It would be wrong to think that valuable illegal drugs are sent randomly into [...]]]>
It would be wrong to think that valuable illegal drugs are sent randomly into the lucrative United States market. The spotters provide an important link in running the big business of the Mexican cartels.
In fact, the cartels’ spotting strategy has been around for years. I wrote about the subject in 2010: BLM: Southern Arizona Is Dangerous Because Mexican Cartels Control It:
As the current article notes, the spotters are located as far as 60 miles within the United States, which indicates the power and determination of the cartels. Hopefully the lessons learned from years of dealing with this crime can help prevent further incursions of hostile foreign criminals.
]]>Fed’s historic takedown reveals widespread network of Mexican cartel ‘scouts’ in U.S., By Stephen Dinan, Washington Times, December 1, 2019
Federal prosecutors have wrapped up what appears to be the largest takedown in history of smuggling cartel scouts, winning prison sentences for 18 people who were involved in an intricate scheme to spy on Border Patrol movements and help the Sinaloa Cartel sneak drugs into the U.S. without being detected.
The Mexican scouts camped on five mountaintops along a line that ran more than 60 miles into U.S. soil, marking a stunning level of penetration by the cartels, who were able to track Border Patrol movements all the way from the border to the interstate just south of Phoenix.
Scouts would stay in situ for months at a time, armed with binoculars and solar charging equipment to replenish batteries for the encrypted radios and cellphones they used to alert their masters back in Mexico — and sometimes directly to the drug backpackers themselves — giving the all-clear or warning to lie low if Border Patrol agents were nearby.
They were assisted by a thorough resupply network that would hike water, food and other necessities into the remote mountain locations.
It took a monthslong investigation, including a sting operation in which undercover agents posed as resuppliers for the scouts, and the legal case dragged on for two years after the December 2017 arrests.
The final defendant was sentenced last week for his role in the operation, which, according to a ledger kept by one of the scouts and recovered by agents, accounted for as much as 1,800 kilograms of marijuana, or almost 4,000 pounds. That works out to a street value of more than $650,000.
Agents believe they managed to nab another 1,967 kilograms (more than 4,300 pounds) carried by the same operation, which the government in one court filing labeled a “staggering amount” to be tied to one single scouting operation.
Michael Bailey, U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona, called the case “a significant blow to the cartel.” Scott Brown, special agent in charge of the Homeland Security Department’s investigations office in Phoenix, said the prosecution showed that the federal government can take out a complex hilltop-spotter operation.
“The west desert portion of the border poses various environmental challenges,” he said. “However, when federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement bands together, we send a clear message to the cartel: You will not operate on the border with impunity.”
The existence of cartel scouts deployed to U.S. locations is deeply controversial. During the administration of George W. Bush, a congressman raised the issue with the White House. Chief of staff Karl Rove ridiculed the idea that Mexican drug cartels had armed agents on U.S. soil.
Making criminal cases has also been tricky. Prosecutors often have to settle for illegal immigration charges and light penalties instead of drug smuggling convictions.
But a series of successful prosecutions over the past couple of years has exposed the breadth and sophistication of the cartel operations — and has shown that the Justice Department has figured out how to make cases stick. (Continues)
It’s crazy that asylum is still permitted when 90 percent of Central Americans applicants are found to be ineligible. A program that riddled with fraud should be shut down, period. An asylum claimant is supposed to have a “well-founded fear of persecution,” not just be a poor person who wants to grab a first world life.
On a planet with nearly eight billion people, it would be better for all concerned if America’s outdated do-gooder policies were ended. Third world people should think in terms of working for reforms at home rather than escaping to the US or Europe.
]]>STEVE DOOCY: There’s some new data out that shows the number of illegals arrested at our southern border more than doubled this past year, compared to the year prior to that.
BRIAN KILMEADE: All right, here reacting is the acting CBP commissioner, Mark Morgan. First off, why are you still acting? How come you haven’t gotten the job yet?
A little strange, you’ve done an incredible job — it seemed like a short time ago you were here, but the numbers are still staggering. How do you wrap your head around it?
MARK MORGAN: So Brian, that’s right, and I think that’s a key for the American people to know that even though in the last four months, this president, this administration everyone with CBP and ICE and other agencies have done a credible job, incredible success, the numbers have gone down for last four months but still the numbers from last year over almost doubled last year and right now our apprehensions per day are still 1400. Those numbers are still unacceptable; we still have a lot of work to do.
DOOCY: And and one of the things the president always touts is the fact that we’re building a new border wall on our southern border but explain how and this has to do with the gigantic number of drugs still being smuggled into the country, how smugglers are using building the wall to distract people from what they’re up to.
MORGAN: Yes Steve, so that’s a great point for a couple different ways one is, it does. It shows that the cartels and the human smuggling they change what we call TTPs — techniques, tactics and procedures. Every time we we find out a new way that they’re using to get drugs and people in the country then as soon as we shut that down they come up with new one.
So now, yep, they’re dressing up as construction workers and using that to get around. And what the American people need to understand is this just isn’t about the migration crisis: it’s also the national security crisis. We seized 750,000 pounds of drugs. Last year 68,000 people in this country died from a drug overdose — that is a national security crisis.
AINSLEY EARHARDT: They’re dressing up as construction workers, and then they’re climbing the wall?
MORGAN: No Ainsley, they’re going around the wall.
EARHARDT: How did you discover that they weren’t actual construction workers?
MORGAN: Well that’s what the Border Patrol and other federal agencies do every single day. We’re gaining information, we’re getting intelligence, we have sources, and we’re out there on the front lines — we figure it out. This isn’t new to us; they try all kinds of those TTPs to illegal enter this country. But again the American people need to understand when we talked about the wall, for example, it’s not to stop law-abiding citizens or immigrants to come here to have a merit-based claim.
This is to stop illegal immigration and, just as important, to stop the drugs from pouring into this country, killing 68,000 people last year.
KILMEADE: Yeah you have 276 miles under so-called pre-construction. You want 450 by the end of the year but the numbers are unbelievable — up 113 percent from 396 to 851, and it would have been so much worse had the triangle countries and Mexico not cooperated — more cooperation than in Congress.
MORGAN: Brian, that is absolutely 100 percent, and again all your viewers right now should be disgusted at that. We have government of Mexico and the northern triangle countries stepping up, seeing this as a regional crisis and doing more to address this humanitarian and national security crisis than our own Congress. Our Congress has sat idly by while other countries have stepped up and done more. Meanwhile drugs and illegal aliens are pouring in our country
KILMEADE: I wonder if the president’s going to consider restoring the aid to Guatemala and Honduras and El Salvador. Do you know?
MORGAN: So we are and here’s the area but we’ve got to make sure that that aid going there is that we have our finger on the pulse to make sure it’s going to exactly where it should be going — to beef up their asylum capacity, to beef up their interior enforcement, to go against the human smuggling and the cartels there.
EARHARDT: Mark Morgan, thank you for joining us.
First, Mexico is not a friend to the [...]]]>
First, Mexico is not a friend to the United States: the relationship is more like that of a pickpocket to his mark because of the easy money of remittances ($33.7 billion in 2018) and other benefits.
There’s nothing that could be called respect from south of the border. Mexican elites must hate this country, but still depend on all the goodies that their little citizens derive from the US being next door.
Conveniently Mexico has scheduled its escape date from its Trump deal, noting that it would review the migration reduction measure in 45 days.
Tucker Carlson discussed some aspects of the Mexico relationship with Colonel Douglas MacGregor, who pointed out that narco-states make unreliable friends.
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: Douglas MacGregor is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and author of the book, “Margin of Victory.” He joins us tonight to assess. Colonel, thanks very much for coming on.
COL. DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Sure.
CARLSON: So it appears as of Friday night when the President announced the deal between the Mexican government and our government that the gambit worked. How significant is this?
MACGREGOR: Well, I think in the short run, there will be some temporary relief. But in the long run, this is not going to influence the crisis on the southern border, and for two very good reasons.
First of all, Mexico has no interest in halting the flow of either illegal immigrants from its country or any other in Latin America into the United States. That’s how they off-load excess population, discontented citizens and criminals onto the United States. They’ve been doing it for decades. So while there may be temporarily relief, it will resume inevitably.
Secondly, Mexico is a narco state. We need to be honest about this. The place is ruled by six drug cartels. These drug cartels control the government. They control the institutions of governance. No one can move in that country without their permission.
So ultimately, they have a permanent interest in keeping open borders. They have no interest whatsoever. They want to filter in people and they want to filter in drugs. You can’t do that if you close the border, so for those two reasons, it has no future in the long run.
So whatever we get from this, it will be temporary. It’s not as you say, a viable solution.
CARLSON: So, what you are saying is that when we leave our southern border porous, as it currently is, we are leaving ourselves exposed to whims of drug cartels?
MACGREGOR: Oh absolutely. I mean, that’s the great draw. People all over South America that are involved with organized crime are shipping drugs up through Mexico into the United States.
Why would they want that to stop, along with millions of people? Now, of course, we are talking about the interest of Central America and Latin America — why they want that open border and why they want to ship people north. We haven’t talked about the left in the United States, the Democratic Party and why it wants these open borders.
CARLSON: What do you make of elected officials, politicians who instinctively side with the government of Mexico over our own government on this question?
MACGREGOR: Well, keep in mind, this is very important, all of your viewers need to understand this. Just a few decades ago, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were elected to high office from the state of California. Is that possible today? Absolutely not. It’s impossible. Why? It’s called demographic change.
And right now, the largest ethnic minority in California is Mexican and hispanic. California is in the main today no longer a majority English-speaking white state. It is in the main something else, it’s something new, but largely Latino, largely Mexican.
The Latinos, the Mexicans are the base of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has decided they are the future for the left in the United States. The more of these people that can be brought in illegally as well as legally, the better it is for the Democratic Party because their goal is to transform the United States into a facsimile of California, so that any election is impossible from the standpoint of the right, from the standpoint of the Republican Party to win anything.
CARLSON: So you don’t believe there is any other calculation other than the political calculation that goes into the question assessing immigration.
MACGREGOR: Oh, sure. Of course. I mean, obviously they are going to sit there and say, “Oh, these people are poor. They need our help.” But we all know that in fundamental terms, not only is that not true, but secondly, we don’t need it. We can’t afford it. We have problems here in our own country with our own citizens. Our own citizens need help and assistance. So that’s a false argument.
The real interest is to create demographic change that will make them the permanent power inside the borders of the United States.
CARLSON: Douglas MacGregor, thank you, Colonel. Good to see you.
Friday’s segment on our unfriendly neighbor repeated the charge that Mexico is a “hostile foreign power” with more examples of the evil it has exported upon us with crime, drugs and illegal immigration.
Mexico’s continuing aid of illegal aliens from Central America pushed President Trump into declaring he would begin increasing tariffs against Mexican goods unless Mexico became more helpful — an act that got Presidente Obrador’s attention in the form of a pompous letter that referred to an iconic American statue as supporting his ideology of invasion for the world’s poor.
President Trump: You can’t solve social problems with taxes or coercive measures. How does one transform, overnight, the country of fellowship with immigrants from around the world into a ghetto, a closed-off space that stigmatizes, mistreats, chases, expels and cancels legal rights to those who are seeking — with effort and hard work — to live free of misery? The Statue of Liberty isn’t an empty symbol.
Apparently Senor AMLO mistakenly believes the Statue of Liberty is an immigrant welcome mat. In fact, the historical truth is revealed by the sculptor’s title: Liberty Enlightening the World: Bartholdi meant that others should be inspired by the successful American Revolution and throw off the chains in their own nations.
Tucker Carlson agrees that the Statue of Liberty was the wrong symbol for the presidente of the narco state to use.
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: Good evening and welcome to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Just in case you’re wondering why the President was serious about the border crisis, last night, he delivered a decisive answer. In a surprise move the White House announced that unless Mexico halts the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, the U.S. will — starting on June 10th — impose a five percent tariff on all imports from that country.
If the situation doesn’t improve going forward, that tariffs will rise by 5 percent a month, every month. By October, there will be 25 percent tariff on all goods coming from Mexico, from avocados to automobiles.
So let’s be honest about what that would mean. The U.S. imports $372 billion worth of goods from Mexico every year. The prices on all of those goods would likely go up. Consumers would feel that, so with businesses.
Critics claim that the tariffs would slow the U.S. economy and they’re likely right. Over time, they probably would, but we ought to impose them anyway. Not every government policy is a pure economic calculation.
When the United States is attacked by a hostile foreign power, it must strike back and make no mistake, Mexico is a hostile foreign power.
For decades, the Mexican government has sent its poor north to our country. This has allowed that country’s criminal oligarchy to maintain power and get even richer, but at great expense to us.
The flood of illegal workers into the United States has damaged our communities, ruined our schools, burdened our healthcare system and fractured our national unity. It has suppressed wages for our most vulnerable. It has been a slow motion attack on this country, and its effects have been devastating.
There’s not a real debate about that. The numbers are clear, honest people admit it. But our leaders are not honest.
In the hours after the President’s announcement they instinctively sided with Mexico.
CNN ANCHOR JIM SCIUTTO: Well, tariff man is back. The President is threatening a new country with new tariffs. This time, Mexico.
CNN ANCHOR CHRIS CUOMO: It sounds “muy fuerte” — very strong, but who will it squeeze? Us or Mexico?
MSNBC GUY: Make no mistake about it, the U.S. consumers will bear the brunt of these tariffs.
CNN ANCHOR KATE BOLDUAN: Whether it’s a negotiating tactic or an attempt to distract, it’s still surprised everyone.
SAME MSNBC GUY: Nothing short of a political stuff.
FORMER OHIO GOVERNOR JOHN KASICH: So you know, I don’t know, maybe it was changing the subject from Mueller, I can’t figure it out.
CARLSON: John Kasich can’t figure it out. It’s too complicated for him. But the line of the week, the award for the most disingenuous response from a sitting world leader has to go to the left wing Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
In response to the tariff threat AMLO issued a statement that warned quote, “Social problems are not resolved with taxes or coercive measures,” end quote. In other words, says the liberal, “Government isn’t the solution.” Hilarious.
Lopez Obrador went on to lecture the U.S. President about America’s national values, because of course, the President of Mexico is just that arrogant and presumptuous to do that. Can you imagine? Quote, “The Statue of Liberty is not an empty symbol.”
Well, Mexico is corrupt. The ruling class believes it is America’s duty to absorb their country’s problems forever. The American left agrees. They are as contemptuous of America as the Mexican government is.
We need the Trump Wall built, no matter how much Mexicans squawk about having their easy access to US jobs and freebies cut off.
Illegal border crossings spiked up 27 percent in May after falling precipitously after the Trump election. Perhaps illegal aliens just discovered they wouldn’t be shot on sight while breaking into Trump-run America.
Just how violent is Mexico these days? RT colorfully headlined (6/22): 3 killed every hour: Mexico’s murder rate reaches 20-year high.
Fox News reporter William La Jeunesse explained the background and present situation with our neighbor:
]]>WILLIAM LA JEUNESSE: Mexico is now the second deadliest country in the world after only Syria, and while they’re in a civil war, Mexico’s violence is attributable to only one thing — drugs. So for context, just a few years ago it seemed we were doing a story every week like this under then-President Felipe Calderon which replaced corrupt cops and took the cartels head-on with the military. But every time you take out one kingpin, another would emerge.
Then Mexico got a new president in 2012, Enrique Pena Nieto, who took a less hardline view. Violence subsided, but now it is back. With the capture of former Sinaloa cartel leader El Chapo and others, the turf wars returned, fueled largely by the US meth and heroin epidemic. Mexico saw a record 2,186 murders in May, 30 percent more than last year and the most in two decades.
So Mexico has 31 states: the highest rate of violence is in Guerrero, the country’s opium capital. Today Mexico provides 90 percent of our heroin, up from just 10 percent 20 years ago. Next is Sinaloa, the pot capital where under-lords are fighting to replace El Chapo. Finally the biggest jump in killings however — almost 400 percent — was in Baja where the Jalisco cartel is fighting to control the drug routes into California and Arizona.
While most of the violence is among criminals, it does breed corruption and fear. It goes into tourist areas like Cabo and Cancun, and it fuels extortion and kidnapping. Yesterday there were three workers in Veracruz who are attacked because they were hanging a billboard offering a reward for a drug lord. So we’re looking at over 25,000 fatalities every year.
Meanwhile, border lawlessness is a magnet to dangerous foreigners from “special interest” countries which sponsor jihad terrorism. [...]]]>
Meanwhile, border lawlessness is a magnet to dangerous foreigners from “special interest” countries which sponsor jihad terrorism. The jihad magazine Dabiq suggested last year that the faithful could smuggle a nuke into America over the porous border with the help of existing trafficking networks. Bill Gertz reported in August, “Sunni extremists are infiltrating the United States with the help of alien smugglers in South America and are crossing U.S. borders with ease, according to a U.S. South Command intelligence report.”
Jihadists may be bloodthirsty barbarians, but they aren’t stupid and recognize an opportunity when the American government offers one.
The great majority of crossers, however, are basic moochers from south of the border who sap stressed resources from citizens who need government services for education, healthcare and other assistance. Other Than Mexicans (OTMs) now comprise 70 percent to 75 percent of all border crossers.
To call the current program “catch and release” is too kind: “welcome and release” would be more accurate.
Below, Border Patrol agents in Arizona fulfill their new function of greeting illegal aliens.
How bad is the chaos? A Thursday report from Fox News was concise and factual:
WILLIAM La JEUNESSE: Our presidential race is literally having immigrants from around the world racing to the US-Mexican border. Both Clinton and Trump — their immigration rhetoric or policies — are providing the cartels a powerful narrative: Get over this fence while you still can. . .
That message prompted a new surge along the border — a thousand arrested each night in South Texas alone.
America’s Senator Jeff Sessions posted a Critical Alert about the worsening chaos a few days ago. Now he and three others — Senator Chuck Grassley and Congressmen Bob Goodlatte and Trey Gowdy — have written to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to demand enforcement and an accounting from his department:
]]>Full letter can be viewed here or below.
November 3, 2016
The Honorable Jeh Johnson, Secretary
Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528Dear Secretary Johnson:
We write requesting that you take immediate action and mobilize all available resources of the Department to stop the ongoing surge of illegal immigration at the southwest border, which is overwhelming the Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Numerous media reports indicate that this surge is a large-scale effort to enter the United States before this year’s presidential election. The onslaught of illegal immigration reflects continued efforts by aliens from Central America—El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala—to overwhelm our limited resources at the border, which inevitably results in the release of tens of thousands of removable aliens within the United States. In addition, thousands of Haitians and Africans are amassing in the Mexican cities of Tijuana and Mexicali for the purpose of presenting themselves to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers asserting dubious claims of asylum, which will practically guarantee their entry. This group of “Other Than Mexicans” at the southwest border comprises 70-75 percent of all border crossings.
The numbers are staggering. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, the Border Patrol apprehended 408,870 illegal aliens at the southern border, 23 percent more than the preceding fiscal year. Of those apprehended, more than 77,000 were members of so-called “family units,” which represents an increase of 95 percent over FY 2015 figures, and nearly 60,000 were unaccompanied alien minors, which reflects a 49 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. On October 31, the Department of Health and Human Services reported that the daily referrals of unaccompanied illegal alien minors averaged 262 over the last week and approximately 237 in October. By comparison, referrals averaged 148 per day in October of FY 2014, the year of the first surge, and 60 per day in October of FY 2015. As of October 27, 2016, the number of minors in ORR care is approximately 10,700.
ICE is currently detaining more than 40,000 aliens—a record number—with internal predictions indicating that the number could reach 47,000 in the coming months. Without additional funding, ICE likely will release thousands of those detained into the United States, many of whom are criminals, who will abscond and hide from authorities. We have been made aware through media reports and whistleblowers that ICE faces imminent budgetary shortfalls because the border crisis is driving so many additional foreign nationals into ICE detention. While we applaud the Department’s efforts to increase detention capacity in response to this surge, we are keenly aware of the limited resources available to the Department for apprehension and detention of removable aliens, and we want to ensure that you are not again considering the mass-release of criminals and other aliens who are subject to removal. As such, we expect you to be forthcoming with Congress regarding this critical situation and your proposed efforts to address it.
That is why our respective staffs worked closely with the Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs to schedule a bicameral briefing on Tuesday, November 1, to discuss the border surge crisis and the Department’s response to it. Subject matter experts within the Department were set to brief our staffs and respond to questions at that time. However, late in the afternoon of October 31, the Department abruptly cancelled the scheduled briefing, citing unspecified scheduling conflicts by some of the experts, and recommended that the briefing occur next week. Efforts by our staffs to have the available experts provide a briefing were rejected. With this pressing issue at hand, it is irresponsible to delay efforts to provide information about the surge as quickly and transparently as possible to Congress.
Finally, it has come to light through information provided to our Committees that the Department may have issued a directive to limit engagement with Congress until immediately before the election. Any such directive, if issued, would be an unacceptable political ploy and a serious infringement of Congress’ oversight authority under the Constitution. We fully expect that such a directive, if issued, would be immediately rescinded. Additionally, we expect that the Department will provide a briefing to our staffs on these critical issues this week.
Should you have any questions, please contact Tracy Short at (202) 225-3926, Kathy Nuebel Kovarik at (202) 224-5225, or Gene Hamilton at (202) 224-7572. Thank you for your cooperation.
Sincerely,
Bob Goodlatte
Chairman, House Committee on the JudiciaryCharles E. Grassley
Chairman. Senate Committee on the JudiciaryTrey Gowdy
Chairman, Subcommittee on Immigration and Border SecurityJeff Sessions
Chairman, Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest
CBS reported last week about the Surge of migrants illegally crossing U.S.-Mexico border ahead of election. Nowadays the [...]]]>
CBS reported last week about the Surge of migrants illegally crossing U.S.-Mexico border ahead of election. Nowadays the illegals claim asylum because of alleged crime at home. Honduran Brenda Aguilar knows the drill, reciting, “I am a single mother looking for work and also to flee the violence.”
Below, illegal aliens hop a train to cross America’s open southern border.
Breitbart News reported yesterday: Agents Accuse Feds of Covering Up Record Border Detainee Numbers for 2016 Election and also Immigration Officer: Border Deluge of Illegal Aliens ‘Is The Worst We’ve Ever Seen’.
Of course, Obama’s open borders attract not only moocher Third Worlders sapping our schools and economy, but also jihadists hoping to murder thousands of infidel Americans.
On Monday, America’s Senator Jeff Session posted one of his well documented reports on his website.
]]>Situation at the Border Deteriorates Further: We Are Simply Overwhelmed”, October 31, 2016
CRITICAL ALERT
There is a crisis at our southwest border—one that in many ways exceeds the crisis we saw just two years ago, one that further undermines the integrity of our immigration system, but one that the most of the media has elected to ignore. The facts are clear:
- Brandon Judd, President of the National Border Patrol Council recently said that “the talk of amnesty has once again created pull factors and encouraged people from all over the world to cross Mexico and then cross our porous southern border to illegally enter the U.S. We are simply overwhelmed.” An ICE officer in El Paso said “The administration’s policies have created the influx and the crisis situation because people overrun our border knowing they have a chance to stay,” the officer said. “The workload, the number of people, we’ve had to deal with has by far surpassed any amount we’ve ever had to handle before.”
- Due to the surge in immigration at the southwest border, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is currently detaining more than 40,000 aliens, with internal predictions indicating that the number could reach 47,000 in the coming months. Without additional funding, it is likely that ICE will release many of those detained into the United States; many of whom will fail to appear in court have criminal histories and will never be heard from again.
- The surge in illegal immigration is largely due to an influx of “Other Than Mexican” (OTM) aliens at the southwest border—with agents in the field estimating that OTMs make up approximately 70-75 percent of all border crossings. Included among those OTMs are thousands of Haitians and Africans concentrated in the Mexican cities of Tijuana and Mexicali, who are pushing to enter the United States, despite having no valid visa; and roughly 35,000 Cubans who crossed into Texas between October of 2015 and July of this year.
- In FY 2016, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 408,870 illegal aliens at the southern border; a number 23 percent higher than in Fiscal Year 2015. Of those apprehended, 77,674 were members of so-called “family units” (a 95 percent increase from FY 2015), and 59,692 were unaccompanied illegal alien juveniles (a 49 percent increase from FY 2015).
- Earlier this year, Mr. Judd testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and The National Interest, and said that for every one illegal alien who is apprehended, another evades arrest—a statistic confirmed by internal DHS numbers, but that the Obama Administration refuses to release. Using that rate as a baseline, that means approximately 408,870 illegal aliens evaded detection in FY 2016, for a total of approximately 817,740 illegal entries into the United States last year.
- The Obama Administration refuses to tell the American people how many of the 408,870 aliens it apprehended in FY 2016 remain in the United States. Nor will it provide information on the current location of the 331,333 it apprehended in FY 2015, or the 479,371 it apprehended in FY 2014. One ICE officer recently explained that ICE is releasing many aliens “into the wind never to be seen by us again[.]”?
The Obama Administration has claimed for years that the border is “more secure than it has ever been,” yet illegal immigration continues to surge, and the Administration refuses to accept responsibility for this situation. Indeed, rather than sending a strong signal to the world that the United States will not tolerate illegal immigration, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson recently appeared to blame the surge in illegal immigration on the refusal of Congress to pass a mass amnesty bill.
Moreover, the crisis at the southwest border highlights the simple fact that, without barriers to prevent the illegal entry of additional aliens, the brave men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol simply do not have enough personnel to detain and deport all illegal border-crossers. In addition, millions come on temporary visas and large numbers do not return home as promised—with 527,127 overstaying their visas or periods of authorized stay in FY 2015 alone.
The integrity of our immigration system and our national sovereignty require a real change in enforcement. The future of our nation depends on strong, secure borders, and a President willing to enforce our laws. Without a commitment to deport aliens who violate our immigration laws, we lose our ability to protect our communities from criminal aliens, terrorism, and cartel-related crime and violence.
One thing is clear, establishing a lawful system of immigration is absolutely doable. With strong leadership, these failed policies can be ended.
One might reasonably suspect that [...]]]>
One might reasonably suspect that demands from open-borders activists that officers being physically attacked should withdraw rather than respond with self-defense. And in fact, that has been the case: U.S. border agency under pressure to reform use-of-force policies (LA Times, 2/28/14). Plus, the administration is obviously friendly to any opportunity to decrease border security to please the raza crowd.
However rock-throwing has been dangerous for Border Patrol agents. In 1979, a BP chopper was brought down with a rock.
As shown by the examples below, rocks thrown by illegal aliens cause serious injuries to Border Patrol agents.
Welcome terrorists, criminals, job thieves and mooches! America is open to you.
]]>DHS tells American border guards to run away from illegal immigrants hurling rocks at them, fleeing in vehicles, Daily Caller, March 8, 2014
Top administration officials have directed 21,000 border patrol officers to retreat whenever illegal immigrants throw rocks at them, and to avoid getting in front of foreign drug-smugglers’ vehicles as they head north with their drug shipments.
“Agents shall not discharge firearms in response to thrown or hurled projectiles… agents should obtain a tactical advantage in these situations, such as seeking cover or distancing themselves,” said the instructions, issued Mar. 7, under the signature of Michael Fisher, chief of U.S. Border Patrol.
Agents were also directed to keep their weapons holstered when drug smugglers drive by.
Agents can’t use guns against “a moving vehicle merely fleeing from agents,” say the instructions.
The new instructions do allow agents to use guns to defend themselves from vehicles that drive at them. “Agents shall not discharge their firearms at a moving vehicle unless the agent has a reasonable belief that… deadly force is being used against an agent,” the new instructions say.
However, the instructions also suggest that officers be penalized if they don’t step back. Agents “should not place themselves in the path of a motor vehicle or use their body to block a vehicles’s path,” according to new instructions.
The new curbs were praised by advocates for greater immigration, including Juanita Molina, director of the Border Action Network. New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, and Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Menendez is one of the drafters of the June 2013 Senate immigration bill, which would boost the inflow of legal immigrants and guest workers up to 40 million over the next decade. During the same period, roughly 40 million Americans will turn 18.
The new rules were issued at the direction of Jeh Johnston, the new head of the Department of Homeland Security.
The rules match the recommendation of a report by an advocacy group that wants to reduce policing of illegal immigration.
The report by the Police Executive Research Forum was commissioned by DHS, and it said border agents should be barred from standing in front of smugglers’ vehicles or from shooting at people who are attacking them with rocks.
The commissioned report was challenged by mid-level DHS officials, who argued that the rules barring self-defense from rock-throwers “could create a more dangerous environment [especially for agents operating] in rural or desolate areas, often alone, where concealment, cover and egress is not an option,” according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
But Johnston overrode the internal response, and forced the implementation of the advocacy groups’ recommendations.
The PERF report was commissioned by top DHS leaders after advocates said law-enforcement agents had killed roughly seven people a year along the 1,933-mile border in 2010, 2011 and 2012. The shootings came during 67 clashes with a huge stream of armed drug-smugglers and illegal immigrants.
Three U.S. border guards have been killed in recent years, including one who was shot during a clash with drug smugglers carrying AK-47 assault weapons.
In a Friday news conference, Fisher told reporters that agents would be equipped with short-range tasers and pepper spray, plus medium-range pellet guns, to deter attacks.
But he also admitted that agents have been attacked 6,000 times since 2007. They’ve been “assaulted by rocks” 1,713 times since 2010, and have responded with deadly force only 43 times, he said.
The agents killed only 10 drug-smugglers and other attackers during the same three-year period, Fisher said.
I may [...]]]>
I may be mis-remembering, but I recall Ramos as speaking English somewhat better in the past. Perhaps a thick Spanish accent is a plus in his new gig. These days he is a major talking head on the new diversity network Fusion which is covering some controversial subjects to appeal to the hip edgy crowd. Rolling Stone characterized Fusion as “a new English-language network aimed at young Latinos and their multicultural peers.”
Interestingly, Ramos interviewed ABC reporter Brian Ross about the refugee terrorist story, where jihadist Iraqis used America’s permissive screening procedures to enter the country. As a result, the government is pursuing “dozens” of likely bad guys. Watch the Fusion segment: Is a Broken Immigration System Allowing Terrorists into the U.S.?
The immigration anarchist was curiously concerned about public safety:
RAMOS: The real question is, Are we in danger? Is it possible that some of these refugees are among us right now and they might be planning something and we have no idea what they are or who they are?
Funny, but many Americans are more concerned about the danger of criminal gangsters like the undeported MS-13 thug, Edwin Ramos (any relation??), who murdered three members of the Bologna family in San Francisco. Plus, foreign crime syndicates have burrowed into every corner of this country: in 2008, the DoJ reported that Mexican drug trafficking organizations operated in 230 US cities, a number unlikely to have decreased. And drunk driving illegal aliens continue to kill more Americans every year.
But Jorge Ramos is worried about the danger from 70,000 Iraqi refugees rather than the 12 million or so illegal aliens, 78 percent of whom are hispanic.
Ladd reports that general numbers of illegal crossers are down, but “the number of drug events is way up.” So he’s not seeing that border security that Washington suits talk about.
]]>Border security: US rancher’s warning on immigration reform, BBC, July 31, 2013
US Congress is debating an increase in border security as part of an overhaul of the country’s immigration system.
But local residents and long-time ranchers along the border worry that their already diminished rights might be under attack again.
Since its peak in 2000, apprehensions of illegal immigrants at the Southern border have decreased 78% to 357,000 in 2012. Two thirds of this drop can be explained by a weak US economy, according to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations. The other third is due to enforcement increases.
In 2012, the US government spent $18bn (£11bn) on border enforcement. The number of border patrol agents in the south more than doubled in the last decade to 18,000 from 8,000.
Under the immigration reform bill passed by the US Senate last month, an additional 18,000 agents would be added in the next decade.
The BBC talked to John Ladd, a fourth-generation rancher whose land borders Mexico, about the border agents who patrol his property.