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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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There Is No Greater Foreign Influence Than Illegal Immigration and Those Thwarting Our Laws

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While the political world will be paralyzed for much of the week with the fallout from the Mueller testimony and talk of Russian influence over our elections, the greatest foreign influence both sides of Congress are ignoring is illegal immigration. Our foundational laws protecting Americans from foreign invaders are being systemically ignored and delegitimized. That is the true foreign influence that should concern us all.

There are countless millions of illegal aliens in this country, many of whom came recently, including well over two million criminal aliens. Yes, there are that many of other countries’ criminals in this country, and there is no sense of urgency from the political class to remove them. ICE should be given full funding and awarded medals for getting rid of other countries’ drunk drivers and drug traffickers, murderers and child molesters. Instead, thanks to a lack of Republican support and a counter-narrative from supposedly conservative media, the left-wing media has empowered wealthy subversive NGOs and local politicians to thwart, fight, and delegitimize every deportation.

The disconcerting truth is that the laws on the books designed to protect Americans from foreign infiltrators – the most foundational responsibility of a national government – are being sabotaged. The very illegal aliens who invaded our sovereignty now have more influence on government, media, and pop culture than the American taxpayers who pay for their hospital stays and care.

The simple reality is that our laws are not enforced. After so much hype about at least going after the million or so illegal aliens with final deportation orders, just 35 individuals have thus far been apprehended.

While this is only one operation still in its early stages, it’s part of a systemic breakdown in enforcing sovereignty. During the first term of Obama’s presidency, when he was still enforcing the law and sanctuaries hadn’t yet begun widespread civil disobedience, deportations were averaging around 400,000 per year. Under this administration, only 230,000 were deported in fiscal year 2018.

Even if you ignore border deportations and just focus on interior deportations, the numbers are stark. During Obama’s first term, ICE was averaging roughly 18,000-22,000 interior deportations per month. That number dropped to around 6,000 a month after Obama suspended much of interior enforcement during his final two years. Even under Trump, we are averaging just 7,000 interior deportations a month so far this year.

Take Venezuela, for example. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there were 67,000 Venezuelans who overstayed their visas in 2017 and 2018. Yet only 584 Venezuelan nationals were removed over that period, and most of them were turned back at legal ports of entry, not removed from the interior. It’s no surprise that more Venezuelans are now incentivized to come to the border. Yet rather than deterring them by enforcing current laws, House Democrats along with 37 Republicans voted to grant them more amnesty. The cycle of lawlessness inducing more illegal immigration, which in turn grows illegal immigrants’ influence on politicians who should be working for citizens, is working splendidly for the anarchist crowd.

While ICE is woefully underfunded given the task before it, it would help to actually enforce laws on the books that will make it harder for aliens to evade detection or be harbored by lawyers and politicians.

How is it that an illegal alien can get a driver’s license and cycle in and out of the criminal justice system, not only as a regular illegal alien but as one who was ordered deported – all without ever being detected? 8 U.S. Code §1304 requires alien registration. In fact, our laws were specifically designed to ensure that every alien is detected upon his first interaction with government or law enforcement.

The law requires every alien to get fingerprinted and documented with “a certificate of alien registration or an alien registration receipt card” pursuant to the Alien Registration Act of 1940. §1304(e) states:

“Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d). Any alien who fails to comply with the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon conviction for each offense be fined not to exceed $100 or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both.”

Why is this not enforced? It would quite literally prevent every illegal alien crime because they would be immediately identified upon their first interaction with police or face prosecution for not registering.

Perhaps there should be a special counsel appointed to investigate how decades’ worth of immigration promises codified into law have been ignored, inducing an inalterable change in our country as a result of the ultimate foreign influence. If we feel too scared to enforce our own laws against foreign infiltration because of fear of reprisal from those very people, indeed we have a much greater problem than foreign influence; we have a problem of foreign control. (For more from the author of “There Is No Greater Foreign Influence Than Illegal Immigration and Those Thwarting Our Laws” please click HERE)

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Oregon Sanctuaries Force ICE to Apprehend Alleged Child Sex Offender in Courthouse

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Will sanctuaries and open-borders advocates get in the way of ICE even when it’s apprehending an accused child sex offender? Evidently so, in the state of Oregon.

Yesterday, open-borders advocates fought with ICE agents who stood outside the Clatsop County Courthouse in Astoria, Oregon, to apprehend Fabian Alberto Zamora-Rodriguez. He was attending a hearing related to his charges of child sex abuse.

According to the Daily Astorian, ICE was forced to release pepper spray after “immigrant rights’ advocates and the man’s mother and partner tightly surrounded him as he tried to leave.” The paper quotes “immigrant rights” groups that protested by promulgating a dangerous lie that ICE needs a criminal warrant to apprehend an illegal alien for deportation.

Just who were “immigrant rights” groups protecting, and why did ICE have to wait almost five months after his arrest to apprehend him at the courthouse?

Clatsop County sheriff’s deputies arrested Zamora-Rodriguez on February 27 when he was caught in an online child sex sting leading to his apprehension at a local park, where police suspected he was planning a sexual rendezvous with an 11-year-old boy. Here is part of the Daily Astorian’s write-up of the arrest:

Zamora was booked in the Clatsop County Jail on one count each of first and second-degree online sexual corruption of a child, two counts of attempted use of a child in a sexually explicit display and eight counts of encouraging child sexual abuse in the first degree.

Zamora allegedly used online communications to make detailed plans to meet the child in person for sexual contact twice, but only followed through with his plans once. He also allegedly pressured a person he believed to be 11 to send him lewd images.

Even someone this bad evidently was not turned over to ICE. Why else would ICE have to wait until the hearing and grab him at the courthouse? When I reached out to ICE for more information, they said that due to privacy concerns they could not comment on this specific individual. However, Tanya Roman, spokeswoman for ICE’s northwestern field office, told CR that in general, “It is actually often due to the implementation of unreasonable ‘sanctuary city’ policies that prevent ICE from being notified of the presence of criminal aliens in jails or prisons, which then necessitates that we utilize options like enforcement actions at courthouses to accomplish our law enforcement mission.”

An example of why ICE would have to wait for a court date to make its move on behalf of public safety, according to Roman, is if the criminal alien is not handed over at the jail and doesn’t have a known address, there is a serious risk they will lose track of the individual. “Absent a viable residential address or place of employment, a courthouse may afford the most likely opportunity to locate a target and take him or her into custody.”

The same local governments and advocacy groups who seek to hamper ICE efforts to arrest illegal aliens at safe and stable locations like jailhouses then complain about ICE showing up at courthouses as the only viable alternative. Otherwise, illegal aliens who have victimized people might be let out on bail and abscond.

“In years past, most of these individuals would have been turned over to ICE by local authorities upon their release from jail based on ICE detainers,” said Roman. “Now that some cities do not honor ICE detainers, these individuals, who often have significant criminal histories, are released onto the street, presenting a potential public safety threat.”

There is a pervasive problem with alien child sex offenders. Border Patrol catches them every day at the border when they seek to return after removal. According to the Epoch Times, one citizen in North Carolina collated criminal data from only 30 percent of North Carolina counties and found that in just the past 18 months, “more than 331 illegal aliens have been charged with 1,172 child rapes and child sexual assaults.”

Federal law (8 U.S.C. 1373) prohibits state and local government from “in any way restrict[ing], any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.” 8 U.S.C. 1324 also prohibits individuals, whether in government or in advocacy groups from encouraging, inducing, harboring, shielding from detection, or transporting illegal aliens in any way or attempting to do so. This is clearly violated on a daily basis, yet the federal government has been lax in enforcing these laws.

What’s clearly evident about “immigrant rights” groups and the politicians who support them is that they now believe anyone who wants should be able to enter our country and should never be deported, including even accused child sex offenders. States like Oregon have already laid down that marker. The question now is: How will the political leaders on the federal side respond? (For more from the author of “Oregon Sanctuaries Force ICE to Apprehend Alleged Child Sex Offender in Courthouse” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

Illegal Immigration on the Rise from Venezuela

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Today, House Democrats are voting on H.R. 549 – the Venezuela TPS Act of 2019. This bill will extend Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan nationals and shield them from deportation. It could not come at a worse time and is akin to dousing a growing fire with lighter fluid.

Illegal immigration has surged over the past year, primarily from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. But in recent months, there has been a rise in migration from many other countries both in our hemisphere and from the Eastern Hemisphere. One of the latest trends that should sound alarms throughout the Trump administration is the weekly increase in numbers from Venezuela.

While the DHS does not provide monthly data of border apprehensions for countries other than Mexico and Central America’s northern triangle, CR has obtained weekly data from Texas’ Department of Public Safety used internally by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The numbers show that apprehensions just in Texas of Venezuelan nationals have increased from a trickle every week for the past few months, culminating with a spike of almost double the previous week in last week’s report.

According to the data, which was given to CR by a Border Patrol agent who must remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the press, 189 Venezuelans were caught at the Texas border July 10-July 17, compared to 99 the previous week. The week before that, 47 Venezuelans were apprehended. That is roughly the level of weekly Venezuelan apprehensions throughout June. In May, it hovered around 20, and before that it was 0-5 per week.

This is a very disturbing trend, according to Joseph Humire, expert on Venezuelan affairs.

“Since the mass exodus from Venezuela began in 2014, there are more than 4 million Venezuelans living abroad,” warned Humire, who heads the Center for a Secure Free Society. “A recent Organization of American States (OAS) report warned that by the end of 2020 the number of Venezuelan refugees/migrants can more than double and as many as 8.2 million Venezuelans could have left the country. This would make Venezuela the largest refugee crisis in the world, overtaking Syria.”

Humire notes that while “until now, most of those that fled Venezuela by foot traveled through South America, going as far south as Argentina, it appears that now they are heading north.”

In other words, if this isn’t stopped in its infancy, we could be facing something much larger than even the Central American migration over the next few years. “If the current projections stay the same, and the migrants from Venezuela moving from South to Central America connect with the tens of thousands of undocumented migrants from Central America to the U.S. southwest border, we could see our illegal immigration problem on our border literally triple overnight,” warns Humire.

Humire further warns that Venezuelan migration poses an entirely new national security threat, given that its dictator, Nicolas Maduro, is a client of Iran and Iran is locked in a tense conflict with America.

“While this is taking place, Iran is quietly but overtly increasing its presence in Latin America. As tensions rise in the Middle East over Iran’s aggression in the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia these past few days to ensure Latin America remains an option in case conflict erupts. … You can be sure that ‘mass migration’ is a phenomenon that Iran is examining to weaponize against the United States.”

Venezuela is Hezbollah’s main base of operations in South America. Hezbollah has direct ties to the country’s former vice president, who is of Syrian descent and still a top minister, and there are hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and Syrian expatriates living there who are native Spanish speakers.

On top of the national security concerns, Venezuela also poses a public health risk. While there are serious concerns over people carrying contagious diseases from many of the countries from which we are seeing migrants, Venezuela’s entire health infrastructure has broken down. The CDC warns against all non-essential travel to Venezuela over concerns of measles, diphtheria, and malaria. It also warns about the re-emergence of polio as a result of “a conflux of plummeting vaccination coverages and ongoing outbreaks of other vaccine-preventable diseases,” together with “the weakening of surveillance programs, forced migrations, and a prolonged political, economic, and food crisis without foreseeable resolution.”

There are also serious concerns about Ebola and measles from some African countries. According to Border Patrol, over 1,100 Africans from 19 countries have been apprehended since May 30. Last week, the World Health Organization declared the Congo Ebola outbreak a global health emergency after more than 2,500 people have been diagnosed with the deadly virus.

Why our government hasn’t officially declared a shutoff and travel ban to and from these countries remains a mystery. Our existing laws should make Venezuelan nationals inadmissible until they can document vaccination history. Asylum does not trump the medically inadmissible statutes of 8 U.S.C. 1182.

When pondering the latest news of migrants ticking up from a failed state with health concerns that happens to be heavily influenced by Iran and Hezbollah, consider the ominous warning El Paso’s DEA chief delivered in an interview with CR in May. “Let’s just put it this way, the cartels are an international organization. It’s a real threat, it’s a prevalent threat, and they do have their associations with groups like Hezbollah, with Afghans, and with radical terrorist organizations,” warned Kyle Williamson, special agent in charge of El Paso’s DEA office, who also served in the DEA’s offices in the Middle East, overseeing narco-terrorism enforcement. “What that does is effectively move those borders right up to the United States. Those cartels link the borders. Just like they use their resources, their technology, their criminal enterprise to conduct criminal activities, they can use those resources to assist terrorists as well.”

Last year, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani passive-aggressively warned that the West will be flooded with “a deluge of drugs, asylum seekers, bombs and terrorism.” There’s no better way for Iran to carry out these threats than through its Venezuelan proxy, especially when it can add biological warfare, through health risks, to its asymmetrical warfare. Nor have the Iranians ever been more desperate to pull that trigger against us. (For more from the author of “Illegal Immigration on the Rise from Venezuela” please click HERE)

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Mexican Officials Bust ‘Massive’ Migrant Smuggling Ring

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Authorities in Mexico announced Monday the discovery of an “industrial-scale migrant smuggling ring” that transported hundreds of migrants in disguised freight trucks.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador described how one tractor-trailer truck was disguised with the logo of a major grocery store chain. But instead of groceries, the truck was carrying about 150 migrants, the Associated Press reports.

’The (grocery) company has filed a complaint, because it was fake, it was camouflage to transport migrants,” Lopez Obrador said.

Last month, Mexico found five trucks carrying 925 migrants disguised with the logos of major companies to avoid detection. The migrants were reportedly transported in inhumane conditions, as air conditioning units installed on the tractor-trailers were not used to provide ventilation to the people being smuggled.

“The biggest concern is that there is going to be a tragedy, that is what we don’t want,” said Lopez Obrador.

This discovery reinforces the point that’s often left out when pundits discuss the border crisis: There are vast criminal networks working to illegally smuggle human beings from Central America to the United States. As long as the border remains unsecured, these criminal networks have an incentive to continue their illegal activity. The worst harm is done to the migrants themselves, who are subjected to dangerous conditions or worse.

While the Left continues to accuse the Trump administration of operating concentration camps, remember that the real human rights abusers are the criminals abusing these people and trafficking them to the United States. And the way to stop them is to enforce United States law. (For more from the author of “Mexican Officials Bust ‘Massive’ Migrant Smuggling Ring” please click HERE)

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Top Democratic Group Admits Trump Is Winning the Immigration Argument

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Last week, a poll showed that President Trump’s instincts on the border crisis are right and his policies enforcing the rule of law on the border are resonating with the American people in a way the Democrats and the media refuse to acknowledge. This week, a top left-wing think tank has broken party ranks to acknowledge Trump is winning the immigration issue with his messaging.

A new report from the Center for American Progress warns that the Left has “ceded powerful rhetorical ground” on the “rule of law” to President Trump, allowing the Republicans to create what it calls “the false dichotomy of America as either a nation of immigrants or a nation of laws.” In other words, by accusing the Trump administration of running concentration camps, by lying about the conditions in ICE detention facilities, by calling for ICE to be abolished, by voting against emergency border security funding, by offering free health care to illegal immigrants, by defending MS-13 thugs, and by denying that there is even a crisis at the border, Democrats have given Americans the impression that they don’t care about the rule of law.

The report’s answer to this problem calls on Democrats to introduce plans for immigration reform, and of course the policies advocated for would functionally make illegal immigration legal. The policies called for include lifting caps on immigration, admitting more refugees, reducing deportations, and granting amnesty and citizenship to more than 10.5 million illegal immigrants. Democrats can’t be accused of neglecting the rule of law if they change the law to embrace open borders, after all.

Fortunately, Democrats are not in a position to act on those policies. But the takeaway from this report is Trump, the Republicans, and every American interested in national sovereignty and secure borders have the rhetorical edge on the immigration issue. It turns out Americans want American law enforced! Embrace that. Have the Senate cancel the August recess and hold marathon hearings on the border crisis to show the American people there is only one party willing to end the human suffering caused by illegal immigration by enforcing the law.

If you want to win, attack where your opponent is weak. Democrats have fully taken the side of illegal immigrants on this issue, leaving lawful immigrants and the rest of America forgotten. Press the advantage! Win! (For more from the author of “Top Democratic Group Admits Trump Is Winning the Immigration Argument” please click HERE)

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After 23 Years, the Trump Administration Is Implementing Key Immigration Law

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The order of deportation is not a punishment for crime. It is not a ‘banishment,’ in the sense in which that word is often applied to the expulsion of a citizen from his country by way of punishment. It is but a method of enforcing the return to his own country of an alien who has not complied with the conditions upon the performance of which the government of the nation, acting within its constitutional authority and through the proper departments, has determined that his continuing to reside here shall depend. He has not, therefore, been deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process or law, and the provisions of the Constitution securing the right of trial by jury and prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and cruel and unusual punishments have no application.” ~Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 1893

It’s better late than never. Twenty-three years after Congress nearly unanimously passed the toughest sovereignty law ever, the Trump administration is looking into finally implementing it. No new laws are needed.

How is it that, in 1954, President Eisenhower directly and indirectly removed over one million illegal aliens in just a few months without any lawfare, yet now every deportation gets litigated?

In 1996, after the number of illegal aliens in the country became intolerable (following the failed 1986 amnesty), there was a bipartisan consensus in Congress that we couldn’t adjudicate ourselves out of an invasion. Unlike in criminal cases, illegal aliens are not entitled to any due process to remain in the country if all we want to do is deport them rather than criminally prosecute them. Therefore Congress passed a law mandating that all illegal aliens be deported without any review by an immigration judge unless the illegal immigrant can prove to the “satisfaction of an immigration officer” that he has resided here for two consecutive years (8 CFR § 235.3(b)(1)(ii)).

As I noted before, the Clinton and Bush administrations never implemented the law. They only authorized expedited removal for those caught within two weeks of infiltration and only within 100 miles of the border. And even then, it was practically only used in a small percentage of cases. Millions of illegal aliens have been accorded a degree of due process explicitly denied by a consensus of Congress. The Trump administration is now looking into implementing the full extent of the law – anywhere in the U.S. within two years of entry.

The law requires the DHS to publish an official notice in the Federal Register for such a change. It has already filed notice to do so. The key point is that Trump is not inventing anything new; he is merely implementing the law that his predecessors ignored.

This decision, which I called for in April, will have a dramatic effect on protecting the American people both at the border and in the interior.

At the border, anyone not claiming asylum would be immediately deported. Even those claiming asylum, as I noted in April, can be immediately rejected by DHS if their claims are bogus, and they can be placed right back into expedited removal without the need for the cumbersome immigration court process.

This decision is also very important for many of the illegal aliens who remain in the country. Many of the illegal aliens who have come under this latest wave from Central American will soon pass the two-year limit of expedited removal. The difference between getting them out now vs. going through the process of an immigration court is the difference between night and day. Because the courts are so backlogged, they often release these flight risks on bond. Many of them, including criminal aliens, break their terms of bail, but wind up remaining in the country indefinitely. This is how there are over one million illegal aliens with final deportation orders and another 1.4 million with deportation orders that are still being appealed.

Drawing a line today and finally implementing expedited removal on the front end will preclude this endless lawfare and the ability of the immigration law profession to find infinite excuses for dangerous aliens to remain in the country. There is no reason anyone should be entitled to such due process when we merely want to preserve our sovereignty and aren’t trying to imprison them. But thanks to lawfare, people like Miguel Angel Martinez-Menjivar, a Salvadoran national charged with raping a 14-year-old girl in Maryland and breaking into her bedroom window, is now out on bond from ICE’s custody. Were we to immediately deport anyone who can’t demonstrate his residence here for two years, it would preclude a huge amount of this needless public safety problem.

On Friday, acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli announced that several of the illegal aliens caught in last week’s mass MS-13 indictment were either ordered removed or were applying for various statuses. They were allowed to remain in the country to commit such heinous crimes because we allowed the lawfare train to get rolling rather than complete their expedited removal.

How strong is expedited removal in terms of removing the officious courts from the process? As the Congressional Research Service says regarding the lack of judicial jurisdiction, “The jurisdictional bar applies to claims that an immigration officer improperly placed an alien in expedited removal proceedings; challenges to an immigration officer’s credible fear determination; arguments challenging the procedures and policies implemented by DHS to expedite removal; and claims contesting the expedited removal order itself.”

In other words, Congress already gave DHS all the tools it needs to stop this at the front end.

Watch for the Left to howl, whine, and name-call over this decision. But guess what? This law passed the Senate unanimously by voice vote in 1996 and was signed by President Bill Clinton. The final conference bill passed the House 370-37. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Steny Hoyer, and James Clyburn, Democrat leaders who were all in the House at the time, voted for the bill. Even Nancy Pelosi, who was radicalized earlier than the others, still said on March 21, 1996, “I agree with my colleagues that we must curb illegal immigration responsibly and effectively.”

Dianne Feinstein, Patrick Leahy, and Patty Murray actually voted for the original Senate bill, which was much stronger before it was gutted in conference. Even the stronger bill passed with 72 votes in the Senate.

Two decades later, the Trump administration is finally implementing a universal promise to the American people. There can be no complaints. (For more from the author of “After 23 Years, the Trump Administration Is Implementing Key Immigration Law” please click HERE)

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Twitter Suspends Angel Mom Over Comment About Illegal Aliens

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Angel Mom Mary Ann Mendoza, who heads the Angel Families organization, has been suspended from Twitter after posting about illegal immigration and raising awareness about the harms of sanctuary city policies.

Angel Mom Mendoza’s son, 32-year-old police officer Brandon Mendoza, was killed in May 2014 by a drunk illegal alien who was driving the wrong way down a highway in Mesa, Arizona.

This week, Mendoza was suspended from her Twitter account and told she would not be able to sign back in unless she deletes a series of posts about crimes committed by illegal aliens and the impact of sanctuary city policies on American citizens.

Mendoza told Breitbart News that Twitter sent her a message claiming that some of her posts “go against” Twitter’s “standards on hate speech.” In order to sign back into her account, Mendoza said, Twitter has mandated that she delete the posts — something she said she will not do. . .

“I will not be silenced in my warning calls of what could happen to any American citizen in the blink of an eye as it did to me,” Mendoza said. “As an American citizen whose beautiful son was collateral damage to the ineptness if our elected officials, I will continue to bring my words to them in whatever platform I can. They owe it to me and every other Angel Family to have a hearing for our voices. Their fellow American citizens and our loved ones killed by their inactions. My voice is my son’s voice, never to be silenced by anyone.” (Read more from “Twitter Suspends Angel Mom Over Comment About Illegal Aliens” HERE)

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