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What ‘Travel Ban’? Trump Admin Extends TPS Amnesty for Syrians in Another Missed Opportunity

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The more the rhetoric on immigration and sovereignty heats up on Twitter, the more things stay the same since Obama … or worse.

Following two decades of record immigration from the Middle East without any ability to vet loyalties to America, President Trump campaigned on a moratorium of immigration from countries with a large presence of terrorism. In the end, he only shut it off from Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, and Sudan, and even then, thanks to the administration’s capitulation to the lower courts, it was watered down several times. Yet, the Left still accuses him of an across-the-board ban on Muslim immigration. Beto O’Rourke said as much last night during the Democrat debate.

In reality, not much has changed since Obama. Yesterday, I warned about the abuse of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and how it has turned into an indefinite amnesty program for people who abused our system, allowing criminals to remain in the country. Well, today, the Trump administration agreed to extend TPS for Syrians, not just for the standard six months, but for 18 months, according to the Washington Post’s Nick Miroff.

In other words, despite the promise to be the first president to finally make Temporary Protected Status, um, temporary, it will now likely remain forever like all the others. It’s already been in place for over seven years, and now that Trump has blinked once – and for such a long extension – it will never be revoked. He did the same with El Salvador, Haiti, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen.

Thus, out of the few remaining countries left from his original promise of a moratorium, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen all have the TPS loophole. What’s next? Is he going to grant TPS to Iran?

Ultimately, the DHS secretary is the one who signs off on this decision, and Kevin McAleenan is clearly not in line with Trump’s campaign promises.

Roughly 7,000 Syrians have been given TPS as of early this year. I’m sure we can rest easy that all of them have been properly vetted and that none of them are like Mustafa Mousab Alowemer, a Syrian refugee who was recently arrested by the FBI for attempting to bomb a church in Pittsburgh.

According to the Congressional Research Service, roughly 417,000 foreign nationals from 10 countries remain here with TPS status. Remember, the longer these people remain in the country under a program that was designed to run no longer than 18 months, the more opportunity they have to adjust their status to a green card. Also, either way, any child born to them is erroneously viewed as an American citizen. Temporary, indeed!

Although Syrian TPS was first offered on March 29, 2012, and should only have applied to those who happened to already be in the country at that date, DHS allowed people to come here all the way up to August 2016 – four years after the designation – to take advantage of it.

This comes as hundreds of thousands of patently illegal DACA amnesty work permits have been renewed under this administration. Even the crazy judge who interfered in the process made it clear that Trump could end it if he issued a proper regulatory change through the Administrative Procedure Act process.

Plus, the administration continues granting over 750,000 of work permits to nearly every illegal alien who comes to our border, even though this policy, much like TPS, is only discretionary even for legitimate asylum applicants.

And we are refusing to close the border to a single country, even to nationals of Ebola-ridden Congo, as a third world country like Rwanda is smart enough to do so.

As if that weren’t enough, Trump is signing what is at least the twelfth budget bill of his presidency that doesn’t have the promised border wall and ICE funding, but spends us into oblivion on everything Democrats want.

“Conservative” “figures,” as they remain obsessed with focusing on internal Democrat politics, are missing the point. The president has some good instincts and wants some of the changes he promised. But his administration is full of swamp creatures with the status quo mindset, and certainly nobody in congressional leadership will pull him to the Right. The gravitational pull in Washington is only to the Left. Absent a firestorm from the notorious conservatives on Fox or on radio, the president will inevitably, however reluctantly, maintain swamp creatures like Kevin McAleenan and sign off on the same liberal policies.

The swamp will not be drained on its own. As conservatives in public policy, we are our best advocates – we are our only advocates. The president will hear 101 absurd arguments from the lawyers at the DHS, the DOJ, and in the Office of Legal Counsel about how everything the Left wants is legal and everything we call for is unlawful or unfeasible. This happens every day. There are a few brave souls in the administration who try to push our agenda, but rather than getting air cover from outside “conservative movement” figures respected by the president, the guns lie silent and the swamp machine overwhelms their ragtag forces.

Thus, we do the president no favors by standing down precisely when we need to stand up and be counted. He will follow if conservatives lead, but he will not lead the fight if conservatives are focused on everything but what they can actually influence.

Conservative commentators are focused on the election, even though it’s still just the Democrat primary. But why do we care about elections? Well, presumably, we care because of the policy outcomes achieved by those elections. There is still another year and a half with Republican control of the entire executive branch, where these figures have the opportunity to influence numerous important decisions every day. Let’s live in the here and now.

Moreover, what of the next election and the subsequent four years? If we are now content with Republican presidents gratuitously continuing liberal policies that can be countermanded by simple administrative actions, then the Democrats have already won. There is no greater victory for them than having their policies secured, irrespective of the outcome at the ballot box in November. (For more from the author of “What ‘Travel Ban’? Trump Admin Extends TPS Amnesty for Syrians in Another Missed Opportunity” please click HERE)

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Illegal Alien, Wrongly Given Temporary Amnesty, Arrested for Molesting Minor

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Another child was allegedly sexually assaulted multiple times by a Central American illegal alien who should have been deported, had our laws been properly implemented.

Yesterday, Customs and Border Protection announced that the U.S. Marshals’ Fugitive Task Force, working with a local Border Patrol agent, arrested an illegal alien from El Salvador in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on three counts of first-degree rape against a child between 2014 and 2016.

While every illegal alien crime, by definition, is avoidable if we had the proper border and interior enforcement in place, this case has an extra wrinkle to it. Andres Fuentes-Castro, 44, according to CBP, was encountered by U.S. Border Patrol-New Orleans Sector agents in 2007 during a traffic stop in Baton Rouge. He would have been deported and this alleged sexual assault would never have occurred, but Border Patrol found he was given Temporary Protected Status (TPS) as a Salvadoran national under the El Salvador TPS program. His status later expired in 2010 and was not renewed, rendering him a fugitive alien for nine years for not departing the country.

If our laws were functioning the way Congress designed them, Fuentes-Castro would have been deported in 2007. TPS was not designed to be an amnesty program for illegal aliens; it was designed as a sixth-month temporary stay for those who are here legally but can’t return home because of an intervening natural disaster.

El Salvador was granted that status in 2001 because of an earthquake. That status, pursuant to law, should have been terminated within six months or at most after 18 months of extensions under “extraordinary circumstances” (clearly lacking here). It should have applied only to very few people who happened to be in the country traveling during the earthquake. But instead, it was handed out to over 200,000 Salvadorans, far more than any other TPS-designated country, and is still being used 18 years later!

Why? Because it has been handed out to illegal aliens in the country, a complete debasement of the 1990 law Congress passed. The reason why El Salvador has the most TPS recipients is not because there happened to be 200,000 Salvadorans traveling on tourist visas visiting Disney World on January 13, 2001, when the earthquake struck. It is because that is the TPS-designated country with the most illegal aliens.

In 2007, Fuentes-Castro should never have had this status as an illegal alien, certainly not six years after the earthquake. But a number of criminals and particularly MS-13 members (who largely come from El Salvador) have been allowed to remain in the country against statute and commit countless avoidable crimes. Previous administrations violated the plain letter of the law. President Trump vowed to change this, and indeed ended TPS for certain countries, but has continued it for El Salvador at the behest of an extraordinarily lawless court ruling that defies multiple statutes, including one stripping the courts of jurisdiction over the issue.

Rather than clamping down on TPS abuse, Republicans and Democrats in Congress as well as some in the administration are seeking to expand this policy to Venezuela at a time when illegal immigration is increasing from there.

Also in Louisiana, on the same day, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced that another illegal alien was arrested on child sex charges. ICE has placed a detainer on Tomas Gabriel Chox-Lopez, who was caught in a child porn sting by state and federal law enforcement and charged with seven counts of possessing pornography involving juveniles under the age of 13.

Earlier this year, Miguel Martinez, an illegal alien who had previously been deported in 2005, was arrested in Louisiana on 100 counts of possession of pornography involving juveniles under the age of 13 years old, one count of production under the age of 13, and one count of sexual battery of a juvenile under the age of 13.

Often, illegal aliens remain in this country and are not deported after their first interaction with law enforcement because of sanctuary cities. In the case of Andres Fuentes-Castro, it was because of lawless federal executive policies that are against statute. Enforcing existing laws would go a long way in preventing rampant horrible crimes like this. Is it too much to ask that we not import other countries’ child molesters? (For more from the author of “Illegal Alien, Wrongly Given Temporary Amnesty, Arrested for Molesting Minor” please click HERE)

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Senator Reveals Heinous Criminals Released via ‘Catch-And-Release’ at Border

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The Department of Homeland Security treats the expanded “Flores” decree like God’s word, releasing any illegal alien who crosses the border with a child, even if border personnel can’t confirm identities, criminal records, or whether they are threats Americans or to the children they’re using as golden tickets.

Senator James Lankford, R-Okla., announced at yesterday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that border agents told him, on his recent trip to the border, that they found in two separate incidents that an alleged murderer and a convicted pedophile had each been released with a kid as part of the expanded Flores catch-and-release deadline of 20 days.

In one case, “they released an adult with a child and then found out two weeks later that that adult had a murder warrant in their home country, and they just released him into the country, and they could do nothing about it.” In another case, “they had released an adult traveling with a child and then found out after they were released when they got their criminal records in from home country that, that was a convicted pedophile from that country now traveling with a child somewhere in our country, and because we couldn’t detain them for longer than 20 days and we couldn’t get those criminal records, they’re released in the country, and they’re traveling with a child.”

When Lankford asked acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan whether border personnel were able to verify criminal status within the arbitrary 20-day deadline by the courts, he answered, “Not efficiently.”

The reality is that these people are coming straight out of rural Central America and countries with extremely unreliable data. All they have to do is give a name and they are home free, thanks to a court order that defies the 1996 immigration law passed unanimously by the Senate stating that these people “shall be detained.”

Thus, the threat of those coming in as “runners” and “gotaways” while Border Patrol is strategically tied down by the cartels with the family units is obvious. All of those with massive criminal records who were previously deported now have a freer lane than ever to come right back in.

But it’s even more disquieting that would-be criminal migrants are so emboldened by the notion that we will give amnesty to anyone with a kid that a number of those coming with family units are criminals. Every day, I see stories from CBP on how they caught criminals, particularly those convicted of child sex crimes, coming in openly with groups surrendering to agents.

Just yesterday, for example, Border Patrol arrested a previously deported Guatemalan who had been “convicted of Lewd or Lascivious Conduct and Failure to register as a Sex Offender on July 31, 2015, in Jacksonville, Florida.” According to Border Patrol in Tucson, the alien convict, 52-year-old Pedro Nolasco-Garcia, was traveling “with” a group of 16 women and children who surrendered to agents.

I asked a border agent why someone would be so dumb as to come in knowing that CBP will discover his record. He told me that he is forced to release criminals or people whose status could not be verified all the time because of the rush to release anyone who comes with a child. “The entire focus is on treatment of the children, to the detriment of not only America’s security, but these children as well,” said the agent, who patrols the hardest-hit areas of the Rio Grande Valley. The agent in Texas, who is on an evidence collection team and administers fingerprints, told CR that they are catching many adult males who come with one child (not an entire family fleeing persecution) who think that despite their criminal record, they will benefit from catch-and-release.

“And they are not entirely wrong,” said the veteran agent, who must remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

“In every single group, almost without fail, there is someone with a criminal record, typically males with single kids,” the agent said. “There is a wide misconception about the majority of these people being females. They are overwhelmingly male. While we try to prioritize referrals for prosecution based on criminal history, we only have so many computers we can utilize and so many staff members.”

When I asked him if that means there are those with confirmed criminal records, even with convictions in the U.S., who have been released, he said, “Absolutely. … They are given a notice to appear in court like anyone else.”

According to Department of Homeland Security investigators, in a letter from DHS to a member of the House Oversight Committee obtained by CR, there were enough criminal convictions (just from their previous time in the U.S.) among the January 2019 caravan members to account for roughly one quarter of the entire group! Homeland Security Investigations identified a total of 860 people with U.S. criminal convictions among the 3,345 people who left Honduras, including “22 individuals convicted of assault or aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, 27 individuals convicted of sexual offenses.” They also identified 47 gang members.

“So many of those coming here now have no records in the NCIC and are from countries that don’t share information with us,” said the agent I spoke to. “We literally have no idea who they are before we release them. They just give us a random name and birthdate and we have no way of verifying it.”

Why is the federal government giving foreign nationals a right to invade with such a dangerous scam of using children when the law actually says the opposite? Nothing in the Constitution can ever compel such carnage, but this policy emanated from a single California judge expanding the original settlement, which a Texas judge agreed doesn’t apply to cartel smuggling. And consider that 97.7 percent of family units are not even coming through California. Most are entering in Texas!

Also, consider the fact that well over 208,000 aliens have been released since Dec. 21, and we have no idea who they are. Thankfully, Border Patrol catches murderers, sex offenders, and gang members every day. But if those are the fish that are caught, one can imagine how many are in that pond and how few we catch when the net is so small and thin. (For more from the author of “Senator Reveals Heinous Criminals Released via ‘Catch-And-Release’ at Border” please click HERE)

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Child Taken into Custody from Border-Crosser After DNA Test Reveals They’re Not Related

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U.S. immigration authorities say they have safely brought a child into custody after a DNA proved that he was brought to the border by someone not related to him.

In an Instagram post published Tuesday night, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) showed a picture of a Border Patrol agent holding a small child at a border facility in Texas earlier this month.

“On July 17, McAllen USBP agents encountered a group of 12 people comprised of family units and unaccompanied children who turned themselves in,” the post explains. “Record checks revealed an individual traveling with his alleged son had 2 previous immigration arrests in El Paso Sector just in the past month. Given the recent apprehensions and the age of the child, Agents requested the assistance of [Homeland Security Investigations] to administer a rapid DNA test.”

“The test revealed there is no parent-child relationship,” CBP concluded. “The man admitted he was not the child’s father, but knew the mother and had permission to the take the child. The man admitted that it is common knowledge in Honduras that if you bring a child, you will be released.”

View this post on Instagram

A Border Patrol agent holds a migrant child at the Central Processing Facility in Donna, TX. Behind the photo: On July 17, McAllen USBP agents encountered a group of 12 people comprised of family units and unaccompanied children who turned themselves in. Record checks revealed an individual traveling with his alleged son had 2 previous immigration arrests in El Paso Sector just in the past month. Given the recent apprehensions and the age of the child, Agents requested the assistance of HSI to administer a rapid DNA test. The test revealed there is no parent-child relationship. The man admitted he was not the child’s father, but knew the mother and had permission to the take the child. The man admitted that it is common knowledge in Honduras that if you bring a child, you will be released.

A post shared by US Customs & Border Protection (@customsborder) on

This is far from an isolated incident. When the Department of Homeland Security started rapid DNA tests at the border in May, one official claimed that the pilot program found that 30 percent of tested “family units” turned out to be fake. In June, DNA tests turned up 24 false parental claims in just a few days, according to acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan. Rapid DNA tests even exposed a false parenthood claim of a six-month-old baby in May.

“Our goal with rapid DNA testing remains twofold,” said ICE Homeland Security Investigations Executive Associate Director Derek Benner in a statement last month. “First, to protect children from being smuggled across the border by ensuring they are with their parents and not being used as pawns by individuals attempting to exploit immigration loopholes. Second, to identify and stop the criminal organizations that are generating false documents and supporting child smuggling.”

The crisis at America’s southern border drags on, with the Rio Grande Valley sector setting an all-time annual record for border apprehensions. (For more from the author of “Child Taken into Custody from Border-Crosser After Dna Test Reveals They’re Not Related” please click HERE)

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True: Free Health Care for Illegal Aliens Would Increase Illegal Immigration

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Montana Governor Steve Bullock pushed back against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and others who supported free health care for illegal aliens, saying that doing so would create additional incentives for people to cross the border illegally.

Bullock said: “The discussion … shows how often these debates are detached from people’s lives. We got a hundred thousand people showing up at the border right now. If we decriminalize entry, if we give health care to everyone, we’ll have multiples of that. Don’t take my word — that was President Obama’s homeland security secretary that said that.”

Indeed, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson did say that — at least on the topic of decriminalization, as the Washington Post noted earlier this month:

That is tantamount to declaring publicly that we have open borders,” said Jeh Johnson, who ran the Department of Homeland Security during President Barack Obama’s second term. “That is unworkable, unwise and does not have the support of a majority of American people or the Congress, and if we had such a policy, instead of 100,000 apprehensions a month, it will be multiples of that.”

After Bullock, Rep. Tim Ryan added: “If you want to come into the country, you should at least ring the doorbell. … Everyone else in America is paying for their health care. I don’t think it is a stretch for us to ask undocumented people in the country to also pay for health care.” (Read more from “True: Free Health Care for Illegal Aliens Would Increase Illegal Immigration” HERE)

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Rio Grande Valley Passes 300K Apprehensions, Sets Annual Border Record

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With two months still left in this fiscal year, the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) border sector has already set an all-time annual record for apprehensions at the border. According to a source in Border Patrol, this week, the total apprehensions in the RGV passed 301,000. That is an all-time record for this sector since Border Patrol began collecting records. The previous record was in 2014 during the first Central American migration, mainly of unaccompanied minors. 256K were apprehended in 2014 and 244k in 1997, the previous records for this sector.

Where is Congress? On vacation.

Earlier today, Rep. Chip Roy tweeted out this fact:

Why is Roy the only Texas official who actually feels a sense of urgency with record illegal immigration pouring into his state? Where are the state’s two senators? Why are they not holding up the budget deal for a better agreement on border wall funding and ICE detention and removal funding?

The RGV sector’s border comprises 320 miles of river bends and labyrinths that are hard to patrol yet has the fewest miles of fencing of any busy border sector. Republicans and the president agreed to a budget bill in February that barred construction of the border wall in the most important areas.

In June, roughly 1,500 illegal aliens were apprehended every day in this sector. However, because of the mandates being placed on the agents dealing with the sensitive job of caring for thousands of children, they are tied down and barely patrolling the line. There are only about 10 agents per 60 miles in parts of the RGV. So how many drug smugglers, gang members, and previously deported criminals are getting in as a result of this flow, which is more consuming than the waves during the 1990s and early 2000s?

There is more manpower and technology than ever before, but thanks to executive and judicial policies not to hold the line and turn people back but rather process and release them, the border funding is not going toward deterrent. The funding is all going toward caring for illegal aliens, which further drains resources away from patrolling.

I asked one veteran RGV agent what he thought of the 301K apprehensions and whether the numbers dropped at all in July. “What’s happening now is that we have no manpower dealing with the seams in the border while we are processing all the family units,” lamented the senior agent, who must remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the media on this point. “So yes, the numbers have gone down since the peak in May, but we literally have minimal idea who is getting past us. That is likely a partial factor in the dropping numbers. As more perceive that they won’t be able to get asylum any more, more are likely resorting to running from us rather than surrendering. But because we still do have plenty of family units to process, we still have less manpower to deal with the runners.”

Every day, Border Patrol counts hundreds of “gotaways” just at one station in the RGV based on the sensors, cameras, and footprints.

The purpose of the Border Patrol was very clearly spelled out in the Labor Appropriation Act of 1924: “Preventing the unlawful entry” of mainly Chinese nationals and deporting anyone who was caught. The Department of Labor was given funding for “the operation of horse and motor vehicles.” It was all for deportation. Nothing more, nothing less. But our agents are being used for babysitting duty.

Despite the deal announced with Guatemala to send asylum-seekers back south, no new guidance appears to be in place on the ground. Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan said that the deal would be completed sometime in August. It remains to be seen whether migrants will actually be turned back at the border or whether the processing will continue. If it is the latter, the agents will continue to be stretched thin, and we won’t even know who comes into our country. (For more from the author of “Rio Grande Valley Passes 300K Apprehensions, Sets Annual Border Record” please click HERE)

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Angel Moms to Alyssa Milano: Why Don’t You ‘Fight for American Children Raped by Illegal Aliens in Our Country’

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Angel Moms Mary Ann Mendoza and Sabine Durden are calling out actress Alyssa Milano over her tearful rant in which she said Border Patrol agents are “destroying” children’s lives by enforcing immigration laws.

Last week, Alyssa Milano broke down on camera after watching footage of a child at the U.S.-Mexico border being reunited with the adult she came to the country with, as Breitbart News reported. . .

“We can’t let this be the new normal,” she continued. “Besides what this country was founded on — this is not innately who we are as human beings. We’ve gotta take inventory of this, of what’s happening, and the humanitarian crisis at the border. We gotta do something. We can’t ignore what’s happening. We can’t allow it to continue.”

Mendoza — who lost her son, 32-year-old police officer son Brandon Mendoza, when he was killed by a drunk illegal alien who was driving the wrong way down a highway in Mesa, Arizona in May 2014 — told Breitbart News in an exclusive statement that Milano has never shed a tear for the children trafficked across the southern border by human smugglers or the American children hurt by illegal immigration. . .

“You can’t be concerned for a handful being separated for a short time as things are sorted out and not be concerned for the sexually abused, recycled children flooding our borders arriving with men and women with ill intentions,” Mendoza continued. “Alyssa is a hypocrite and is doing this to further incite hate towards our President. If she is truly concerned about the children, fight for the American children being raped by illegal aliens in our country. Put your boots on and leave your home and go work at the borders with our Border Patrol agents for a week. (Read more from “Angel Moms to Alyssa Milano: Why Don’t You ‘Fight for American Children Raped by Illegal Aliens in Our Country’” HERE)

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Trump’s Guatemala Deal a Game-Changer? 2 Questions That Will Determine Success

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After well over a year and one million illegal alien children and families coming to our border, has President Trump finally forged the deal to end the invasion?

No, the president is not fully asserting American sovereignty by announcing an §1182(f) shutoff at our border, but if his deal with Guatemala succeeds, it may net a similar result.

On the surface, it’s hard to overstate the importance of the third-party asylum deal the president signed with the Guatemalan government in the Oval Office on Friday. Guatemala is agreeing to serve as the first destination for asylum seekers coming northward. This deal will force all but the migrants from Guatemala itself to first apply there. Geographically, Guatemala is the chokepoint for all migration coming north. Anyone from the other countries in Central and South America, as well as from Africa, Haiti, and Cuba, ultimately come through Guatemala before pressing on to Mexico.

Once this deal is fully implemented, in August, according to DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan, all these migrants except those from Guatemala will be ineligible to seek asylum in America. While the Central American migrants were overwhelmingly from Guatemala at the start of this crisis in 2018, in recent months there have been almost twice as many from Honduras. Thus, fully enforcing the requirement to first seek asylum in Guatemala will shut off most of the migration. For example, according to data I’ve seen from Texas DPS’ weekly border apprehensions in Texas, just 2,577 of the 14,266 aliens apprehended in the state the week of July 17 were from Guatemala. That means 82 percent should be turned back under this agreement (including those from Mexico who are already subject to expedited removal).

This is reason to celebrate the pending end to the border crisis, right?

Will they be turned back at our border?

The key question in light of this deal is whether the illegal aliens will now be turned back right at our border, as they should have been for months, or not. At the end of the day, the president has tweeted many hollow threats over the past year, and they have not deterred the illegal immigrants because they all see the reality on the ground or hear about it from their friends and relatives who just went through the pipeline without the much-hyped restrictions. Will this time be different?

Unless DHS actually turns them back at the border itself, this deal will be nothing more than a glorified Trump tweet. Remember, asylum is not even the issue any more. In many parts of the border, fewer than 10 percent are even expressing a credible fear of persecution. I’ve spoken to several border agents who’ve said that most of them, when being interviewed by Border Patrol, openly say they are coming for work or for medical care. Both of those motives should automatically render these people inadmissible (§1182(a)(4) for medical care public charge and (a)(5) for seeking labor) and they should be immediately sent back.

Yet DHS is still bringing them in (even from behind the wall!), and if they are here with a child, they are released within a few days. Again, DHS is doing this even for people not claiming asylum. Thus, the asylum deal won’t automatically change this policy. DHS must actively turn people back. Until Central Americans and Africans see mass numbers of people turned back, they will not be dissuaded from coming.

However, once the first migrants in the pipeline are turned back, it will likely put an end to this entire charade. Despite the media’s feigned outrage over Guatemala not being prepared to absorb asylum-seekers, no serious person thinks Guatemala will be flooded with migrants once they know America is closed for business. They are not fleeing persecution; they are seeking to come to the U.S., and nowhere else, for work, medical care, and birthright citizenship.

Kevin McAleenan said on Friday that any migrant from south of Guatemala who fails to make a claim there and “instead, in the hands of smugglers, make the journey all the way to the U.S. border, [would] be removable back to Guatemala.” The question lies in the word “removable.” If they continue to feel bound by the insane ruling of Judge Dana Sabraw that all illegal aliens with a child must be released together within 20 days, once we agree to hold them rather than turning them back immediately, we will ultimately have to release them. At present, ICE lacks the funding for enough deportations back to Central America even for single adult males. Thus, with a lack of funding, it will take some time to remove them, and by then, the courts will demand they be released. Turning them back and marching them over the river as soon as they are caught, which we are already doing at ports of entry, is the only solution.

Will Trump hold the line on the courts?

This entire crisis was spawned by the California judges last July shredding immigration law and enshrining the use of children as a ticket into our country. The courts have engaged in civil disobedience against every attempt of this administration to enforce the laws. The entire purpose of a third-party asylum agreement is to finally take this issue out of reach of the courts.

The law states in the most emphatic terms that the courts have absolutely no jurisdiction to hear any lawsuit against a third-party agreement. It is inherent in foreign diplomacy anyway and is as much out of the courts’ jurisdiction as war and treaty powers, but nonetheless, Congress codified it into law. 8 U.S. Code §1158(a)(3) states, “No court shall have jurisdiction to review any determination of the Attorney General under paragraph (2),” which is the crafting of a third-party asylum deal with a foreign country. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Unfortunately, we’ve been down this road many times this year. There have been many illegal district court rulings on immigration issues over which Congress explicitly stripped the courts of jurisdiction. They did this in the case of TPS amnesty and in several deportation cases, as well as creating habeas corpus rights for illegal aliens explicitly barred by the 1996 law. In fact, just over the weekend, the Supreme Court ruled that the California judges had no valid case with standing to rule against Trump building a border wall with Pentagon funding.

Yet rather than enforcing the jurisdictional bar of the law against the same courts that have continuously been slapped down by SCOTUS, the Trump administration has enforced the lawless rulings against the law.

The left-wing open-borders groups are already threatening to sue the asylum deal, even though it is an act of diplomacy. The Trump administration needs to get out ahead of this by educating the public that all lawsuits against this agreement are barred under immigration law and that it will not participate in any court proceedings, respond with any briefs, or enforce any illegal court ruling.

The bottom line is that we are over one year into this crisis because, until now, the administration has not held strategic line at the border itself against the smugglers and the legal line against runaway California judges. There are no shortcuts to those two imperatives. The deal with Guatemala is a great way of announcing a change in those two policies, but absent those changes, it is no policy at all. (For more from the author of “Trump’s Guatemala Deal a Game-Changer? 2 Questions That Will Determine Success” please click HERE)

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Not Terrorists? Gulf Cartel Threatens to Wipe out Mexican Town

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The Gulf Cartel just threatened to wipe out a town in southern Mexico. Why should Americans care? That same cartel also controls Mexico’s northeast border with the U.S. and controls the busiest illegal alien smuggling routes into our country. They tie down Border Patrol and bring their assassins, financiers, drug runners, and general criminals over our border. They are every bit as terroristic as Islamic terrorist groups in the Middle East, and they’re in our own yard. Why won’t the State Department designate them as terrorists?

According to Borderland Beat, which monitors daily cartel activities, Gulf Cartel assassins entered the town of Asuncion Ixtaltepec in broad daylight with long guns to murder a resident on Wednesday. These types of assassinations happen every day. But lest people think this is limited to targeted cartel-on-cartel violence, the Gulf assassins left a “narco message” at the site of the assassination that read: “This is for El Burro, Pollito, and his people. And for all the town who covers for them. You will all die. Sincerely, Comandante Jaguar. CDG.”

This is the dictionary and statutory definition of terrorism that continues to be ignored by the State Department, which refuses to designate these cartels as such. These cartels seek to control territory through the use of terror! They are not simply crime syndicates that just want to earn money quietly.

The Mexican cartel culture is similar to the ideology of ISIS and al Qaeda in the sense that they seek “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) or to effect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping,” which is the definition of international terrorism under 18 U.S.C. § 2331.

If anything, they now have more impact on our country than Islamic terrorists and certainly more than FARC, the Colombian drug cartel that is already designated by the State Department. Why is this administration not unleashing the Defense Department and the intelligence assets to be used against the cartels on both sides of our border?

Rather than lambast our government agencies for committing human rights violations against illegal aliens, Jaeson Jones, former captain in the Texas Department of Public Safety’s intel and counterterrorism division, believes we should be criticizing them for ignoring the human rights violations of the cartels, which affect both our security and the survival of the migrants.

“The weaponization of migration has masked a dark truth,” said the retired counter-cartel operative. “Massive human rights violations have been and are being committed in Mexico. All of the three-letter agencies of the United States government have become complicit for failing to do everything in their power to protect the American people and to secure our border. The State Department refuses to designate the Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), and the FBI, DEA, and Department of Defense (DOD) refuse to support CBP and finally secure our border.”

Jones believes that these agencies are stuck in the past and just don’t have the stomach to reorient our threat assessments to focus on the border and the cartels as a national security issue. “I get it, it sucks that these agencies will have to change their current priorities, but good intel analysts don’t look at the evolving threat landscape the way they wish it was, they look at it for what it is and what most reasonable Americans believe. The threat to our southern border is substantial, and we must protect our country from the out-of-control violence plaguing Mexico and our nation.”

Jones noted how high-ranking Gulf leaders are living in the Rio Grande Valley – on our side of the border. “They often live lives of wealth and comfort and might pick their kids up from school on our side of the border before they travel back over to Tamaulipas and torture some people, then come right back over.”

Indeed, just last week, a Gulf Cartel leader was caught crossing over our border by Border Patrol in La Paloma, Texas, according to Breitbart Texas. How many more does Border Patrol miss because our political leaders prioritize care for illegals over national security, especially in these parts of the Rio Grande Valley where there is no border wall? Without a wall, the cartels use the bends in the river to easily cross undetected and disappear into the population because the populated towns are right on the border without any buffer of wall or desert.

Jones believes that designating the cartels as terrorists will open up many more investigative tools against those operators inside our country in addition to using DOD assets to combat them at the border itself.

This is happening all across our border, not just with the Gulf Cartel. Sinaloa, which is still the largest cartel, controls most of the territory on both sides of the Mexican border with California and Arizona. Last month, there was a Sinaloa shootout a half a block away from Arizona’s Cochise County. But that narco culture and all the violence that comes along with it is creeping into Arizona itself.

“Most Americans would be shocked to know how deeply entrenched the cartels are throughout this country,” warned Mark Lamb, sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona. “We fight against the cartels every day to uproot their scouts living in the mountains and to disrupt and dismantle their drug and human trafficking operations. Though we are 70 miles off the border, we are one of the last lines of defense, fighting to protect communities and families across this great country that will be negatively impacted, including the lives of those being exploited by the cartels.”

Even though Pinal County is not even on the border itself, Sheriff Lamb told me Sinaloa knows his county through and through and has a lot of operational control of the smuggling routes deep into U.S. territory.

Clearly, the root of the problem at the border is the national security problem of the actual people engaging in the smuggling of illegal immigrants. Were the State Department to finally designate the cartels and treat them the same way we would treat al Qaeda at our border, it would not only solve the security problem but would pre-empt the humanitarian problem.

This is exactly why Sergio Tinoco, a supervisor border agent in the Rio Grande Valley, believes that Border Patrol must be unshackled to actually deal with the mission at hand instead of serving as babysitters. “So long as we continue focusing solely on the needs of illegal immigrants and the humanitarian issue without dealing with the cartels and the security problem, we will continue playing into the hands of the cartels,” warned the exasperated agent on my podcast.

After holding numerous hearings about the needs and wants of illegal immigrants, Congress is on vacation until September. Meanwhile, agents like Tinoco are forced to deal with these brutal cartels alone, without backup, and with two hands tied behind their backs in 105-degree heat in dangerous territory. Decisions made in the air-conditioned halls of Congress and the State Department could change all of that. (For more from the author of “Not Terrorists? Gulf Cartel Threatens to Wipe out Mexican Town” please click HERE)

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Anarchy: Protesters Help Stop ICE From Apprehending Criminal Alien

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Over 10,000 Americans die every year in drunk driving accidents. Many of them are caused by foreign nationals who either should never have been in the country or who could have been previously deported for prior arrests. Now it appears that the position of anti-ICE activists and sanctuary city politicians is that they will work to thwart the deportation even of serial illegal alien drunk drivers who have been ordered deported by a judge.

On Tuesday, a group of anti-ICE protesters helped a criminal alien lock himself in a car with a 12-year-old boy being used as a human shield after they saw a group of ICE agents coming to apprehend him. The protesters enabled him to remain in the car for four hours in the Hermitage area of metro Nashville and then, after ICE agents had already decided to come back another day, engaged in a political stunt and surrounded the car with a human chain.

One protester who helped form the human chain around the car told the local ABC affiliate, “I could see if these people were bad criminals, but they’re not. They’re just trying to provide for their kids.”

There’s just one problem. The individual was indeed a criminal alien with a final deportation order who has remained an ICE fugitive for nearly a decade. An ICE official confirmed the man’s identity to CR so that CR could locate his criminal history.

The man who locked himself in the car is a 29-year-old Mexican national who has been arrested at least three times in Tennessee. According to Davidson County court records, he was arrested on March 22, 2010, for drunk driving and for driving without a license. He was sentenced to time served and a year of probation.

According to ICE, he was ordered deported by an immigration judge in 2010 but was offered voluntary departure on July 28 (which comes with less criminal offense if he were to re-enter illegally). He was given until November 26 to depart. Instead of taking the offer, he absconded and then was given a final order of deportation in absentia, making him a criminal fugitive.

Astoundingly, he was arrested again on August 31 of that year and was found guilty of misdemeanor identity fraud and driving without a license. Again, he was cycled in and out of the criminal justice system with a final order to leave the country, and yet local officials treated him as if he were an American.

The Mexican fugitive was once again arrested in Davidson County on May 1 of this year for driving on a revoked license with an open container of alcohol, which was also a violation of his probation. Then he was in court on July 2 for a hearing over his probation violation.

How was this man able to cycle in and out of jail and court and interact with state government without ever being turned over to ICE? This was all after a final order of deportation.

Yet local officials who were at the protest treat ICE agents as if they, not the illegal aliens, are the criminals. Nashville Metro Councilman Bob Mendes, who claimed to be on scene at the attempted apprehension, said in a statement, “There are reports I have heard that the ICE agents may have been telling the gentleman in the van that he had to give himself up or else MNPD would arrest him. If that’s what they said, that’s not true.”

Mendes went on to extol the policy of Nashville not to cooperate with ICE.

Mayor David Briley said ICE “stokes fear and distrust in our most vulnerable communities, which is why we do not use our local resources to enforce ICE orders.” He promised to work with local open-borders groups “to make sure residents know their rights and that support and resources are available for undocumented immigrants should the need arise.”

We have now reached the point where these sanctuaries are harboring, aiding, abetting, and shielding from detection those who violate our driving laws, drive drunk, and violate a deportation order for nine years. Those are all violations of 8 U.S. Code §1324. DHS and DOJ have been lax about prosecuting sanctuary officials for harboring illegal aliens.

What these local officials are essentially saying is that anyone is allowed to break into the country and nobody is allowed to be deported, even after they are arrested for subsequent crimes. For activists and local politicians to interfere with enforcement of sovereignty is the ultimate form of anarchy against American citizens.

Moreover, for illegal aliens to refuse to depart and then lock themselves in a car is itself a criminal offense on top of the baseline civil immigration violation. 8 U.S. Code §1253 states as follows:

“Any alien against whom a final order of removal is outstanding…who willfully fails or refuses to depart from the United States within a period of 90 days from the date of the final order of removal under administrative processes” or who “willfully fails or refuses to make timely application in good faith for travel or other documents necessary to the alien’s departure” or who “connives or conspires, or takes any other action, designed to prevent or hamper or with the purpose of preventing or hampering the alien’s departure pursuant to such” or who “willfully fails or refuses to present himself or herself for removal at the time and place required by the Attorney General pursuant to such order” is subject to up to four years of imprisonment.

ICE could go back and obtain a criminal warrant from a U.S. attorney in this case for violation of §1253, but the agency has never had to do this since the implementation of federal immigration laws in the late 1800s. The Ninth Circuit issued a lawless ruling requiring it to obtain a criminal warrant to break into a house or car to get an illegal alien. But that opinion is not valid outside the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction, especially as it violates Supreme Court precedent. In Turner v. Williams (1904), the court made it very clear that as long as immigration officers are not trying to criminally convict the alien but rather deport him, “Detention or temporary confinement as part of the means necessary to give effect to the exclusion or expulsion was held valid.” The fact that an alien commits another crime to hamper that apprehension doesn’t make him better off and give him the right to thwart the basic actions necessary to affect the removal.

This principle was clearly established by James Iredell, one of the authors of Article III of the Constitution and a founding member of the Supreme Court. In 1799, he said the following, applying even of people who were lawfully admitted into the country, much more to those who violate today’s immigration laws and are ordered to be deported:

“Any alien coming to this country must or ought to know, that this being an independent nation, it has all the rights concerning the removal of aliens which belong by the law of nations to any other; that while he remains in the country in the character of an alien, he can claim no other privilege than such as an alien is entitled to, and consequently, whatever [risk] he may incur in that capacity is incurred voluntarily, with the hope that in due time by his unexceptionable conduct, he may become a citizen of the United States.”

For now, there is civil disobedience against the immigration laws, even when the subjects are drunk drivers and even accused child molesters. The only question is whether the administration will begin enforcing current law. (For more from the author of “Anarchy: Protesters Help Stop ICE From Apprehending Criminal Alien” please click HERE)

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