Iran or find themselves in the crosshairs of Washington’s reimposition of sanctions as part of Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

The article explains that Congress was not informed of what was going on–in fact they were lied to:

The Senate Homeland Security Committee’s permanent subcommittee on investigations probe contends that the Obama administration went out of its way to keep U.S. lawmakers in the dark about calculated and secretive efforts to give Tehran a back channel to the international financial system and to U.S. banks, facilitating a massive U.S. currency conversion worth billions of dollars.

“Senior U.S. government officials repeatedly testified to Congress that Iranian access to the U.S. financial system was not on the table or part of any deal,” according to a draft copy of the document obtained by The Times. “Despite these claims, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, at the direction of the U.S. State Department, granted a specific license that authorized a conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system.

“Even after the specific license was issued, U.S. government officials maintained in congressional testimony that Iran would not be granted access to the U.S. financial system,” the report said.

The article concludes:

Mr. Portman said in a statement Tuesday night that “the Obama administration misled the American people and Congress because they were desperate to get a deal with Iran.”

“Despite claims both before and after the Iran deal was completed that the U.S. financial system would remain off limits, the Obama administration issued a specific license allowing Iran to convert billions of dollars in assets using the U.S. financial system,” Mr. Portman said. “The only reason this transaction wasn’t executed was because two U.S. banks refused, even though the administration asked them to help convert the money.”

Such sanctions, he added, “are a vital foreign policy tool, and the U.S. government should never work to actively undermine their enforcement or effectiveness.”

Thank God our banks had more integrity than President Obama.

The Facts Aren’t Important–Just Create Outrage

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It seems as if every week there is a new dust-up about some horrible thing Donald Trump has done. Oddly enough, when these stories are disproved (as they often are), the media seems to ignore that fact. One recent example of the mainstream media’s hysteria is the missing children who came here illegally without their parents who were housed in wire cages. Somehow much of the media has ignored the fact that the pictures of children in wire cages were from 2014. President Trump wasn’t even active in politics at that point! So what is the actual truth about the missing children?

Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial on the subject yesterday.

The editorial cites one blatant example of news that simply is not true:

Next, there was a picture showing a bus outfitted with child safety seats being used at an ICE family detention center in Karnes County, Texas. ABC Houston reporter Antonio Arellano tweeted the picture on Sunday, describing it as “a prison bus just for babies.”

Again, outrage ensued.

“Unconscionable and inhumane, “said Texas Sen. Sylvia Garcia. “This is what we’ve come to under Donald Trump,” said Stephen King. Others tweeted: “your new gestapo at work,” “this is what fascism looks like,” “we live in a dark period of American history,” “moral abomination.” Etc., etc.

Oops. Turns out this picture, too, was taken when Obama was president. And, the bus was actually used to take the children on field trips to places like the San Antonio Zoo, a nearby park, the movies, as well as for medical treatment and court appointments.

So much for the Trump-era inhumane prison bus for babies.

About those missing children…The editorial reports:

Back in 2008, the inspector general for the Health and Human Services department noted that HHS and Homeland Security weren’t regularly checking in on these children to make sure they were doing OK with their sponsor families. So, HHS started following up with the sponsors 30 days after the children’s release.

But, as the IG noted in a follow-up July 2017 report, HHS doesn’t always succeed in its attempts to reach the sponsors. It reported that in the first half of 2016, HHS couldn’t reach 16% of the 25,975 children placed with sponsors during those months.

In other words, under President Obama, the government “lost” 4,156 illegal immigrant children in just the first six months of 2016!

It is generally a good idea if you choose to get outraged to check your facts first.