Border Patrol Caught a Convicted Murderer From Honduras in the Caravan

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Border Patrol agents in San Diego arrested an alien from Honduras earlier this week after he crossed into the United States illegally. The man was part of the caravan from Central America that is currently parked in Tijuana, Mexico.

After further investigation, it was discovered the illegal alien was in Honduran prison for nearly two decades after being convicted of murder.

“On Nov. 24th, around 11 P.M., agents detected three people crossing the border illegally approximately one-mile east of the San Ysidro port of entry. Agents responded, arrested the three men, and transported them to a nearby Border Patrol station for processing,” Customs and Border Protection released Friday afternoon. “At the station, agents discovered documents indicating one of the men, 46 year-old Miguel Angel Ramirez, was recently released from prison in Honduras. Ramirez later admitted he was arrested and convicted for murder in Honduras and was released just four months ago. The San Diego Sector Border Patrol’s Foreign Operations Branch corroborated the man’s admission with the Honduran Consulate in Los Angeles and discovered that Ramirez served 16 years in a Honduran prison for his crime. Ramirez claimed he traveled with the migrant caravan from Honduras to Guatemala and Mexico.”

One of the other men who illegally crossed into the United States after traveling in the caravan has been deported in the past. He is also from Honduras. Earlier this week, an MS-13 member was found in the caravan. (Read more from “Border Patrol Caught a Convicted Murderer From Honduras in the Caravan” HERE)

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One-Third of Migrant Caravan Sick: HIV, Tuberculosis, Chickenpox

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Thousands of migrants marched from Central America to the U.S. border over the last six weeks, but many of them are suffering from respiratory infections, tuberculosis, chickenpox and other serious health issues — including HIV.

Of the 6,000 migrants gathered in Tijuana just south of the U.S. border near San Diego, more than a third of them (2,267) are being treated for health-related issues, a spokesman for Tijuana’s Health Department told Fox News. . .

Meanwhile, the mayor of Tijuana said Tuesday that the city cannot afford to help the migrants that are there. “We won’t compromise the resources of the residents of Tijuana,” Juan Manuel Gastelum said during a press conference, noting that the city is spending some $30,000 a day. ““We won’t raise taxes tomorrow to pay for today’s problem.”

Hundreds of migrants stormed the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, and the U.S. Border Patrol’s top San Diego agent said they shoved women and children to the front of the mob to use as human shields.

“What we saw over and over yesterday was that the group – the caravan, as we call them – would push women and children to the front, and then begin, basically, rocking our agents,” Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott said in a CNN interview. (Read more from “One-Third of Migrant Caravan Sick: HIV, Tuberculosis, Chickenpox” HERE)

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Trump Abruptly Cancels Meeting With Putin

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By Washington Times. President Trump on Thursday said he was canceling plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin because of escalating military tension in Crimea.

The announcement tweeted from Air Force One in route to the G20 summit in Argentina was an abrupt reversal of comments just 40 minutes earlier, when Mr. Trump said he would probably go through with the meeting.

“Based on the fact that the ships and sailors have not been returned to Ukraine from Russia, I have decided it would be best for all parties concerned to cancel my previously scheduled meeting in Argentina with President Vladimir Putin,” the president said in a series of tweets.

He added, “I look forward to a meaningful Summit again as soon as this situation is resolved!” . . .

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news services that the Kremlin learned of the cancelation from Mr. Trump’s tweet and had not received formal notification. (Read more from “Trump Cancels Meeting With Putin” HERE)

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Trump Cancels G-20 Meeting With Putin, Citing Ukraine Crisis; Decision Follows Michael Cohen Guilty Plea in Russia Probe

By CNBC. President Donald Trump on Thursday abruptly canceled his meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at this weekend’s G-20 summit in Argentina.

Trump in two tweets blamed the cancellation of Saturday’s expected encounter with Putin on the failure of Russia to return three ships and their sailors seized from Ukraine last weekend in the Black Sea.

But the social-media scuttling of the sitdown came an hour after he personally told reporters that he would probably meet with Putin.

And it came just two hours after Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the president’s involvement in an aborted real estate deal in Moscow.

(Read more from “Trump Cancels G-20 Meeting With Putin, Citing Ukraine Crisis; Decision Follows Michael Cohen Guilty Plea in Russia Probe” HERE)

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CNN Commentator Calls for Elimination of Israel

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Far-left CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill appeared to defend using violence to resist Israel and appeared to call for the elimination of Israel on Wednesday while speaking to the United Nations.

Hill made the remarks while speaking during the U.N.’s International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, as first reported by Arutz Sheva.

“Contrary to western mythology, black resistance to American apartheid did not come purely through Gandhi and non-violence,” Hill said. “Rather, slave revolts, self-defense, and tactics otherwise divergent from Dr. King or Mahatma Gandhi were equally important to preserving safety and attaining freedom.”

“If we are in true solidarity, we must allow the Palestinian people the same range of opportunity and political possibility. We must recognize the right of an occupied people to defend themselves,” Hill continued. “We must prioritize peace, but we must not romanticize or fetishize it. We must advocate and promote non-violence at every opportunity, but cannot endorse narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in the face of state violence and ethnic cleansing.”

“Louis Farrakhan is using a photo with CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill to promote a $260 box set of music on his Nation of Islam website,” The Wrap reported. “Hill, a political commentator for CNN touted on the site as ‘one of the leading intellectual voices in the country,’ told The Wrap that he was not aware his image was being used for commercial purposes and will ask for its removal.” (Read more from “Cnn Commentator Calls for Elimination of Israel” HERE)

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Border Patrol Arrests MS-13 Member Who Traveled with Caravan

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U.S. Border Patrol agents have arrested a member of the infamous Salvadoran MS-13 gang who admitted to authorities that he traveled with a caravan of Central American migrants who were hoping to qualify for asylum in America.

Agents arrested Jose Villalobos-Jobel, 29, shortly after 6 p.m. on Saturday east of the Calexico Port of Entry on the U.S. side of the border, Customs and Border Protection said in a statement Wednesday.

During questioning at the El Centro station, the Honduran citizen confessed that he is an active member of MS-13 and had intended to enter the country illegally after traveling to the U.S. with the caravan of thousands of other migrants. He is in custody pending his deportation back to Honduras. . .

In April, another MS-13 member, Herberth Geovani Argueta-Chavez, 18, was apprehended after illegally entering the U.S. with a group suspected to be part of the caravan that headed for the border last spring. He posed as an unaccompanied minor before police discovered his identity as an adult gang member.

(Read more from “Border Patrol Arrests MS-13 Member Who Traveled with Caravan” HERE)

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How Twitter’s Biased Bans Echo China’s Social Control System

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A little more than one year ago, a few weeks after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, I worried out loud to some friends in the tech world about the way numerous Internet-based services had responded by banning far-right figures associated with the event. While social media services like Twitter had banned individual provocateurs such as Chuck Johnson and Milo Yiannopoulos prior to this, the wave of bans following Charlottesville included credit card companies, financial services, booking sites, and domain registrars.

I worried this set a precedent whereby those with views far enough outside the mainstream, whatever that may mean, would be denied not only the ability to voice their ideas publicly, but the ability to function in the modern world. No, my friends assured me, this fear was unfounded. First, in a marketplace, firms are interested in drawing from a larger pool of customers. Second, the Charlottesville marchers were too extreme to indicate a broader trend.

Fast-forward to today, and not only have more mainstream, but still somewhat fringe, figures—most notably Alex Jones—met similar fates, but in the past week Twitter has also begun to ban indisputably mainstream figures. On Sunday, Jesse Kelly, a conservative writer who voiced concern about creeping social media censorship in the wake of Jones’ banning in August, had his account permanently terminated without apparent reason.

Last week, Twitter also permanently banned feminist writer Meghan Murphy for tweets insufficiently obedient to transgender language conventions. The latter incident highlighted a recent change in Twitter’s terms of service regarding “Hateful conduct” to now include “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”

Referring to transgender people by either their biological sex or their name prior to becoming transgender is now grounds for a ban, grouped in with “non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone.” While Kelly and Murphy have not faced the cross-platform bans that Jones did, their cases illustrate the shifting definition of “hate” that is increasingly being used to justify the censorship and ostracism of anyone willing to voice even mainstream conservative opinions. (Read more from “How Twitter’s Biased Bans Echo China’s Social Control System” HERE)

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Amid Tear Gas and Border Clashes, the Migrant Crisis Arrives in America

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On Sunday, hundreds of Central American migrants overwhelmed federal and local Mexican police in Tijuana and rushed the U.S. border at the San Ysidro port of entry near San Diego in an effort to force their way into the United States. Some migrants reportedly threw rocks and attempted to break through a border fence. They were repelled only when U.S. Border Patrol agents fired tear gas.

This is precisely what the Trump administration warned would happen—and what Democrats and liberal pundits assured us would not happen—if the migrant caravans were allowed to reach the U.S.-Mexico border. Now that they have, with predictable results, the crisis is going to deepen.

An estimated 500 men, women, and children, most of them from Honduras, were involved in the chaotic scene Sunday afternoon. But thousands more have arrived in Tijuana in recent weeks with the caravans President Trump has vowed not to allow into the United States. Some 5,000 Central Americans are now being housed in cramped conditions in a Tijuana sports complex, with thousands more expected to show up in the coming weeks.

Local officials in Tijuana have complained that they have no resources to handle the growing number of migrants, who are growing restless amid reports that they will have to wait in Mexico for weeks or months (or longer) while their asylum claims are being processed.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said it lacks the resources to process the thousands of would-be asylees now showing up to ports of entry all along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. The Washington Post reported last week that the Trump administration had struck a deal with the incoming administration of Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador that would require asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims move through U.S. courts.

(Read more from “Amid Tear Gas and Border Clashes, the Migrant Crisis Arrives in America” HERE)

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If Recent Patterns Hold, There May Indeed Be Terrorists Inside the Border Caravan

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President Trump’s recent claim that some Middle Easterners might be among caravan members moving north from Honduras provoked a storm of inquest seeking proof. The president had none to immediately offer. Scorn followed. Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, in one emblematic expression, dismissed the idea of Middle Easterners and potential terrorists among them as “pretty much a canard and a fear tactic.”

When reporters pressed a few days later, the president said he had “very good information” that the caravan included Middle Easterners, but “There’s no proof of anything.” Sunday night, a group of mostly male caravan members charged the U.S. border throwing rocks and shouting “Yes, we can,” according to Fox News. In response, U.S. Customs and Border Protection closed the port of entry between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego.

While President Trump may well have employed the prospect of terrorist infiltration as election messaging, Middle Easterners from places like Syria, Iraq, and Egypt do indeed travel the same routes as Hondurans to the U.S. southern border, and rising numbers of suspected terrorists have, in fact, been apprehended at the border or en route in recent years.

One public case-in-point is Somali national Ibrahim Qoordheen, caught in Costa Rica in March 2017 after passing through Panama on a northward route. Costa Rican authorities publicly announced that U.S. officials requested his detention to investigate him as “connected to an international terrorist organization.”

Qoordheen is among growing ranks of suspected terrorists now being encountered on well-known U.S. border-bound land routes, or at southwest border itself. In fact, intelligence community sources with access to this information tell me that more than 100 migrants from “countries of interest” were apprehended between from 2012 through 2017 at the border or en route who were on U.S. terrorism “watch lists”— namely, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), or the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). (Read more from “If Recent Patterns Hold, There May Indeed Be Terrorists Inside the Border Caravan” HERE)

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Russia Opens Fire on Ukrainian Navy Ships

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By Washington Times. Russia’s coast guard opened fire on and seized three of Ukraine’s vessels Sunday, wounding two crew members, after a tense standoff in the Black Sea near the Crimean Peninsula, the Ukrainian navy said.

Russia blamed Ukraine for provoking the incident, which sharply escalated tensions that have been growing between the two countries since Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and it has worked steadily to bolster its zone of control around the peninsula.

Earlier in the day, Russia and Ukraine traded accusations over a separate incident involving the same vessels, prompting Moscow to block passage through the narrow Kerch Strait, which separates the peninsula from the Russian mainland.

The Ukrainian navy said two of its gunboats were struck and Russian crews boarded and seized them and an accompanying tugboat.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as the FSB and which oversees the coast guard, said there was “irrefutable evidence that Kiev prepared and orchestrated provocations … in the Black Sea. These materials will soon be made public.” (Read more from “Russia Opens Fire on Ukrainian Navy Ships” HERE)

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Tension Escalates After Russia Seizes Ukraine Naval Ships

By BBC News. Russia has fired on and seized three Ukrainian naval vessels off the Crimean Peninsula in a major escalation of tensions between the two countries.

Two gunboats and a tug were captured by Russian forces. A number of Ukrainian crew members were injured.

Each country blames the other for the incident. On Monday Ukrainian MPs are due to vote on declaring martial law.

The crisis began when Russia accused the Ukrainian ships of illegally entering its waters.

The Russians placed a tanker under a bridge in the Kerch Strait – the only access to the Sea of Azov, which is shared between the two countries. (Read more from “Tension Escalates After Russia Seizes Ukraine Naval Ships” HERE)

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Trump Is Right: Bin Laden Pal Khashoggi Is No Reason to Wreck the U.S.-Saudi Alliance

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The death of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi is not nearly enough of a reason to upend the United States-Saudi Arabia relationship, as President Trump made clear in a statement released Tuesday afternoon.

In a three-page statement titled “Standing with Saudi Arabia,” the president articulated why it is important to continue moving past this in our relationship with the Middle Eastern nation. He began by reminding the country that “America First” is always the priority, and the reality is that the “world is a dangerous place.”

“We may never know all of the facts surrounding” Khashoggi’s death, but “our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the president said in the lengthy statement, which also noted that the Saudis denied that the crown prince and king of Saudi Arabia were involved in the plot.

Jamal Khashoggi disappeared in Istanbul on October 2, following his entrance into the Saudi consulate in Turkey. It was later revealed that he was murdered.

Saudi Arabia’s enemies, Turkey, Qatar, and Iran, through their state media outlets, and some leftist and Islamist Western thinkers and influencers have waged an all-out propaganda campaign to use Khashoggi’s death to undermine the Saudi monarchy and the U.S.-Saudi alliance.

Countless outlets, including the Washington Post, where Khashoggi was an op-ed contributor, not a journalist, have sought to position Khashoggi as a freedom fighter and a voice for individual rights and democracy. The legacy media has also sought to attach the misleading “journalist” label to Khashoggi, perhaps to tie him to the president’s supposed battle against the press. While Khashoggi was once a journalist for state-run Gulf publications, he has not been anything remotely resembling a journalist for decades.

The truth about Khashoggi is found in his own writing. He was a dedicated Islamic fundamentalist and an apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda terrorists. In his native Saudi Arabia, the government in Riyadh wanted to distance itself from his favorite Islamists in the Muslim Brotherhood.

Khashoggi had a decades-long relationship with Osama bin Laden, well into the 1990s, when the al Qaeda chieftain was in the midst of carrying out several terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its allies. The Saudi exile remained a terrorist supporter until his last days.

In his Arabic writings and commentary, he articulated a regressive Islamist worldview that followed the Muslim Brotherhood playbook, calling for imposing Islamic law, overthrowing American allies, and waging endless political and kinetic warfare against Israel.

He consistently and openly wished death upon Israel and other countries and leaders he perceived as his enemies. His tweets are rife with anti-Semitism. He has excused Palestinian terrorism as a reaction to “Jewish usurpers.” He hoped Israel would “die by force.”

Khashoggi also downplayed the importance of the Holocaust, comparing it to the Palestinian “Nakba.” As a Muslim Brotherhood supporter, he wanted to fan the flames for violent revolutions across the Middle East. Outside publications such as Conservative Review, The Federalist, and Frontpage Mag, there has been a total media blackout on Khashoggi’s fundamentalist worldview.

No one deserves to be murdered for what he believes, but the Trump administration is right that Jamal Khashoggi is no reason to fundamentally alter the U.S.-Saudi relationship, which has encouraged unprecedented reforms within Saudi Arabia and has benefited both countries under President Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. (For more from the author of “Trump Is Right: Bin Laden Pal Khashoggi Is No Reason to Wreck the U.S.-Saudi Alliance” please click HERE)

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