By Daniel John Sobieski


Just in time for the midterms, another "spontaneous" migration from Central America began with a bevy of allegedly oppressed and downtrodden Hondurans leading the way. Pressured by a threat from President Trump to cut aid to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador if the caravan is not stopped, some moves by these governments have been made. Yet evidence exists that these migrations are not spontaneous, with both of the governments in question encouraging them as a political and economic safety valve and a source of foreign currency, financed in part by foreign leftists with connections to George Soros.

As Fox News's Laura Ingraham noted in a tweet, this is not a walk in a national park, but an expensive and arduous journey:

Who is funding the migrant "caravan"? Each migrant's passage can cost as much as $7K each. Per capita income in Honduras is $2.3 K.

It is doubtful that such sums came from college funds. Evidence of Soros funding of an earlier "spontaneous" migration have been found among the tentacles of support that flow from his Open Society group coffers:


Leftist billionaire George Soros is funding the well-organized anti-Trump migrant caravan invasion from Central America that has been hitting the United States-Mexico border in defiance of immigration enforcement.

Several major ultra-liberal foundations and corporations have supported the asylum-seeking migrant caravans, and Soros' funding has been tied to several groups that have spearheaded the "refugee" invasion coalition – also dubbed "the Soros Express."

"The caravan is organized by a group called Pueblo Sin Fronteras, [but] the effort is supported by the coalition CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project, which includes Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLIN), the American Immigration Council (AIC), the Refugee and Immigration Center for Education and Legal Services (RICELS) and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) – thus the acronym CARA," WND reported. "At least three of the four groups are funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundation."

The hands of the Honduran government are not clean in these efforts. Among the alleged asylum-seekers parked on the U.S. border is a contingent of Hondurans, allegedly fleeing persecution, poverty, crime, and oppression. If that is the case, why is the Honduran government helping them, driving them northward under orders given to the Honduran ambassador, who is helping and escorting them?


Leaders of a caravan of Central American migrants traveling toward the United States through Mexico have repeatedly accused the Honduran government of corruption and with failing to address the poverty, crime and economic conditions forcing families to flee by the thousands.

So it shocked some observers when the Honduran ambassador joined the migrants protesting outside the Honduran embassy in Mexico City on Wednesday, and then accepted their invitation to walk 9 miles to a migrant shelter.

"I have been ordered by my government to support the Honduran migrants traveling with the caravan. There are about 200 Hondurans who we will help out with paperwork and whatever is necessary," Alden Rivera Montes, the Honduran ambassador to Mexico, told El Universal.

Ordered by my government? Why is the country whose oppression they are allegedly fleeing helping them leave? The answer is remittances, the money sent back home by so-called "migrants." Asylum is in large part a colossal scam designed to provide Latin American countries with a political and economic safety valve and a cash cow of foreign exchange. In 2017, remittances sent back to Honduras totaled $4.33 billion and make up a significant part of the Honduran economy:


Within the span of a few short decades, migrants have become an essential engine of economic support for Honduras. Remittances comprised 17 percent of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011, according to World Bank estimates, the second largest share of any country in Latin America or the Caribbean. As such, Honduran emigrants have tremendous significance for the country's economy and for the sustenance of many otherwise impoverished communities and families.

Talk about a trade imbalance. We import alleged asylum-seekers and other illegal aliens, and they send home billions sucked out of a benevolent U.S. government and economy. We have an economy that has some 7.3 million jobs going unfilled because of a shortage of skilled workers. Judging from photos of the latest caravan, one would suggest a paucity of welders, pipefitters, electricians, and long-haul truck-drivers.

Inner-city blacks have long asked which country they get to go to to escape violence and poverty. Although President Trump is succeeding in fighting crime and increasing job opportunities in our urban areas, much remains to be done. We do not need to be importing low-wage and low-skilled competitors to American citizens to drive down poor workers' wages. Inner-city residents have long asked, where's our sanctuary?

Unlike the children of Central America, arriving en masse, the children of Chicago, facing conditions every bit as horrible, have no border to cross to seek asylum or refuge.

"Do something for our children," said one of the protesters in a video posted at the blog Rebel Pundit. "Have the same love for these young people like you got for the ones across the border, and you want to save them."

A woman, identified only as Elaine, explained the plight of inner-city Baltimore residents on Laura Ingraham's radio show: "My children cannot play outside. I cannot take my trash out without locking the door – it's awful. Who is going to give us anything? Where can I get asylum? Where can I get refugee status?"

Where, indeed? Perhaps this side of a border wall Democrats oppose in favor of sanctuary cities and Medicare for illegal aliens. If any of the alleged asylum-seekers want to learn a trade – how about a crash course in border wall construction? Build it, and they won't come.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen warned Sunday that the illegal immigrant caravan heading toward the U.S. could be exploited by cartels that control most of the illegal flow of people through Latin America.

Ms. Nielsen also praised the efforts of Mexico and Central American governments she said are working with the U.S. to try to contain the caravan, rather than enable it.

While some among the once-5,000 member caravan have given up and returned to Honduras, local reports say about 2,000 people have barged into Mexico and vow to press on to the U.S., defying the will of the Mexican and American governments.

Warnings of a get-tough policy from U.S. officials have done little to deter the migrants, who for years have seen relatives and neighbors easily jump the border to enter the U.S. with little consequence. The ease of entering is a selling point for the cartels, who control the drug and human smuggling routes into the U.S. and require payment of a “mafia fee” just to cross the U.S.-Mexico boundary line.

Court records show that fee typically runs from $1,000 to $2,000. That doesn’t include thousands of dollars in other fees that cover foot guides, drivers, stash houses and the rest of the illegal journey.

“While we closely monitor the caravan crisis, we must remain mindful of the transnational criminal organizations and other criminals that prey on the vulnerabilities of those undertaking the irregular migration journey,” [DHS secretary] Nielsen said in a statement Sunday.


She also repeated U.S. backing for the governments who have tried, under threats from President Trump, to stem the flow.

“We fully support the efforts of Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, as they seek to address this critical situation and ensure a safer and more secure region,” the secretary said.

Mr. Trump has said he would pull U.S. foreign assistance from Central American countries and would “seal” the border, including nixing the free trade agreement he’s finalizing with Mexico, unless those nations find ways to halt the caravan.

He has also said he will deploy the U.S. military — a step beyond the National Guard troops he previously asked be sent to the border.

Mexican authorities had attempted to keep the caravan in Guatemala, processing people individually to enter either to claim asylum or to get a visitor visa. But thousands of migrants decided not to wait and burst through fencing or paid to be ferried across the river into Mexico, circumventing the border guards.

The caravan began a week ago in Honduras. The Associated Press reported that Guatemalan officials calculate some 5,400 people had entered their country from Honduras since the caravan began. Perhaps 2,000 have returned home.

At least 100 members of the migrant caravan travelling through Mexico in an attempt to reach the United States have been kidnapped by the Zetas cartel, according to human rights officials in the country.

Fleeing gang violence and threats back home in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, thousands of the migrants travelling en masse reached Mexico City on Monday and Tuesday.
But reports have emerged that a number of members, including children, have gone missing from the group. They are suspected of having fallen prey to criminal gangs, who abduct migrants in order to extort their family members.

Human rights activists and officials in the southern states of Oaxaca and Veracruz, across which the massive group of Central American migrants have trekked over the last few weeks, say that at least 100 were kidnapped in the state of Puebla and allegedly handed over to the Zetas gang.
Arturo Peimbert, the human rights ombudsman in Oaxaca, told local media that the migrants were offered rides by fruit trucks, which they took despite warnings not to, and after getting onto the trucks found themselves locked in.

“The testimonies I have heard [of those who managed to escape] was that many of those migrants were handed over to organised crime near the Federal Police base in Puebla," Mr Peimbert related.
The ombudsman said that promises from the state government of Veracruz to provide transport to the migrants to get them to Mexico City were later retracted, creating a sense of desperation among many in the group.

Numbering more than 4,000 now, the Central Americans have been trekking steadily from their home countries in hot, unsanitary conditions in an attempt to reach Mexico’s shared border with the United States and ask for asylum.
In Mexico City, they have been given shelter and other humanitarian help by the city government.

For years, organised crime has preyed on migrants passing through Mexico, from taxing them to use established routes to kidnapping them and imprisoning them in safehouses.
They then ring their relatives either at home or those already living in the US to demand payment in return for their release.

The size of the group of migrants currently passing through Mexico has brought renewed attention and interest to the plight of those fleeing violence and gangs back home.
Donald Trump, the US president, has ramped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric as the migrant groups approaches the US border.

This week, he told the migrants to “turn back now, because you’re not getting in,” and has pledged to send some 15,000 extra troops to the border to protect Americans.

by Lukas Mikelionis and Griff Jenkins, Fox News


Migrants who came with the caravan are suffering from respiratory infections, tuberculosis, chickenpox and other serious health issues, Tijuana's Health Department warned on Thursday morning.
The spokesman told Fox News that out of 6,000 migrants currently residing in the city, over a third of them (2,267) are being treated for health-related issues.

• over 60% have respiratory infections,
• three confirmed cases of tuberculosis,
• four cases of HIV/AIDS
• four separate cases of chickenpox, the spokesman said.
• At least 101 migrants have lice and
• multiple instances of skin infections, the department’s data shows.

There’s also a threat of Hepatitis outbreak due to unsanitary conditions, the spokesman said. The thousands of migrants are being sheltered at the Benito Juarez Sports Complex near the San Ysidro U.S.-Mexico Port of Entry, despite the place being capable of providing for 1,000 people.
The location also has only 35 portable bathrooms. A sign reading “No Spitting” was put up, as coughing and spitting by migrants are rampant in the shelter.

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum said Tuesday that the city has enough money to assist the migrants only for a few more days, with the city saying it’s spending around $30,000 a day.
“We won’t compromise the resources of the residents of Tijuana,” Gastelum said during a press conference. “We won’t raise taxes tomorrow to pay for today’s problem.”

Amid the problems and dire living conditions, some migrants are reportedly self-deporting. Approximately 80 self-deported Tuesday while another 98 were deported by Mexican immigration officials for their involvement in Sunday’s demonstrations that turned violent.
Others have chosen to accept offers of temporary work and asylum from Mexico, yet most still remain committed to entering the U.S.


SOME MIGRANT CARAVAN MEMBERS SELF-DEPORTING AS FRUSTRATION GROWS IN TIJUANA

TIJUANA MAYOR SAYS $30,000-A-DAY FUNDING FOR MIGRANTS IS ABOUT TO RUN OUT

The newspaper La Jornada surveyed women attempting to migrate while they were in Mexican border cities. 30% said coyotes forced them to have sex as payment.[21]

The United Nations estimated that among women crossing without husbands or families, as many as 70% were victims of some form of abuse.[5]

At the time of the Amnesty International report, the non-profit estimated "as many as six in 10 women and girl migrants experience sexual violence during the journey."[1] It cites a 2006 study of already-detained migrant women in which 23 of 90 reported experiencing violence, with 13 saying the perpetrator was a state official.[1] The researchers involved believed actual numbers were likely higher.[1]

According to a report by Splinter News, as many as 80% of women and girls coming to the United States from Central America are sexually assaulted.[3]

Michelle Brané of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children told Tucson Weekly that "nonprofit groups and even the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement ... estimate that the vast majority of women and female children encounter some sort of sexual assault en route to the United States," and that "it's become the norm, and in many cases with female children, they just assume that there's been some sort of incident."[5]

The newspaper La Jornada surveyed women attempting to migrate while they were in Mexican border cities. 30% said coyotes forced them to have sex as payment.[21]

The United Nations estimated that among women crossing without husbands or families, as many as 70% were victims of some form of abuse.[5]

At the time of the Amnesty International report, the non-profit estimated "as many as six in 10 women and girl migrants experience sexual violence during the journey."[1] It cites a 2006 study of already-detained migrant women in which 23 of 90 reported experiencing violence, with 13 saying the perpetrator was a state official.[1] The researchers involved believed actual numbers were likely higher.[1]

According to a report by Splinter News, as many as 80% of women and girls coming to the United States from Central America are sexually assaulted.[3]

Michelle Brané of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children told Tucson Weekly that "nonprofit groups and even the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement ... estimate that the vast majority of women and female children encounter some sort of sexual assault en route to the United States," and that "it's become the norm, and in many cases with female children, they just assume that there's been some sort of incident."[5]

Yes you spun the dead kid. Happy new year WB, see you next year

Migrants working in the United States sent a staggering $120 billion back to their families last year, it was revealed today.

The amount of money being sent by migrants across the entire world reached $530 billion last year, making it a larger economy than Iran or Argentina, the data from the World Bank showed.


This worldwide figure has tripled in the last ten years and is now three times bigger than the total aid budgets given by countries around the world. It has sparked debate whether this so-called remittance money could be a viable alternative to relying on help from other governments.

In the United States last year, more than $120 billion was sent by workers to families abroad - making it the largest sender of remittances in the world. More than $23 billion went to Mexico, $13.45 billion to China, $10.84 billion to India and $10 billion to the Philippines, among other recipients.

In 2011, the World Bank estimated that U.S. remittances alone reached $110.8 billion, which was more than 80 per cent of the size of the total amount of cash flow ($132 billion).

It is little surprise as the US is home to the largest number of migrants from developing countries; there are 42.8 million immigrants in the country, making up around 14 per cent of the population.


By contrast, 2.4 million Americans live oversees, with largest populations in Mexico, Canada and Puerto Rico, and just $5.1 billion sent back in to the country, data shared on The Guardian showed.

The data showed that the biggest beneficiaries included India and China, which each received more than $60 billion, followed by the Philippines ($24 billion), Mexico ($24 billion) and Nigeria ($21 billion).

World Bank officials believe the amount they donate could be billions more because not all cash is sent through banks and money transfer companies on which the figures are based.



A number of countries have set up initiatives to manage the cash flow, including the Rwandan government, which saw much of its aid cut last year over claims it was helping rebels i neighboring Democratic of Congo.

As a result, it has asked all Rwandans living abroad to contribute to a new 'solidarity fund' to make up the difference. However, migrants are complaining they are being charged more than 20 per cent in transfer fees as companies scramble to exploit the ever-growing market.

For smaller economies across the world, remittances make up massive proportions of national income. For example, Tajikistan receives the equivalent of 47 per cent of its GDP from workers abroad, while Liberia receives the equivalent of 31 per cent.

Showing just how many families in Liberia are on money from relatives abroad, 18 per cent of people surveyed in Gallup polls said they take in remittances, with as many as 27 per cent of families receiving money in urban areas.


For dozens of developing countries, such as Bangladesh, Guatemala, Mexico and Senegal, remittances are worth more than the aid they receive from the other states.

Some countries both send and receive massive remittances; Bangladesh received over $12bn in remittances in 2011 - about 11 per cent of its GDP - while migrants in Bangladesh, for example, are estimated to have sent over $3.7bn to India in 2011.


Across the world, there are more than 214 million migrants, which would make it the fifth most-populated country after China, India, America and Indonesia.

Remittances from western Europe have weakened since the financial crisis, which has affected money going to sub-Saharan Africa, eastern Europe and central Asia.

But across the world, the total sum is rising as the value of money from Russia and the Gulf countries increases with high oil prices, and beneficiaries are mostly neighbouring former Soviet states, including Tajikista, Armenia and Georgia.

In the United Kingdom, which sent $23 billion out of the country, the government's shadow minister for international development, Rushanara Ali, who was born in Bangladesh, believes the UK government should try to harness migrant money to complement aid spending.

'I've never heard someone with an origin in another country not feel a sense of obligation or a sense of contribution,' she told The Guardian. 'There will always be pressure on budgets. The time is ripe for coming up with new ideas on how diaspora communities can make a difference.'

SAN FRANCISCO (Associated Press) — A suspected drunken driver accused of killing a California police officer who pulled him over was captured Friday as he tried to flee back to Mexico, where he lived before illegally crossing into the U.S., authorities said.

The sheriff leading the investigation blamed California's sanctuary law for preventing local authorities from reporting Gustavo Perez Arriaga to U.S. immigration officials for two previous drunken driving arrests. If he had been deported, the sheriff said, Cpl. Ronil Singh of the tiny Newman Police Department would still be alive.

"We can't ignore the fact that this could have been preventable," Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson told reporters, asking why the state was "providing sanctuary for criminals (and) gang members. It's a conversation we need to have."

Following a statewide manhunt, Perez Arriaga was arrested on a murder warrant in a house near Bakersfield, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of where Singh was shot Wednesday.

As a SWAT team prepared to raid the house, Perez Arriaga came out with his hands up and surrendered. He was sent north in the slain officer's handcuffs, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said.

Perez Arriaga crossed the border in Arizona several years ago and had worked a variety of jobs as a laborer, including at several dairies. The 33-year-old Mexico native had gang affiliations and multiple Facebook pages with different names, Christianson said.

The shooting came amid an intense political fight over immigration, with President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats at odds over funding for a border wall that has forced a partial government shutdown.

Trump tweeted about Singh's killing Thursday, saying it was "time to get tough on Border Security. Build the Wall!"

Security. Build the Wall!"

California's sanctuary law limits cooperation between local authorities and U.S. immigration officials and has drawn scorn from the Trump administration. It includes more than 800 exceptions for violent crimes and felonies and bars police from asking people about their citizenship status.

Former state Sen. Kevin de Leon, the Democrat who wrote the legislation, said it's unfair to blame the law for the officer's death.



Christianson, who was at a meeting with Trump and slams California's law in a video posted by the White House in May, said the measure prohibited his department from sharing Perez Arriaga's gang ties, "other active warrants" and past DUI arrests with federal immigration authorities. He didn't give details on the other warrants.

That suggests law enforcement could have apprehended Perez Arriaga previously, de Leon said.

(more at link)

Taking the data only from these five states, and assuming that each person incarcerated for a homicide-related offense is responsible for only one death, yields 5,400 people killed by illegal aliens.

Sabine Durden offered to bring her dead son’s ashes to show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer the consequence of not securing the southern border.

Durden was responding to a proposal Trump 2020 presidential campaign manager Brad Pascale made to Pelosi and Schumer.


“Would Nancy, Chuck and their friends in the media have the courage to look an angel mom in the eyes and lecture them about a wall being “immoral”?” Pascale wrote Wednesday. “Democrats need to stop putting politics ahead of the safety of American citizens.
#BuildTheWall

“I would volunteer and bring my sons ashes for a simple show and tell because clearly they don’t want to understand anything else,” legal German immigrant Sabine Durden wrote Wednesday.

Durden’s son Dominic Durden came to the U.S. with his family in 1992, at the age of ten. He was a 911 dispatcher for the Riverside Sheriff’s Department and had dreams of becoming a Police helicopter pilot. He received awards posthumously for his extensive community involvement and volunteerism.

An illegal alien driving without a license and with two prior DUI convictions slammed into Dominic Durden and his motorcycle in July 2012, killing the young man. The offender spent just 35 days in jail for killing Dominic.

Sabine Durden carries the ashes of her only child with her in remembrance.

February 15, 2019 12:45 pm

Angel Moms confronted CNN correspondent Jim Acosta at the White House on Friday, leading him to briefly interview one after President Donald Trump told him to ask the mothers if he was truly manufacturing a border crisis.

Trump invited the Angel Moms to his announcement that he had declared a national emergency to secure money to build a southern border wall, after failing to get adequate funding from Congress for it.

Acosta, a strident critic of the president, said before the event Trump was using anti-immigration "mythology" as part of his case to build the wall and also said the Angel Moms' presence there was part of an effort of "trying to drum up some emotional energy on this occasion." He also mentioned their children were "allegedly" killed by illegal immigrants.

At the press conference, he asked Trump if he was concocting an emergency and cited data showing illegal immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than native-born Americans. Trump told Acosta he had an agenda and called him "fake news." He also told him to ask the Angel Moms whether it was truly an emergency.


Finally, Acosta interviewed one mother whose son was killed by an illegal immigrant.

"I'm standing in front of these Angel Moms who came to the Rose Garden today to testify to what they've been through in terms of their ordeals, dealing with crime in this country and the undocumented immigrants that were responsible for the crimes that took away their loved ones," Acosta said.

"In terms of all of us here at CNN, our hearts go out to them. There is no attempt whatsoever to diminish what they've gone through or take away what they've gone through," Acosta said, stipulating his question was about the data behind Trump's declaration of an emergency.

A woman who said she was a legal immigrant held a photo of her deceased son and declared Trump "completely correct on this issue" while speaking with Acosta.

"My family came through the right channels, and this is my only son, who was murdered by a previously deported illegal alien," she said. "We need to secure our borders to protect American citizens. President Trump is completely correct on this issue. We need to protect this country."

In the studio, anchor Kate Bolduan reiterated CNN's coverage wasn't about diminishing anyone's pain, but rather about the constitutionality of Trump's emergency declaration.

Acosta has become a household name for his frequent spats with the White House and Trump himself.

He is writing a book about his experiences covering Trump called The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America. Acosta so dislikes Trump's rhetoric about the media that he once suggested on-air that reporters should make bumper stickers and signs and chant "We are not the enemy of the people" on Pennsylvania Avenue.

SENATE VOTES TO BLOCK TRUMP EMERGENCY
NYT: “The Senate on Thursday easily voted to overturn President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the southwestern border, delivering a bipartisan rebuke to what lawmakers in both parties deemed executive overreach by a president determined to build his border wall over Congress’s objections. The 59-41 vote on the House-passed measures set up the first veto of Mr. Trump’s presidency. It was not overwhelming enough to override Mr. Trump’s promised veto, but Congress has now voted to block a presidential emergency declaration for the first time — and on one of the core promises that animated Mr. Trump’s political rise, the vow to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. In an attempt to limit defections ahead of the vote, Mr. Trump had sought to frame the vote publicly as not only a declaration of support for his border security policies but a sign of personal loyalty.”

The twelve Republicans who voted to block Trump - The Hill: “Here is the list of the GOP senators who voted against Trump on the emergency declaration: Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.), Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), Sen. Mike Lee (Utah), Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio), Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Sen. Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Sen. Roger Wicker (Miss.).”

This week Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano explains the constitutional powers of Congress when it comes to national emergencies: "The act itself fails to define what constitutes an emergency, but the courts – as is their job where a law is ambiguous – have generally defined an emergency as a sudden and imminent threat to life, liberty and property that cannot be addressed by the exercise of ordinary government powers. … President Donald Trump, in his recent declaration of national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, ordered the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to spend unused but unauthorized money in their budgets on building a 55-mile steel barrier – ‘a big, beautiful wall’ -- along a portion of that border. Because Congress has expressly and explicitly declined to authorize the funds for the construction of such a barrier, we have a constitutional conflict on our hands.”

By Dan Cadman, March 20, 2019

As most readers know, enough Republican senators (12 of them, in a closely divided chamber in which they hold the majority by the tips of their fingers) voted with Democrats in both the House and Senate to force to President Trump's desk for signature, a congressional measure whose effect would have been to eviscerate his own immigration emergency declaration.

Virtually every one of the senators who joined the Democrats spoke at one point or another about "principles" and the need to oppose presidential overreach. But one wonders: Why were those principles not so clearly on display during the breathtaking presidential overreaches of the Obama administration? For instance, when he sidestepped congressional treaty oversight with his "Iran deal" and gave the mullahs billions of dollars in cash — much of it on pallets of used money of various currencies air-freighted in the middle of the night?

Adding insult to injury, according to the Los Angeles Times, "The money came from a little-known fund administered by the Treasury Department for settling litigation claims. The so-called Judgment Fund is taxpayer money Congress has permanently approved in the event it's needed, allowing the president to bypass direct congressional approval to make a settlement." (Emphasis added.) Note that the intent of the fund was settling of claims for litigation against the Iranian regime due to its past engagement in, or support of, terrorism that cost Americans their lives, not for giving money to Iran.

And where were their principles when the Obama administration initiated its constitutionally dubious "Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals" (DACA) amnesty without benefit of a single statute authorizing such action, unlike the laws undergirding this president's emergency declaration, which can be found in at least two places: the National Emergencies Act and the language embedded in Section 103(a)(10) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Considered in this light, the senators' claims of standing on principle seem suspiciously thin.

Needless to say, the president vetoed the action (see here and here). At this juncture it's seen as safe from future congressional action, meaning that the emergency declaration will stand — provided, that is, that the usual gang of anti-declaration progressives and open-borders advocates don't find a conveniently activist judge to declare the declaration a violation of the law or the Constitution. Or find that it's an impermissible exercise of power, or that it hides hidden racist-xenophobic motives, or maybe that they just don't like it and therefore order an injunction despite the fact that what we have here is fundamentally a dispute between the political branches over exactly what differing individuals consider an "emergency". This is an area in which the supposedly non-political judicial branch should fear to tread, but we crossed that Rubicon and entered the era of governmental rule by jurists a long time ago.

It was a bitter pill for folks like me to see Republicans line up to defeat the president on a matter so important, something that so fundamentally defines our nation's sovereignty, or loss thereof, because when you lose control of your border, you lose control of your country and therefore of your destiny and that of your progeny.
That's one of the disturbing things about the so-called "conservative" movement, whose banner Republicans purport to fly. It's chock-a-block full of people who for various reasons oppose immigration control and, at least on this one issue, entertain ideas that very closely mirror, by end-result if not motive, those of open-borders advocates.

Making my point stronger is this: In the last Congress, despite a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress, no significant immigration control or enforcement legislation of any kind was enacted. Why? Because under the arcane rules of the Senate it takes 60 votes, not a simple majority, to see a bill pass that chamber (presuming it also passed the House) and be presented for enactment into law by presidential signature.

In other words, these 12 Senate Republicans had no problem joining the minority Democrats to make up that 60-vote margin to try to defeat the president's immigration emergency declaration. And Senate Republicans have never been able to either persuade enough Democrats to join them in meaningful immigration control measures or, alternately, on their own kill the filibuster and cloture rules that make this anti-democratic (small "d" there) 60-vote rule a requirement.

I was curious about the immigration views of the 12, so I went to NumbersUSA, an organization that issues "score cards" to all representatives and senators based on their immigration voting records. Here's what I found:

• Republican Senators Voting Against Emergency Declaration, with Immigration Score Card Grade (recent, and overall career) :
  
  Sen. Lamar Alexander (TN)....... F-, ..... C
  Sen. Roy Blunt (Missouri).......... F-,..... B+
  Sen. Susan Collins (Maine)........ F-,..... D+
  Sen. Mike Lee (Utah)................ A+,..... B+
  Sen. Jerry Moran (Kansas)........ F-, ..... A-
  Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)..... F-,..... D
  Sen. Rand Paul (Kentucky)......... A+,..... B+
  Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio)........... F-, ..... B
  Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah)........... F-,..... F-
  Sen. Marco Rubio (Florida)........ A+,..... C-
  Sen. Pat Toomey (PA).............. A+,..... B
  Sen. Roger Wicker (Mississippi).. D,...... B+

The results of the table aren't really much of a surprise: For the most part, these senators all have abysmal records where immigration control measures are concerned. I am surprised, though, by the four senators described as having A+ grades on recent voting records.

While I respect NumbersUSA, I cannot credit the recent A+ (nor even the career C-) assigned to Marco Rubio who, where immigration is concerned, appears to change his principles as quickly as he changes his shirts. Remember his ardent support for the mass amnesty of the infamous "Gang of Eight" legislation? Rubio was, in fact, one of the “gang”, and I've seen nothing substantive change in recent years other than a kind of faux contrition after being beaten so badly during his failed presidential run, and nearly losing his Senate seat in his re-run bid, all because of his immigration views.
Toomey, too, was soft on the Gang of Eight legislation. Although in the end he voted against it, he wavered so significantly on the matter that he was targeted as part of a select group of potential deciding votes, and as recently as November 2017, endorsed a broad-based amnesty for alien "Dreamers" and DACA recipients, even as he admitted that doing so might lead to a new influx of illegal border-crossers.

That leaves the other two A+ recipients, Rand Paul and Mike Lee. Paul is idiosyncratic and hard to characterize. Though he has been known to flirt with organizations outspoken in their advocacy for amnesty and open-ended cheap labor programs, he voted against the Gang of Eight and has in the past acknowledged that the border is "lawless". Why, then, he fails to see the legitimate need for an emergency declaration is a puzzle. Sen. Lee has perhaps been the most consistent in opposing amnesties and endorsing border security. This makes his vote against the emergency declaration as enigmatic as Paul's.

So there you have it, the full round-up. Of the 12 senators, eight of them have recent track records that resulted in NumbersUSA assigning them failing grades when it comes to any kind of support for meaningful immigration enforcement, and at least two of the four who have A+ grades are, in fact, squishy in their support of immigration enforcement and against amnesties. No wonder they didn't support the emergency declaration. It's pretty clear that for at least 10 of the 12, their votes had little or nothing to do with high-minded constitutional "principles".

In the dying minutes of the Obama administration’s final term, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removed from its website a collection of almost 200 speeches and testimonies delivered by agency leadership dating back to 2004. With a couple of clicks of a mouse, access to a federal government web resource containing 12 years of primary source materials on ICE’s history was lost. In our most recent report, the Web Integrity Project (WIP) documents the removal of this collection.

As our report details, a collection of 190 transcripts of speeches and testimonies hosted on the ICE website’s “Speeches and Testimonies” page was removed between the early afternoon of January 18 and late evening on January 19, 2017. (Compare the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine captures from January 18, 2017 and on January 19, 2017.) The transcripts were of speeches and testimony delivered between 2004 and 2017 by high-ranking ICE officials, including the director of the agency and directors of ICE sub-units. Most contained prepared remarks submitted to congressional committees, often on controversial topics like the standard of medical treatment for detainees, treatment of unaccompanied children, sanctuary cities, drug trafficking, and E-Verify.

Testimony from Thomas Homan, who was appointed Acting Director of ICE by President Trump soon after inauguration in January 2017, featured prominently in the removed collection. In one removed transcript — a February 2016 statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the “Unaccompanied Children Crisis” — then-Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Homan detailed how ICE contracted out to “effectuate” the transportation of “UC” and enumerated the “important steps” that the administration had taken to “deter illegal immigration.” In another removed transcript from May 2016, Homan detailed how local jurisdictions “limiting or declining cooperation with ICE” put “the public at risk.” It is not inconceivable that an outgoing Democratic administration might want to avoid preserving these public stances for future scrutiny.

(more at the link)

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Wednesday arrested roughly 680 undocumented immigrants at seven Mississippi poultry processing facilities.

An ICE spokesman confirmed the raids to The Hill, saying it was part of a coordinated operation with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Mississippi.

“In what is believed to be the largest single-state immigration enforcement operation in our nation's history, today at seven sites… ICE HSI (Homeland Security Investigation) special agents executed administrative and criminal search warrants resulting in the detention of approximately 680 illegal aliens,” Mike Hurst, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, said Wednesday afternoon.

“The arrests today were part of a year-long investigation,” ICE Acting Director Matt Albence added.


Detained employees at a Koch Foods plant in Morton, Miss., 40 miles east of Jackson, were boarded on three buses and taken to the Mississippi National Guard base in Flowood, Miss., for processing, according to The Associated Press.

It said agents searched the plant, asking employees for identification. Those who could not prove their legal residence were detained, while those with papers had their lockers searched and were released.

Poultry processing relies heavily on immigrant labor to clean, cut and package chicken parts for consumption.

Activists and labor unions have long accused the poultry industry of abusing undocumented workers who can't appeal to the federal government for protection.
Koch Foods, the Illinois-based company that operates some of the raided plants, did not immediately return a request for comment. Koch Foods is not connected to billionaire mega-donor Charles Koch.

The Mississippi raids follow a large-scale raid last year in Ohio, where a large landscaping company was investigated by ICE.

President Trump vowed in June to deport "millions" of undocumented immigrants from the interior of the country, as immigration detention centers exceeded their capacity, packed with asylum-seeking detainees from the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Trump administration has threatened generalized, large-scale workplace raids, but has mostly focused its interior deportation assets on undocumented immigrants with pending orders of deportation.

It is unclear what criminal activity prompted the federal criminal warrant and the participation of the U.S. Attorney's Office; immigration violations are for the most part civil law violations and not subject to criminal warrants.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents are executing federal search warrants today at multiple locations across the state of Mississippi as part of a coordinated operation with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi pursuant to ongoing HSI criminal and administrative investigations," ICE spokesman Bryan Cox said in an email.

According to the 99% response rate obtained from the race question on the 2010 Census questionnaire, 90.6% of the population identified themselves as being Black, 4.7% White and 2.1% of a mixed race (African and European).[80] Three centuries prior, in 1722 when the first official census of the Bahamas was taken, 74% of the population was native European and 26% native African.[80]

Since the colonial era of plantations, Africans or Afro-Bahamians have been the largest ethnic group in the Bahamas, whose primary ancestry was based in West Africa. The first Africans to arrive to the Bahamas were freed slaves from Bermuda; they arrived with the Eleutheran Adventurers looking for new lives.

The Haitian community in the Bahamas is also largely of African descent and numbers about 80,000. Due to an extremely high immigration of Haitians to the Bahamas, the Bahamian government started deporting illegal Haitian immigrants to their homeland in late 2014.[81]

The white Bahamian population are mainly the descendants of the English Puritans looking to flee religious persecution in England and American Loyalists escaping the American Revolution who arrived in 1649 and 1783, respectively.[82] Many Southern Loyalists went to the Abaco Islands, half of whose population was of European descent as of 1985.[83] The term white is usually used to identify Bahamians with Anglo ancestry, as well as "light-skinned" Afro-Bahamians. Sometimes Bahamians use the term Conchy Joe to describe people of Anglo descent.[84]

A small portion of the Euro-Bahamian population are Greek Bahamians, descended from Greek labourers who came to help develop the sponging industry in the 1900s.[85] They make up less than 2% of the nation's population, but have still preserved their distinct Greek Bahamian culture.[86][87]

Bahamians typically identify themselves simply as either black or white.[84]

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Thursday, October 17, 2019


Senators gave a backhand approval Thursday to President Trump’s border emergency wall building plans by failing to override his veto, marking the latest instance when the White House has outmaneuvered Congress.

The president’s opponents mustered 53 votes to overturn the veto, with 10 Republicans siding with Democrats, but it still fell far short of the two-thirds needed to force Mr. Trump to retreat from his marquee campaign promise.

At stake is billions of dollars in money Congress allocated to the Pentagon in 2019, but which Mr. Trump, in his February emergency declaration, said is better spent at the U.S.-Mexico border, erecting hundreds of miles of wall.

Democratic leaders have tried twice to block him by canceling his declaration, and each time Mr. Trump’s veto has thwarted them.

“As long as my colleagues continue to give him the green light, President Trump will continue to put his ‘big and beautiful’ wall ahead of the needs of the U.S. military,” said Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who is chairman of the subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending.

There may be other hurdles.

A federal court in Texas ruled last week that Mr. Trump’s proclamation was unlawful. That judge is still deciding what action to take and has asked both sides to file briefs on what powers a court has to restrain the president, the head of a co-equal branch of government.

And Mr. Trump’s building plans have not made much progress in expanding existing fencing.

Since Mr. Trump took office, Customs and Border Protection has erected 71 miles of wall — but all of that is replacement of old fencing. Officials say no new miles of the border have been sealed off beyond the 652 miles he inherited from President Obama.

The wall is also coming in over budget, congressional Democrats said this week.

They said the $6.1 billion Mr. Trump siphoned away from the Pentagon with his emergency declaration didn’t take into account overhead and bureaucracy costs, and the administration notified them last week that it’s going to grab another $129 million in money that was supposed to go to fight drug production in Afghanistan.

That’s in addition to the $6.1 billion that was coming out of military projects across the globe.

Democratic campaign operatives swung into action Thursday to chastise Republicans whose districts stand to see money drained from their local military bases.

The White House says Congress could easily restore the money for those projects in the 2020 budget.

But Democrats say to do so would mean giving Mr. Trump’s wall money grab an imprimatur. Most Democrats voted last month against a non-binding measure that would have urged replenishment of the funds.

Democrats chide Mr. Trump for having to turn to U.S. taxpayers for funding, saying he promised during the 2016 campaign that Mexico would bear the financial burden.
the 2016 campaign that Mexico would bear the financial burden.

Mr. Trump says Mexico is doing just that, indirectly, through terms of trade.

The White House requested another $5 billion in border wall money in its fiscal 2020 budget. The House, controlled by Democrats, has erased those funds from its Homeland Security spending bill. The Senate has included the money in its version, but that bill has yet to clear the chamber.

Minutes before the veto override failed, Senate Democrats also lost their bid to overturn Mr. Trump and reinstate Obama-era global warming restrictions known as the Clean Power Plan.

The Obama regulations were designed to limit fossil fuel-intensive energy production, particularly coal-based production. The Trump administration released a policy undoing the Obama rules, and Democrats sought to attempt a congressional veto.

“Time is running out for the United States to meet the existential threat posed by climate change,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer.
But he couldn’t keep all his Democrats in line, much less win over Republicans, and saw his effort doomed on a 51-43 vote.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, cheered the outcome, saying it saved the country as many as 125,000 jobs and prevented double-digit increases in energy costs.

At this moment there is a bill pending in Congress called the New Way Forward Act. It’s received almost no publicity, which is unfortunate as well as revealing.
The legislation is sponsored by 44 House Democrats, including Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. At roughly 4,400 words, it’s almost exactly as long as the U.S. Constitution.

Like the Constitution, this legislation is designed to create a whole new country. The bill would entirely remake our immigration system, with the explicit purpose of ensuring that criminals are able to move here, and settle here permanently, with impunity.

You may think we’re exaggerating for effect. We’re not – not even a little.
The New Way Forward act is the most radical single piece of legislation we’ve seen proposed in this country. It makes the Green New Deal look like the status quo.

A document produced by Democrats to promote the bill says: “Convictions should not lead to deportation.”

Keep in mind, we’re not talking about convictions for double parking. The bill targets felony convictions – serious crimes that send you to prison for years. A press release from Rep., Jesus Garcia, D-Ill., is explicit about this.
Garcia brags that the bill will break the “prison to deportation pipeline.” How does the bill do that? Under current U.S. law, legal U.S. immigrants can be deported if they commit an “aggravated felony” or a “crime of moral turpitude” – that is, a vile, depraved act, like molesting a child. Under the New Way Forward Act, “crimes of moral turpitude” are eliminated entirely as a justification for deportation. And the category of “aggravated felony” gets circumscribed too.

What does that mean?

Consider this: Under current law, immigrants who commit serious crimes – such as robbery, fraud, or child sexual abuse – must be deported, regardless of the sentence they receive. Other crimes – less severe ones like racketeering – require deportation as long as the perpetrator receives at least a one-year sentence.

But if this bill passes the House and Senate and is signed into law by the president, there will no longer be any crimes that automatically require deportation. None.

And one crime – falsifying a passport – will be made immune from deportation, no matter what. Because apparently 9/11 never happened, and we no longer care about fake government documents.
If you just renewed your driver’s license to comply with the Real ID Act, you must feel like an idiot. Under the proposed legislation, the minimum prison sentence for crimes that still require deportation would rise from one year to five.

We checked the Bureau of Justice Statistics. According to federal data, crimes like car theft, fraud, and weapons offenses all carry average prison sentences of fewer than five years. And that’s just looking at averages. There are people who commit rape, child abuse and even manslaughter and receive sentences of fewer than five years. Lots of them.
If the New Way Forward Act becomes law, immigrants who commit those crimes and receive those sentences would remain in the country. They’ll all be eligible for citizenship one day, too.

But even that is understating the law’s effect. Even a five-year prison sentence won’t necessarily be enough to secure deportation. The bill would grant sweeping new powers to immigration judges, allowing them to nullify a deportation order.

The only requirement is that “the immigration judge finds such an exercise of discretion appropriate in pursuit of humanitarian purposes, to assure family unity, or when it is otherwise in the public interest.” In other words, anti-American immigration judges – and many of them are exactly that – would have a blank check to open the borders. No vote required.
Current U.S. law makes drug addiction grounds for deportation, because why wouldn’t it? This bill would eliminate that statute.

Current law also states that those who have committed drug crimes abroad, or any “crimes involving moral turpitude,” are ineligible to immigrate here. The New Way Forward Act abolishes that statute.

A Mexican drug cartel leader could be released from prison, then freely come to America immediately. And if he wants, he could come here illegally, and it wouldn’t be a crime – because, and you were waiting for this, the bill also decriminalizes illegal entry into America, even by those previously deported.

According to a document promoting the bill, criminalizing illegal entry into America is “white supremacist.”

By this point, you’re beginning to wonder if we’re making this up. We’re not. In fact, we’re barely halfway through the bill.

The legislation doesn’t just make it harder to deport legal immigrants who commit crimes. It doesn’t just make it easier for criminals to legally move here. The bill would also effectively abolish all existing enforcement against illegal immigration.

To detain illegal immigrants, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would have to prove in court that the illegal immigrants are dangerous or a flight risk. But of course, ICE wouldn’t be allowed to use a detainee’s prior criminal behavior as proof he or she is dangerous. That's banned.

ICE would have to overcome even more hurdles if the detainee claims to be gay or transgender, under 21, or can’t speak English and an interpreter isn’t immediately available.

In other words, it would be much harder to arrest an illegal alien than it is to arrest you. They’re the protected class here. You’re just some loser who’s paying for it all.

But believe it or not, we saved the nuttiest part for last. What could be more destructive than changing U.S. law, specifically to allow rapists, child molesters, and drug dealers to stay in America? How about this: Using taxpayer money to bring deported criminals back into America.

That’s right. This bill would not only abolish your right to control who lives in your own country, but it invents a new right in return: the “right to come home.”

The bill orders the government to create a “pathway for those previously deported to apply to return to their homes and families in the United States,” as long as they would have been eligible to stay under the new law.

The Department of Homeland Security must spend taxpayer dollars transporting convicted criminal illegal aliens into the United States. Who will be eligible for these free flights? Tens of thousands of people kicked out of this country for all kinds of crimes. Sexual abuse. Robbery. Assault. Drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, human trafficking.

From 2002 to 2018, 480,000 people were deported for illegal entry or reentry into America. And under this bill, you’d have to buy them all a plane ticket to come back. The tickets alone would cost about a billion dollars, and that’s before Democrats make you start paying for these criminals’ free health care, too. Which they plan to.

The New Way Forward Act fundamentally inverts every assumption you have about America. Under this legislation, the criminals are the victims. Law enforcement is illegitimate. It’s racist, just like the country you live in, and the only solution is to get rid of both. America would be better off as a borderless rest area for the world’s worst predators and parasites.

This is a big deal. It’s hard to believe any American would put these ideas on paper, much less pass them into law. Yet, remarkably, the press has ignored it. Scores of Democrats have backed it, but the bill hasn’t been mentioned in The New York Times, or on CNN, or even in self-described conservative outlets like National Review.

If a lone Republican state legislator from Minot, N.D., had proposed a bill this extreme, that would remake America this completely, the president himself would be expected to answer for it.

CNN would demand the president “disavow,” even if he knew nothing about it. But when one-fifth of the Democratic caucus backs a bill demanding that you pay to import illegal alien felons, it’s a non-event in American media. They don’t think you should know about it. That’s dangerous.

Whether the press cares or not, these are the stakes of the 2020 election. A growing wing of the Democratic Party views America as essentially illegitimate – a rogue state, in which everything must be destroyed and remade: our laws, our institutions, our freedoms, our history and our values. That’s the point of all this, of course. An entirely new country, in which resistance is crushed, and they’re in charge forever.


Adapted from Tucker Carlson’s monologue on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Feb. 6, 2020.