6 Things the Media Doesn’t Want You to Know About the Border Crisis

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Let’s talk about the media and the border crisis. Media advocacy on behalf of bogus asylum has succeeded. It has spawned the most precipitous increase in family units ever crossing our border and has empowered the dangerous drug cartels beyond belief. Now, the media strategy is “see no evil, hear no evil.” They are seeking to deny that there even is any problem at our border.

One of the most common canards from these blowhards who refuse to educate themselves about this issue is that the border flow is not truly exceptional. They point to the fact that there were years in the 1990s and early 2000s when we experienced almost 1.5 million annual apprehensions. This myopic approach exposes how they are completely disregarding the nature of this particular migration and the dangers it poses.

Here are six interconnected points that explain why the problem is so imminent now more than ever before.

1) Trajectory

When assessing any sense of urgency in policy, a firm grasp of the trajectory is very important. While it’s true that there were years a long time ago when we experienced more border crossings, it’s the trajectory of this current surge that is concerning.

When Trump was elected, border crossings immediately slowed to a trickle. Border sheriffs with decades of experience tell me they never saw anything like it. The mere perception of deterrent dried up the flow because perception of amnesty is what drives the migration. But then the courts went into high gear and even Trump started talking about a “dream” amnesty later in 2017. That ratcheted up the flow again.

Then, in the summer of 2018, the media and the courts virtue-signaled on behalf of criminal aliens self-separating themselves from their kids, and we have now experienced the sharpest surge in such a short period of time. We are on pace for over 700,000 apprehensions this fiscal year (which could easily be 1.5 million in total coming over the border, counting non-interdicted). The number of family units apprehended between points of entry skyrocketed by almost 2,151 percent since the rock-bottom numbers of the Trump effect in the spring of 2017. Yes, that is an emergency and needs to be addressed. The numbers are climbing higher every single month. Do we need to wait until it reaches the peak of the last wave before we get permission to pre-empt the peak of a new wave that should never have happened?

2) We are not returning these illegal aliens back to their countries

One of the big reasons why this wave of migrants not of Mexican origin is even worse than the previous waves of migration from Mexico is because we are not repatriating them. While it is true that we had years of over one million apprehensions during the 1990s and early 2000s, we also returned 1-1.5 million of them every year to Mexico. And we usually did so within hours. Now those numbers are down to 100,000-200,000 a year (not including removals from the interior, which take forever) because most of them are from other countries and are wrongly considered by the courts to be eligible for various forms of status. According to the DHS, only 1.1 percent of non-Mexican family unit aliens had been repatriated and only 1.8 percent of non-Mexican unaccompanied alien minors had been repatriated. For example, of the 31,754 unaccompanied minors CBP apprehended from the Central America in fiscal year 2017, 98.2 percent remain in the country today. It takes about a year to return just the total of aliens that come from a mere few days of apprehensions! In that sense, this wave is much more devastating to American taxpayers than previous waves because it’s permanent.

Also, in general, the courts are more aggressive than ever in blocking removals or returns. We are facing death by a thousand lawsuits, being forced to litigate deportations for months that once took us hours.

3) Nature of the migrants

Whereas in previous decades the migration consisted mainly of single adults, the current migration is being driven by the magnets of catch-and-release for teenagers and family units. This has created a humanitarian crisis with children the likes of which we’ve never seen before, even at the peak of the Mexican migration of last decade. By the media’s own admission, during the July showdown over “family separation,” this was a huge crisis. Well, that very media outcry has now incentivized a gushing flow from Guatemala and doubled the number of family units coming over even relative to the emergency levels of last July.

4) Shutdown of our Border Patrol

Our Border Patrol is being tied up in a way we’ve never seen before. Because most of the migrants are coming for amnesty through their children, they are purposely surrendering themselves to the border agents, not trying to evade detection as they did in past decades. This is the wave of “I have a credible fear” migrants. The number of migrants asserting credible fear and surrendering themselves to border agents has increased 1,744 percent from 2009 through FY 2018, and the numbers are now surging even higher. That is an emergency of stolen sovereignty, especially when you consider that violence went down in those countries precisely as migration went up. We are being taken advantage of.

It would be bad enough if that did not enable the drug cartels, but it does. The cartels use the surrendering migrants as diversions so they can smuggle in their Special Interest Aliens, drugs, criminals, and gangsters. In the past, the flow was more uniform, so Border Patrol could spread out and deter the cartels and their more high-value clients with the fear of interdiction. Now there are record numbers of bogus asylees, often 100 at a time, running straight for Border Patrol at the command of the cartels. This is taking border agents out of the field and turning them, quite literally, into babysitters and hospitals. That is when the drug cartels bring in all of the criminals and drugs, which is why that crisis began around 2014 with the flow of Central Americans.

None other than Obama’s DHS secretary, Jeh Johnson, warned about the “the increased global movement of SIAs” in July 2016, asserting that it demanded the “immediate attention” of the nation’s most senior immigration and border security leaders to counter.

5) The drug and gang crisis

This iteration of the migration has empowered the drug cartels more than ever to spawn the worst drug and gang crisis in our history. Back during the great wave of Mexican migrants, the drug problem was bad, but the deaths were a fraction of what they are today. MS-13 was almost eradicated during Bush’s second term. Now the gangs and cartels are stronger than ever. Everyone seems to recognize the drug crisis as an imminent emergency, except as it relates to its primary source: the border.

6) Drug cartels are more powerful and dangerous than ever before

The sheer fact that anybody is comparing this border problem to that of previous decades demonstrates a core problem. They fail to understand that the cartels have adapted to new dimensions of criminality and have become a bigger problem than before.

The cartel violence at our border is through the roof and much worse than in previous decades. Why? Because now that the cartels control the lucrative migration trade engendered by the amnesty agenda (catch-and-release, UACs, asylum, DACA, sanctuary cities), they fight for control over the turf. To fully understand the gravity of the cartels and why things have changed so much for the worse, I had a long interview with Jaeson Jones, a veteran of the border war, on my podcast on Monday. Jones is a retired captain of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division, who commanded and developed the Texas Border Security Operations Center (BSOC) currently under the Texas Rangers. Here’s what he said about the evolving threat of the cartels:

Children and people are now a commodity to the cartels. They have to pay what is known as the Peso, or the tax to the cartels, as they transit from southern part of Mexico all the way up to our northern border. Once you’re in control of a plaza, everything that moves through is paid for. That’s why they battle. That’s why they battle for control of that space. That’s basically the way it works, and it’s also why you are not going to enter the United States without working and contracting with the Mexican cartels.

Jones lamented the amount of crime from criminal alien networks that is not being quantified in federal data:

Along our southwest border right now, the level of cartel infiltration at local, and state, and federal levels is unbelievable. Look at the kidnappings that are occurring. The extortion, drug trafficking. … To this day at a national level, the American people have no idea how much dope is actually seized in this country. Human trafficking, labor trafficking, money laundering, weapon seizures, cybercrime. I mean the list goes on.

What about those who believe blocking cartel infiltration is somehow not the purview of national defense?

When we see these individuals learning the tradecraft of how to utilize armored vehicles and military-grade weapons in two-man, four-man, 10-man tactics … our everyday law enforcement officers domestically are not capable of handling that. That’s not what they train for.

Indeed, this is a national emergency quintessentially grounded in our national security more than anything else we do. The problem is here, and the time to address it is now. (For more from the author of “6 Things the Media Doesn’t Want You to Know About the Border Crisis” please click HERE)

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Democratic Governor’s Anti-Gun Package Is Straight-Up Confiscation

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Elections have consequences and all elections matter, especially at the state and local level. For nearly ten years, the Virginia Republican Party has yet to win another statewide race; the 2009 gubernatorial election was the last time they won. In 2017, Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam beat Ed Gillespie, and they virtually wiped out the GOP in the state. The GOP maintains two-seat majorities in both the House of Delegates and the state Senate. It’s not pretty, given that Republicans use to control over 60 seats. That sizable majority was the reason why former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, another Democrat, couldn’t push a far left agenda. He even signed into law a deal on the state’s concealed carry reciprocity laws, which were about to be shredded by state Attorney General Mark Herring, who is considering running for governor in 2021; Virginia bars consecutive terms for governors.

With the tide changing in the state, Northam is going all-out on this anti-gun blitz. He smells blood. And even if he isn’t successful this session, he’s laying the groundwork to pass this gun control package that includes a so-called assault weapons ban and universal background checks. The latter is a prelude to a national registry. The former is grounded in total confiscation. Stephen Gutowski of the Washington Free Beacon has more:

The plan to ban the sale and possession of certain kinds of firearms proposed by Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D.) could affect millions of gun owners, an industry group said on Friday.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which represents gun manufacturers and dealers, said the vague description of the legislation released by Northam on Jan. 4 would apply to most firearms currently on sale in the commonwealth.

(Read more from “Democratic Governor’s Anti-Gun Package Is Straight-Up Confiscation” HERE)

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NYT Reveals FBI Retaliated Against Trump for Comey Firing

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In a Friday night news dump, the New York Times revealed the FBI’s surprisingly flimsy justification for launching a retaliatory investigation into President Donald Trump, their chief adversary during their recent troubled era.

Admitting there is no actual evidence for their probe into whether Trump “worked for the Russians,” FBI officials instead cited their foreign policy differences with him, his lawful firing of bungling FBI Director James Comey, and alarm that he accurately revealed to the American public that he was told he wasn’t under investigation by the FBI, when they preferred to hide that fact.

The news was treated as a bombshell, and it was, but not for the reasons many thought. It wasn’t news that the FBI had launched the investigation. Just last month, CNN reported that top FBI officials opened an investigation into Trump after the lawful firing of Comey because Trump “needed to be reined in,” a shocking admission of abuse of power by our nation’s top law enforcement agency.

The Washington Post reported Mueller was looking into whether Trump obstructed the Russia investigation by insisting he was innocent of the outlandish charges selectively leaked by government officials to compliant media. Perhaps because such an obstruction investigation was immediately condemned as scandalous political overreach, that aspect was downplayed while Mueller engaged in a limitless “Russia” probe that has rung up countless Trump affiliates for process crimes unrelated to treasonous collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election, and spun off various investigations having nothing to do with Russia in any way.

The latest Times report does provide more detail than these earlier reports, however, and none of it makes the FBI look good. In fact, it provides evidence of a usurpation of constitutional authority to determine foreign policy that belongs not with a politically unaccountable FBI but with the citizens’ elected president. More on that in a bit. (Read more from “NYT Reveals FBI Retaliated Against Trump for Comey Firing” HERE)

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Why Is the Main Harm of a Long Shutdown the Pay of the Workers and Not the Actual Work?

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The political and media elites are border deniers. They are also debt deniers. This partial government shutdown has finally forced a national dialogue over the most ignored national security problem of this generation at our border. But oddly, the fact that so many agencies and departments have shut down for three weeks and nobody cares has not spawned a national discussion over the purpose of having some of these jobs, other than to pay the employees.

On Friday, with almost no debate, House Democrats brought a bill to the floor, S. 24, that would permanently guarantee automatic back pay for federal employees, even the ones that were furloughed, in the event of a shutdown. Traditionally, Congress has always voted to pay back federal workers after a particular shutdown, given the radioactive nature of the politics behind it. But this bill is different. If it were to become law, it would essentially take all federal employees’ salaries, which are currently discretionary and subject to the appropriations process, and make them mandatory spending. Thus, irrespective of whether Congress passes appropriations bills, all federal employees – whether essential or not – would be guaranteed pay for not working during an appropriation lapse.

The amazing thing is that only seven Republicans had the courage to fight through the demagoguery and vote against this bill.

The bill was poorly crafted, even from a leftist perspective, because if the goal is to pre-emptively end government shutdowns, then why didn’t the bill also mandate that these same workers go to work? If you want to end the concept of government shutdowns, then just end them. This bill merely permanently guarantees pay and treats government salaries like Social Security and Medicare without even ending the furloughs when Congress can’t reach an agreement on spending bills. As Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., one of the seven brave conservatives who voted against the bill, told me today, by guaranteeing “retroactive pay for every possible future shutdown,” it will only make it “easier for politicians to cause future shutdowns,” which is the exact opposite of what proponents of this bill are touting.

Sadly, the political class is learning the exact opposite lesson they should from this stealth shutdown. Obviously, there are some important agencies, such as ICE, Border Patrol, and the Coast Guard, that are subject to this lapse in appropriations and are seeing their pay delayed. We should always ensure that the essential workers are paid. But because they are essential, they are still working. What about the 95.4 percent of HUD employees, 86 percent of Commerce, 83.3 percent of Treasury, 66.5 percent of Agriculture, and 76 percent of Interior, employees who are not working because they are deemed unessential? Education and Labor are already funded this time, but if they were subject to the shutdown, 95 percent and 81 percent of their respective employees would be deemed nonessential.

One can make a case that some nonessential workers are necessary in the long run and are just not indispensable at the moment. That is certainly the case at Justice and Homeland Security, where roughly 85 percent of employees are deemed essential, so naturally you will need a certain number of nonessential, yet necessary, employees to support their work. But if such a high percentage of a department is deemed nonessential, shouldn’t we have a discussion on whether those positions should exist or whether states, which actually have to balance their budgets, should take up the slack?

For some non-security-related agencies, the only collateral damage of this border fight is that the workers aren’t getting paid. But if that is the only substantial problem, why are we not having a debate over the purpose of these jobs to begin with? We don’t have government for the purpose of creating employment. Regardless of one’s ideology, federal agencies and programs should only exist if they are deemed indispensable to the public good.

Sure, the media is trying to conjure up problems resulting from the shutdown, but nobody could honestly suggest that we are seeing a crisis from the closure of the departments and agencies where the majority of the employees are nonessential, such as at HUD. We have thousands of local governments and 50 states governments for a reason, and housing is clearly a local function.

Which brings us to the 800-poound gorilla in the room – the debt. Any responsible American, even one who is not facing a debt crisis, would not pay for so many products and services that are so unessential that if they were terminated for a while, they wouldn’t feel it. Now consider someone who does face a debt crisis. The finances of an individual family who is in the same debt crisis as the federal government would look like this:

The family earns $100,000 per year but incurs $130,000 in annual expenses.

The cumulative debt of the family is greater than all its assets and is set to explode in a few years.

The family already throws away a lot of money every year paying interest to credit cards, but in a decade, $18,000 every year will be going towards that interest.

Any normal American family in this predicament would be forced to make painful long-term cuts and find a new path in life. Yet our government won’t have a discussion over the debt even now that it has become evident that we can go so long without many government positions.

Unfortunately, we already have two-thirds of federal spending deemed off limits and not subject the annual budget process. This is why it was so irresponsible for Congress to try to take the entire federal payroll out of the budget process and turn it into de facto mandatory spending. We will never have a discussion on the need for any part of the federal budget if this bill becomes law.

For that matter, Congress is not even doing anything about the $141 billion in annual “improper payments.” We are having a fight over $5.7 billion in funding for the most important job of the federal government, while Congress refuses to deal with pure waste and fraud that is 25 times that cost every year.

In the coming weeks, it’s incumbent upon people of all political persuasions to ask the following question: If we are facing such a deep debt crisis, can we still afford to reflexively keep every federal office currently in existence simply because it offers a paycheck? (For more from the author of “Why Is the Main Harm of a Long Shutdown the Pay of the Workers and Not the Actual Work?” please click HERE)

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Missing: Key Documents About Alleged Misconduct by Robert Mueller’s Lead Prosecutor

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Andrew Weissmann, the lead prosecutor for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has a history of questionable conduct. But the full extent of Weissmann’s alleged prosecutorial misconduct is unclear because some of the most serious charges were hidden behind redactions and secreted in sealed court filings.

Two months ago I sued to have these records released, but late Friday federal Judge Sim Lake’s case manager confirmed that several of the sought-after documents are missing from the court record.

In early November, Houston attorney Kevin Fulton of the Fulton Law Group filed a motion in a Texas federal court to unseal and unredact court records related to claimed prosecutorial misconduct by Weissmann during the latter’s stint as the head of the Enron Task Force. . .

Even if cause originally existed to keep the content of this email secret, with the underlying criminal cases now complete, there is no longer a basis to hide the details from the public. Thus, my motion to unredact the public record asked Judge Lake, who had presided over the criminal cases, to release unredacted copies of several court filings, most significantly the joint motion to dismiss, which included this email and other relevant details.

Over the holidays, though, the court entered an “amended notice,” announcing that after “a full and exhaustive” search by the clerk, certain court filings “were unrecoverable in their original or un-redacted form,” including the unredacted copy of the joint motion to dismiss and the supporting memorandum. Also missing from the court record was the government’s unredacted response to this motion, which likely would have included the full text—or relevant portions—of the Weissmann email. (Read more from “Missing: Key Documents About Alleged Misconduct by Robert Mueller’s Lead Prosecutor” HERE)

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The Dossier: Two Alarming Explanations for the FBI Trump-Russia Investigation

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The two alarming explanations for Comey-McCabe-Strzok FBI’s evidence-free Trump-Russia investigation

There are really only two tenable explanations for the bombshell revelation that the Andrew McCabe-led FBI opened up a counterintelligence investigation into President Trump’s supposed ties to Russia following his decision to fire then-FBI Director James Comey.

The first is that the FBI is extremely incompetent. Following the firing of disgraced FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe explored an evidence-free hunch, based on anonymously sourced media reports and political opposition material traced to Democrats, that the president was a Russian agent.

The second is that McCabe, knowing that he had nothing, used the Trump-Russia collusion “conspiracies” as part of an information operation intended to destroy the legitimacy of the duly elected president, hoping the FBI probe would tie him up in endless additional investigations that would chip away at his mandate. To put it more bluntly, McCabe and his collaborators engaged in subversion.

When discussing this shocking idea, it’s worth remembering that Andrew McCabe has a long track record of appalling behavior. He was fired after an internal DOJ probe found that he lied under oath at least three separate times. Additionally, McCabe attempted to frame and sabotage FBI colleagues for his own leaks to the media. McCabe later blamed his multiple lies on the president, claiming the “chaos inside the FBI under siege from Trump and his allies” forced him to lie under oath. (Read more from “The Dossier: Two Alarming Explanations for the FBI Trump-Russia Investigation” HERE)

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Pentagon: Another Round of Troops Will Head to the Border

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By Townhall. The Pentagon on Monday announced a mission to extend the length of time active duty troops remain on the Southern border. Troops will continue to assist border patrol with and provide security through Sept 30, Reuters reported. The decision was made based on a request from the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that over sees the border patrol.

New troops heading to the border “will include combat engineers to fortify border crossings and aviation units to help ferry Border Patrol agents,” USA Today reported.

“DOD is transitioning its support at the southwestern border from hardening ports of entry to mobile surveillance and detection, as well as concertina wire emplacement between ports of entry. DOD will continue to provide aviation support,” the Pentagon said in a statement Monday.

The current deployment was issued by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and was set to expire Jan 30. The new order was approved by Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan. (Read more from “Pentagon: Another Round of Troops Will Head to the Border” HERE)

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Pentagon to Send More Active-Duty Troops to Southwest Border

By USA Today. The Pentagon will send a fresh deployment of active-duty troops to the southern border at the request of officials from the Department of Homeland Security.

Late Monday, the Pentagon also announced that deployments of active-duty troops would extend through September.

The new contingent of troops will include combat engineers to fortify border crossings and aviation units to help ferry Border Patrol agents, according to a Defense Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

The troops will also help with surveillance at the border, according to the Pentagon statement.

The new deployment has been anticipated since Homeland Security officials made the request to the Pentagon for additional resources late last month. There are about 2,350 active-duty troops and an additional 2,200 National Guardsmen at the border. (Read more from “Pentagon to Send More Active-Duty Troops to Southwest Border” HERE)

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Cali Wheels out Plan for New Statewide Tax on Drinking Water

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California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) wants to tax the state’s drinking water, a move he says will allow poor people access to safe and affordable water. . .

Newsom’s proposed 2019-20 budget includes the creation a “safe and affordable drinking water fund,” to “enable the State Water Resources Control Board to assist communities, particularly disadvantaged communities, in paying for the short-term and long-term costs of obtaining access to safe and affordable drinking water,” SFgate.com reported.

The Association of California Water Agencies, which represents more than 400 water suppliers across the state, swiftly rebuked the idea of a water tax. In a statement, the association said it would be “highly problematic” and not necessary due to what it calls the state’s ample budget surplus.

“The vast majority of the state’s residents have access to safe drinking water, but a small percentage of the population does not,” the association stated. “This unacceptable reality is a social issue for the State of California. ACWA believes that making access to safe drinking water for all Californians should be a top priority for the State. However, a statewide water tax is highly problematic and is not necessary when alternative funding solutions exist and the state has a huge budget surplus.”

Orange County Republican Travis Allen, who ran for governor in 2018, also blasted the idea.

(Read more from “Cali Wheels out Plan for New Statewide Tax on Drinking Water” HERE)

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Supreme Court to Review Illegal Alien’s Gun Possession Conviction

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The Supreme Court will decide whether an illegal alien from the United Arab Emirates was wrongfully convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm.

The case was occasioned in December 2015, when Hamid Mohamed Ahmed Ali Rehaif was arrested in Florida after renting a gun at a shooting range and purchasing ammunition. Federal law prohibits certain classes of people from possessing guns, including illegal aliens.

Rehaif is a citizen of the United Arab Emirates. He came to the United States in 2013 to attend the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT), but was dismissed for academic reasons Jan. 21, 2015. His lawful immigration status terminated shortly thereafter on Feb. 23, 2015. Therefore, he was in the U.S. illegally when he rented the gun and procured ammunition.

At trial, the judge told the jury that “the [prosecution] is not required to prove that [Rehaif] knew that he was illegally or unlawfully in the United States.” The legal question the Supreme Court will decide is whether that instruction was correct.

Rehaif contends the government must prove he knowingly possessed a firearm and knowingly violated immigration law in order to secure a conviction. That point is important because Rehaif claims he did not know his immigration authorization expired after he left FIT. If Rehaif was not aware of his changed immigration status, his lawyers argue, he cannot be convicted for being an illegal alien in possession of a fire arm under the relevant law. (Read more from “Supreme Court to Review Illegal Alien’s Gun Possession Conviction” HERE)

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White House Slams Democrats for Puerto Rico Vacation During Shutdown

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White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders harshly criticized Democratic lawmakers for flying to Puerto Rico for a political event and vacationing during a partial government shutdown.

Democratic lawmakers like New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez were spotted on the beaches of Puerto Rico during a meeting for a political action committee which supports the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The retreat comes on the 24th day of a partial government shutdown, the longest funding lapse in the history of the U.S. . .

Democrats have refused to budge from their position of $1.6 billion with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even telling Trump in a situation room meeting last week that even if Trump reopened the government they would not negotiate. Trump is now exploring funding options to begin construction on the wall, including declaring a national emergency. (Read more from “White House Slams Democrats for Puerto Rico Vacation During Shutdown” HERE)

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