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ICE Union Officers to Trump: ‘”Catch and Release” Is Not Just Happening, It’s in Overdrive’

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In a letter sent to President Donald Trump on Monday, ICE officers said they still have to catch and release illegal aliens into the U.S. because they don’t have the resources they need — and that they are forced to waste man-hours on a border enforcement shell game.

First reported by the Washington Times and signed by National ICE Council president Chris Crane and other union leaders, the letter details that the situation currently at the border doesn’t reflect the president’s promises to get tough on illegal immigration.

“As you know, every day thousands of illegal aliens are being released into the United States by your Administration,” reads a copy of the letter obtained by Blaze Media. “‘Catch and Release’ is not just happening, it’s in overdrive. Catch and release must continue as ICE doesn’t have sufficient custody space to hold the massive number of family units illegally entering the United States every day.”

The letter then goes onto describe a work arrangement inside the Department of Homeland Security in which ICE officers are being told to perform duties related to the ongoing catch-and-release policy in order to keep Customs and Border Protection personnel from doing it.

“So ridiculous is the combined DHS, CBP and ICE policy, that Border Patrol Agents and contractors are prohibited from opening the doors of Border Patrol detention vans after transporting immigration detainees to a location for release,” the letter claims. “The Border Patrol transports the detainees for release, but ICE Officers must follow in a separate vehicle for the sole purpose of opening the doors of the van upon reaching the destination so the detainees can exit the vehicle.”

As a result of this arrangement, the officers claim, ICE personnel are being pulled from working on other agency duties like combatting terrorism and hunting down fugitives: “Hundreds of man hours are wasted each day at a time of crisis on the border when the focus of our leadership should be streamlining efforts and eliminating redundant and unnecessary work.”

“DHS resources on the border are overwhelmed,” the letter says.

“Political games in Washington, DC have rendered the United States completely incapable of controlling its southern border. While agencies like ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) cannot control the agendas of political leaders, they have a responsibility to properly manage our resources, under the hand we’ve been dealt, in a manner that best provides for enforcement generally, and first and foremost public safety. That isn’t happening.”

Indeed, contrary to President Trump’s calls to end catch-and-release, illegal immigrants are still being released into the American interior after being apprehended by U.S. immigration authorities. For example, late last week, the Arizona Republic reported that around 50 or more illegal immigrants were dropped off at a Phoenix-area bus stop, overwhelming volunteers.

Last week, CR’s Daniel Horowitz explained the relationship between continued catch-and-release policies and February’s record illegal immigration numbers. Additionally, Reuters reports, current asylum policies have made existing sections of border fencing a magnet for would be border-crossers, rather than a deterrent.

“Again, as there is no custody space, the hundreds to thousands apprehended each day by CBP must be released to charitable organizations that facilitate their travel to locations throughout the U.S.,” the first section of the letter concludes. “In a nutshell, this is ‘Catch and Release.’ And this is where the utter nonsense begins.”

At time of publishing, the Department of Homeland Security had not responded to Blaze Media’s request for comment. (For more from the author of “ICE Union Officers to Trump: ‘”Catch and Release” Is Not Just Happening, It’s in Overdrive'” please click HERE)

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While Everyone Sleeps, the Courts Are Abolishing All Immigration Enforcement

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Congress could never get away with creating constitutional rights for illegal aliens to remain here, yet a single lower court just did so on Thursday. And where Congress would face deep reprisal in the next election, faceless judges will never feel the heat.

Conservatives fear that extreme Democrats might actually abolish ICE and all immigration enforcement, but the lower courts are already systematically abolishing ICE’s authority, nullifying immigration enforcement statutes, violating separation of powers, and constantly increasing the wave of bogus asylum-seekers that they originally spawned with other radical rulings. The latest ruling from the Ninth Circuit demonstrates that unless Republicans and the president begin pushing back against these radical judges and delegitimizing their rulings, Democrats will get everything they want without ever facing electoral backlash or even the need to win elections.

It’s truly hard to overstate the outrageously harmful effects of Thursday’s Ninth Circuit ruling. For the first time in our history, the courts have fabricated a constitutional right for those denied asylum to appeal to federal courts for any reason.

Here’s the background.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants are flooding our border, claiming the formula of “credible fear” of persecution. They get to stay indefinitely while they ignore their court dates in immigration court. Because of an amalgamation of several prior activist court rulings, mainly by this very circuit, roughly 90 percent of credible fear claims are approved by asylum officers and the claimants shielded from deportation, even though asylum status is ultimately rejected almost every time by an immigration judge. Unfortunately, by that point it’s too late for the American people, who are stuck with the vast majority of these claimants remaining indefinitely in the country. Yet rather than ending this sham incentive, the Ninth Circuit drove a truck through immigration law by asserting that there is now a constitutional right for even the few who are denied initial credible fear status and are placed in deportation proceedings to appeal their denials, not just to an administrative immigration judge but to a federal Article III judge for any reason.

In past cases, the courts merely twisted statutes and contorted their plain meaning. In this case, for the first time ever and in direct contrast to a ruling by the Third Circuit in 2016, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the immigration statute that denies the federal courts jurisdiction to hear such appeals is unconstitutional under the constitutional requirement of habeas corpus, thereby giving 7.8 billion people in the world habeas corpus access to our courts. This will allow numerous illegal aliens, including the brand-new ones entering now, to stay indefinitely while they litigate themselves into status. The ACLU, which of course led this lawsuit on behalf of a Sri Lankan migrant denied asylum, wasn’t kidding when it proclaimed, “The historical and practical importance of this ruling cannot be overstated.”

This is one of many recent violations of sovereignty doctrine, known as “plenary power doctrine.” This long-standing principle in the courts is that while aliens have due process rights against criminal punishment, they have no rights to litigate against deportation, which is a mere extension of sovereignty, other than the process laid out by Congress. This principle “has become about as firmly embedded in the legislative and judicial tissues of our body politic as any aspect of our government,” not “merely” by “a page of history … but a whole volume” (Galvan v. Press). The concept is “inherent in sovereignty,” consistent with “ancient principles” of international law, and “to be exercised exclusively by the political branches of government.” (Kleindienst v. Mandel).

What is so outrageous about this case is that Congress explicitly stripped the courts of any jurisdiction to hear such claims. The reason why the district judge, who was an Obama appointee, refused to even hear this case is because 8 U.S.C. §1252(e)(2) prohibits the federal courts (not to be confused with DOJ administrative courts) from hearing habeas corpus claims against expedited removal of those denied their credible fear claims unless of course they have a claim that they are a citizen or a legal permanent resident. In this case, the three Clinton appointees of this Ninth Circuit panel, Wallace Tashima, Margaret McKeown, and Richard Paez, ruled for the first time that this provision is unconstitutional and that the district court must hear the case.

The court used the Boumediene v. Bush decision, which created a right to habeas corpus for enemy combatants being held at Guantanamo Bay, as the basis for its decision. That decision in itself was an egregious warping of the Constitution, a decision that Scalia angrily predicted that “the Nation will live to regret.” However, the important distinction is that Boumediene was a case of indefinite detention, whereas this is a case where we are enforcing our sovereignty and getting rid of the person, who can live freely wherever he wants. Applying habeas corpus to deportation is bonkers even by the Boumediene standard.

Now that there is a circuit split on this revolutionary idea, court watchers on all sides predict the Supreme Court will take up the case. While conservatives are fairly confident that this will be added to the endless list of Ninth Circuit reversals by SCOTUS (although I have my concerns about Gorsuch in this case), conservatives need to realize the factors creating an emergency with sovereignty and the lower courts:

We’ve seen over and over again how lower courts create a legal, political, and policy momentum for creating new rights. If they are not nipped in the bud and delegitimized immediately, they wind up growing and eventually being codified, even if initially reversed by the Supreme Court. This has happened with almost every phantom right created by the courts and has already begun with immigration law. We are at the cusp of the courts doing with immigration what they did with abortion and gay marriage, even though it took years for the Left to win in those cases. All of the justices except for Clarence Thomas succumb to pressure to varying degrees and will eventually go along with much of the anti-sovereignty doctrine building in the lower courts.

Many conservatives are suggesting that we “fix” our immigration laws to stop the asylum fraud, among other problems at the border. What this case demonstrates is that courts are so radical they are not just twisting the wording of statutes, they are downright invalidating them by creating new constitutional rights to immigrate. They are even brazenly invalidating statutes that block the courts from hearing cases, as we saw with the TPS amnesty case. Keeping out and deporting aliens as well as defining court jurisdiction are two of the most unquestionable and categorical powers of Congress, and they are backed by case law dating back to our Founding. This is no longer about any one statute. There is no statute to fix. Remember, we already fixed our immigration laws in 1996. Many of the things we want to do, including kicking the courts out of these cases, were already done in 1996, including the statute at issue here. This law passed the Senate unanimously! Passing more laws while continuing to legitimize lower court supremacy won’t help. If we continue to agree that lower courts rule over immigration, no amount of congressional changes could help, because the courts will rule the changes unconstitutional. This is why it’s time to grab the bull by the horns and attack the notion of judicial jurisdiction over these issues to begin with. The Trump administration needs to begin pushing back against the courts.

There is something much bigger occurring here. Putting aside particular smaller areas of immigration law, the legal profession has now pulled the trigger on a long-standing goal of what they refer to as “applying constitutional norms” to foreign nationals, not just in terms of criminal proceedings, but in the context of immigration claims themselves.

Justice Robert Jackson, the great champion of due process and the dissenter in the Japanese internment case, described it this way: “Due process does not invest any alien with a right to enter the United States, nor confer on those admitted the right to remain against the national will.” Due process for aliens in the context of immigration decisions is whatever Congress says it is. As the court said in Lem Moon Sing v. United States, “The decisions of executive or administrative officers, acting within powers expressly conferred by Congress, are due process of law.” Liberals have been trying to attack this for decades and ensure that even the aliens we successfully deport expeditiously (increasingly a small number) can remain here indefinitely and tie up our courts with lawsuits. If we allow this game to continue, the flow at our border will make what Europe is dealing with look like child’s play.

Every week, we cede another piece of our sovereignty to unelected courts who are actually violating longstanding Supreme Court precedent. The conservative movement needs to push this administration to stand up and put the Supreme Court on notice to guard its own precedents and doctrines and that if it fails to rein in its own quite inferior courts, the administration will certainly not regard those decisions as superior to our own laws. Trump has no other choice. (For more from the author of “While Everyone Sleeps, the Courts Are Abolishing All Immigration Enforcement” please click HERE)

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Just ONE Year’s Flow of Illegal Immigration Will Cost up to $150 BILLION

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Do American taxpayers matter in the debate over bringing in under our government completely unchecked number of illegal immigrants with few resources of their own?

On Wednesday, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testified before the House Homeland Security Committee that at the current pace of illegal immigration, we will receive 990,000 migrants per year. Most of them are families from the most impoverished parts of Central America who, thanks to catch-and-release, will never be deported unless policies change. Has anyone thought for a moment what this does to the American taxpayer, not to mention the social and cultural problems in our communities and schools?

As explained by border officials, unlike past waves of Mexican migrants, most of these migrants are never being deported. What is the lifetime cost of one year’s flow of non-deported asylum seekers?

In 2017, Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies gave a conservative estimate that the net fiscal cost of each illegal immigrant crossing is $74,722. He used the fiscal cost estimates of immigrant based on education attainment from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) in order to calculate the cost of the average illegal alien. But as Camarota notes, the NAS uses “net present value,” which applies less value to the costs down the road than the immediate costs. He estimates that a straight approximation of “the actual net lifetime fiscal cost of illegal border-crossers, given their education levels, is possibly $140,000 to $150,000 each in their lifetimes.” These numbers include costs like criminal justice, education, and general use of public services balanced against taxes paid, which for a great many illegal immigrants is net zero or negative.

At 990,000 aliens per year, that would be a lifetime cost of between $138.6 billion and $148.5 billion our taxpayers are being forced to accept for a single year’s flow. Much of that cost will be borne by state and local governments, which don’t have the luxury of printing money to service debt.

But those numbers don’t even begin to fully quantify the enormity of the cost. Here are some important factors to consider:

Under our erroneous policies, when illegal aliens have babies in the U.S., those babies are considered Americans immediately and are eligible for every citizen benefit and welfare program under the sun. Many of these families are coming for the purpose of having American-born babies, which will augment the long-term cost both by adding to the population of those from illegal immigrant families and by allowing the families to collect more benefits.

In 2016, about 48 percent of border crossers were from Central America. Now it’s over 75 percent. Most of these people are from rural areas where, according to CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, “poverty and disease are rampant,” and large numbers of them “may have never seen a doctor, received immunizations, or lived in sanitary conditions.” In other words, the pool of migrants has likely grown even more impoverished and uneducated, on average, than when the CIS analysis was done on migration trends from several years ago.

Whereas in past years, most of the illegal immigrants were single adults from Mexico and often wanted to glide under the radar, the Central American families are almost treated as de facto refugees and will be more prone to openly use public benefits. In fact, a number of the children, who are a large share of the migration, are treated as refugees under the unaccompanied alien child policies. Therefore, the children and many of their sponsors will be eligible for more benefits than quantified in this standard analysis of illegal immigrant benefit use.

There are numerous upfront costs that are not included in long-term estimates of their costs to society. Given that they are coming in with so many illnesses and in such desperation, much of the increased costs for DHS, HHS, and even parts of our Defense budget are all the result of our refusal to have a long-standing deterrent at our border and to push back against the judicially legislated policies at our border.

Section 237 of the INA states that “any alien who, within five years after the date of entry, has become a public charge from causes not affirmatively shown to have arisen since entry is deportable.”

How is it that illegal immigrants can just pour into our country and there is no regard for their profound strain on our taxpayers? (For more from the author of “Just ONE Year’s Flow of Illegal Immigration Will Cost up to $150 BILLION” please click HERE)

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Insanity: Ninth Circuit Finds Constitutional Right for Some Aliens to Appeal Deportation Orders

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On Thursday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border who fail their initial threshold of showing a “credible fear” of persecution in their home countries are entitled to a judicial appeal before they can be deported. The decision could severely undermine the Trump Administration’s efforts at securing the border and expeditiously deporting frivolous would-be aslyees in California and Arizona, which are both border states under the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit.

Law360 reports:

The Ninth Circuit looked back at cases dating to the 1700s, determining that under review procedures set by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2008 case known as Boumediene and by legal precedent set in several immigration cases dating back to the 1950s, Thuraissigiam should be covered by the suspension clause [of tbe U.S. Constitution] because he was arrested in the United States, according to the opinion.

The court went on to hold that a procedure that would not allow the California court to review the immigration judge’s determination in Thuraissigiam’s case would be unconstitutional, according to Thursday’s opinion.

“We … reject the government’s contention that because, in its view, Thuraissigiam lacks due process rights, there are no rights for the suspension clause to protect,” the opinion read. “Boumediene foreclosed that argument by holding that, whether or not due process was satisfied, the suspension clause might require more.”

(Read more from “Insanity: Ninth Circuit Finds Constitutional Right for Some Aliens to Appeal Deportation Orders” HERE)

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The Illegal Alien Health Crisis by Itself Is Enough Reason to Shut Down Border Migration

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What has happened to the government of, by, and for the people of this country? What has happened to the government that once did everything it could to shield the American people from dangerous diseases we’ve worked so hard as a civilization to eradicate? Now, the only concern of our government is to build more health care facilities at the border to further invite in illegal aliens with dangerous diseases to suck the American taxpayer dry while exposing our country to all sorts of infectious diseases we’ve long eliminated. This is not progressive; it’s the most regressive policy imaginable, back to a time long before the Enlightenment.

On Tuesday, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan announced the building of a new facility to deal with the health crisis of those coming over the border and surrendering themselves to agents. A whopping 31,000 medical referrals were made for illegal aliens this year, straining our hospitals and local county emergency medical personnel, up from 12,000 last year.

Nobody is asking the question: Shouldn’t the goal be to shield the American people from these diseases, not just offer to treat countless hundreds of thousands from the most disease-prone regions of the world for free? Why does the forgotten American family never get factored into the equation as the government manages rather than stops the invasion? Isn’t it time, henceforth, to stop allowing them to come in at all?

Bringing in diseases from rural Central America, an undeniable threat

Last September, the Honduran Ministry of Health declared a medical state of emergency after at least 5,000 incidents of mumps were reported. Fast-forward to this week, and Texas health officials are reporting 186 cases of mumps at detention facilities within Texas, which is still the busiest migration route for the Central Americans. What occurred right around last September? The start of the caravan in Honduras. These are the people who have been arriving over the past few months, as the Mexican government and the cartel smugglers sprinkle in the caravans in groups of 100-300 rather than having them all come in at once.

Over the past few months, there have been numerous cases of chicken pox, tuberculosis, scabies, and lice among the migrants. According to the Daily Caller:

In one case, a teenager arrived at a medical clinic at the Texas border with a “vile-smelling wound on his foot,” which a pediatrician warned could cause the teen to lose his leg. At the same clinic, a young girl arrived with a 104-105 degree fever and a cough and chills.

A rotating medical team near the southern California border reportedly discovered hundreds of cases of communicable diseases and other conditions in the first two months of 2019, including 362 cases of lice, 113 cases of scabies, 22 cases of possible flu and four cases of chickenpox.

Do you really think people coming from the most disease-ridden parts of rural Central America can just be released within 10 days of detention with medical care and it won’t be a danger to Americans? What about those who don’t exhibit the symptoms during their brief stay before they are amnestied into our communities, but are carrying the diseases nonetheless? Guatemalans are 83 times more likely to have tuberculosis than Americans and seven times more likely than legal immigrants, according to the CDC.

And what about the people we do not apprehend? It’s very hard to believe that the ones we don’t apprehend somehow have a lower rate of infectious diseases. According to the Tijuana Health Department, one-third of the caravan migrants who stayed in the region were treated for health issues, including tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, chicken pox, lice, skin infections, and hepatitis.

While defenders of open borders conveniently claim that these countries have high rates of vaccinations, the CDC notes, “Access to basic healthcare in Central America largely depends on socioeconomic status and environment (urban or rural).” The migrants we are getting now are among the poorest families from rural areas, largely from the indigenous population, who are centuries behind us in health standards and education levels. As Commissioner McAleenan said during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, “Migrants travel north from countries where poverty and disease are rampant,” and large numbers of them “may have never seen a doctor, received immunizations, or lived in sanitary conditions.”

Moreover, these countries of origin are prone to other diseases for which there are no vaccines, such as chagas, dengue fever, malaria, chikungunya and Zika. Almost every one of these migrants, a pace of nearly one million a year, is being released into our communities and schools indefinitely.

Two congressional committees held hearings this past week on the measles outbreak in America. They focused entirely on the domestic anti-vaccination crowd and never once brought up the 800-pound gorilla in the room – illegal immigration. I’m certainly not a fan of going unvaccinated, but at the end of the day, most of these diseases have been eradicated from America and it takes an external migration in order to bring in these diseases so that those who don’t vaccinate will even contract these illnesses. While some of it can come anywhere in the world through travel of domestic non-vaccinators, it’s simply inconceivable that much of this recent resurgence in near-obsolete diseases is not coming from the border, when such large numbers of migrants are arriving from places currently experiencing outbreaks and then resettling across the country.

It’s amazing how liberals suggest that somehow enforcing our sovereignty is divorced from our history and traditions on immigration. The fact is that from our colonial times through every other era, our governments scrupulously denied entry to anyone with diseases. The first concern was not for those coming, but to protect Americans, the one and only job of the United States government. Now we are permanently bringing in these people and after their hospital stays, they are almost all released into our communities.

As I noted when this outbreak began, as early as 1907, we passed laws singling out those with tuberculosis for exclusion. Yet 112 years later, we have gone backwards by allowing the courts to essentially invite in a population that is 83 times more likely to have TB than Americans. Worse, rather than turning them back, we are now on the hook for their survival. There is nothing progressive about that.

The president should finally shut down all immigration at the border

Putting aside the dozens of other reasons why all asylum claims and all immigration should be shut off until this crisis is addressed systematically, the health crisis should be reason enough. In 1893, Congress passed a law updating mandates on quarantining any vessel suspected of containing those with diseases to ensure that the American population would never be placed in danger. Section 7 of the act says:

Whenever it shall be shown to the satisfaction of the President that by reason of the existence of cholera or other infectious diseases or contagious diseases in a foreign country there is serious danger of the introduction of the same into the United States, and that notwithstanding the quarantine defense this danger is so increased by the introduction of persons or property from such country that a suspension of the right to introduce the same is demanded in the interest of the public health, the President shall have power to prohibit, in whole or in part, the introduction of persons and property from such countries or places as he shall designate and for such period of time as he may deem necessary.

Notice how similar the language is to today’s statute, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), giving the president authority to shut off immigration for any period of time, at will, when he believes it’s in the national interests:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Yes, there is a lot of wisdom in our statutes. We don’t have a statute problem for the most part; we have a lower court problem. The Supreme Court just made clear last year that there are no limitations on this power, and the court cited the Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc. (1993) case, which concluded that this power superseded even asylum law.

What better fulfillment of this statute than protecting America from known epidemics in these countries, among the many other harmful effects on our national interest?

The president would be wise to give a televised address based on the new information put out by Border Patrol and make the case for fully suspending all immigration requests and processing at or inside our border. We are closed for business. Then he should lay out this unquestionable executive power. No judge has the power to prevent the president from forbidding anyone to land on our shores or cross our land borders. Congress can try to change the statute, and voters can disapprove of the power, but the law is the law.

Once again, either we have a country, or we don’t. (For more from the author of “The Illegal Alien Health Crisis by Itself Is Enough Reason to Shut Down Border Migration” please click HERE)

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ICE Giving Pregnancy Tests to Migrant Girls as Young as 10 After Dangerous Journey to Border

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Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told lawmakers Wednesday that the journey for migrants traveling from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border is so fraught with danger that the U.S. is giving pregnancy tests to migrant girls as young as 10. . .

Nielsen was speaking to the House Homeland Security Committee and was informing lawmakers about the dangers that migrants face on the way to the border, a day after figures showed that the number of illegal immigrants coming over the border had spiked dramatically.

“In February, we saw a 30 percent jump over the previous month, with agents apprehending or encountering nearly 75,000 aliens,” she said. “This is an 80 percent increase over the same time last year. And I can report today that CBP is forecasting the problem will get even worse this spring as the weather warms up.” . . .

Nielsen’s testimony comes days after President Trump said in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that he was told by Border Patrol that mothers give their daughters large amounts of birth control pills “because they know their daughters are going to be raped on the way up to our southern border.” . . .

A Doctors Without Borders report from 2017 found that nearly one-third of women surveyed entering Mexico had been sexually abused on their journey north, while 68 percent of the migrant and refugee populations as a whole reported being victims of violence. (Read more from “ICE Giving Pregnancy Tests to Migrant Girls as Young as 10 After Dangerous Journey to Border” HERE)

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12 Astounding Numbers That Show the Whole Invasion of Our Border

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After the media lied to the public throughout the border debate, when we actually had a chance to fix things in the budget, now they suddenly admit we have a crisis at the border. A Washington Post reporter conceded that the numbers were “bonkers.” The New York Times put in a headline the Customs and Border Patrol chief’s warning that the border is at a “breaking point.”

Here are twelve facts about the border apprehension numbers and the trends that demonstrate why the Trump administration should immediately shut down all asylum requests. Now is the president’s opportunity to make a new case to the American people and go beyond simply addressing a few billion in border funding.

76,325 – The number of total illegal aliens and inadmissible aliens apprehended at and between points of entry in the month of February. That is the highest number for a single month since April 2008, but very likely one of the highest months of all time for unique (non-repeating) illegal aliens, given that many of the apprehensions from last decade were multiple crossings of the same individual within hours or days. Today, according to Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, “We rarely arrest the same person twice in one year, much less in the same work shift.”

916,000 – The annual pace of February’s border flow if this continues. But Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) predicts that with the weather getting warmer over the next few months and the incentives for illegal immigration unaddressed, the numbers will grow larger.

40,325 – A record number of family unit apprehensions in February. That beats the record we just set in December 2018 by a whopping 26 percent.

136,150 – The number of family units apprehended between points of entry for the first five months of fiscal year 2019. This far surpasses the numbers for any previous full year.

165,568 – The number of family units apprehended between points of entry since Judge Dana Sabraw ruled last July that all parents or adults brought with children must be released with the children. During that last seven months, as many family units have been apprehended as in the previous 23 months.

2,023% – The percentage increase in monthly family unit apprehensions since the low of the “Trump effect” in April 2017 through February 2019. Yes: 2,023 percent increase.

311% – The percentage increase in family units apprehended by Border Patrol for the first five months of this fiscal year over the first five months of last fiscal year.

97% – The total percentage increase in all illegal alien apprehensions for the first five months of this fiscal year over the first five months of last fiscal year.

1689% – the increase in family units apprehended in the El Paso sector for the first five months of fiscal year 2019 over the same period last year. El Paso saw its highest apprehensions in February since April 2006. And many of those in 2006 were the same people coming back after being deported immediately, and they were deported again. Almost all of these coming in currently remain here indefinitely.

70 – Number of large groups, defined as 100 or more, coming in at once to surrender to border agents and shutting down their resources. There were 13 such groups in FY 2018, mainly in the latter part of the year when this phenomenon began. It was almost unheard of in previous years.

31,000 – The number of projected aliens taken to American hospitals by the end of the year if the current pace holds, as compared to 12,000 last year.

57,000 – The number of man-hours Border Patrol had to spend with aliens in our hospitals just since December 22. According to Brian Hastings, chief of Border Patrol operations, 25-45 percent of Border Patrol resources are now diverted to the processing and humanitarian functions rather than patrolling the border.

During the press conference when Trump announced his emergency declaration on February 15, the media demanded from the president a set of data to demonstrate the problem. Well, here is the data that shows the most evident indicators of an emergency – a skyrocketing trajectory on all fronts.

The question for us all is how bad things need to get before we finally respect our own national sovereignty and stop allowing the courts to encourage illegal aliens to come here? (For more from the author of “12 Astounding Numbers That Show the Whole Invasion of Our Border” please click HERE)

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Arizona Border Rancher: Our Border Agents Patrol ’10 Yards Behind the Line of Scrimmage’

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Is our government trying to stop and deter the invasion at the border, or is it simply trying to manage, process, apprehend, and arrest our way out of the problem? This question has real-life consequences for Jim Chilton, a prominent Arizona rancher who owns one of the largest properties on the border.

Jim and Susan Chilton own a 50,000-acre ranch south of the tiny town of Arivaca in Pima County, Arizona. Their ranch is 12 miles west of the Nogales point of entry, with rugged terrain separating the checkpoint and all its law enforcement assets from his “no man’s land,” which includes 14 miles of international border. According to Chilton, there is nothing close to a permanent Border Patrol presence at the border where his ranch is located, and his property has become a known drug and human smuggling route for the cartels, who are constantly surveilling his property. “My ranch is essentially controlled by cartel scouts,” says the fifth-generation rancher, who is wondering why the agents don’t permanently camp out right at his border.

“The fact is the Sinaloa Cartel has cartel scouts on our mountains and they have telephones with satellite encryption and high-value radios,” said Chilton in a wide-ranging interview. “We’ve uncovered extremely expensive binoculars left by one of the scouts chased off by one of my cowboys. They have night vision and rolled-down solar packs on their backs, so they can keep everything charged. They are on the tops of the mountains 24/7 guiding the drug packers through the country. They can see Border Patrol 5-15 miles away and they carefully move their people through our area. It’s outrageous.”

In any other country or any other era of our history, we’d consider this an invasion. An invasion would warrant, at the bare minimum, the Border Patrol and other assets holding the line right at the border and refusing to allow any entry of cartel activity on our soil. Most of those crossing in the remote areas aren’t even the bogus asylum seekers; they are the drug smugglers. Chilton was incredulous at the notion that drugs don’t cross between points of entry and invited the media to come to his ranch and see the photos of those coming over in camo with assault rifles.

Chilton described a frustration I’m hearing from several parts of the border, namely that the policy of our government is to keep the Border Patrol stationed in operating bases far from the border, essentially ceding all the land south of their presence, allowing the cartels to whittle away our sovereignty and the security of our border ranchers. To be clear, Jim is thankful when they do come, and indeed, one agent was almost killed on his ranch after being shot by a cartel smuggler last June, but he is stupefied as to why they won’t proactively park themselves right at the border and not let anything move across.

“The Border Patrol are in the Tucson station, which is 80 miles north of the border,” said Chilton, criticizing what is known as the “depth in defense” strategy. “It takes them several hours to go to the border after morning briefings and checking the vehicles, but they won’t stay at the international border.”

Thus the Chiltons’ entire ranch is outside the protection zone, open to the criminal activity and the drug smuggling which eventually affects the rest of the country. “The real drug packers we see drop off their drugs at a GPS site and then we see them going back south to Mexico.” All while the cartels complete their smuggling, Chilton complains that he “very seldom ever sees a Border Patrol agent” unless they are called in for a specific reason.

Chilton’s entire border region only has a cattle fence that “as an 80-year-old” he can get through himself. He believes we need agents actually stationed at the border itself, with access roads, not just responding from afar.

“The Tucson station has 650 agents and has 24 miles of responsibility. That is 27 agents per mile.” Chilton believes that is a line that can be held at that level of manpower. But given that the broader area is 4,000 square miles of responsibility, if you don’t put agents right at the line to deter border-jumpers, it’s like a losing game of football to deter them “from behind the scrimmage line.”

Most of his land is leased from the Forest Service and would be easy for the feds to control. In addition to seldom seeing border agents, he rarely sees Forest Service rangers.

“Does a football team on defense line up 10 yards behind the line of scrimmage? They’d lose every time. You need to be at the line of scrimmage, not behind the line and letting these drug packers come through.”

“As soon as Trump was elected, traffic stopped, but gradually increased again and was much higher this past year than in 2017.” He said most of the traffic in his region is drugs.

“I’m really happy they are doing things at the points of entry, but that will just push them through me.”

Chilton is frustrated that the agents are busy either operating around the point of entry, dealing with the asylum seekers, or parked in Tucson.

He expressed frustration at the refusal of CBP to change strategy and proactively prevent smugglers from getting onto our soil rather than trying to apprehend them later. “They say their strategy is multi-level defense and depth, meaning you come out halfway to the border, let people walk into the country, and apprehend them after they come in 10-15 miles. I say put the team on the line of scrimmage.”

“I have offered them 10 acres near the U.S.-Mexico boundary to patrol and to rent it for a forward operating base at a rate of a dollar a year. And if you can’t afford the dollar, I’ll give it to you.”

Chilton explained how he’s had five forest fires on his ranch over the years that he and his fellow ranchers believe were set by the cartels who camp out on his property because they have free rein. “Each one cost over $2 million to put out and [was] paid by you taxpayers.”

He went on to describe numerous fires in the broader region that were traced back to “drug packers and illegal immigrants” that destroyed homes, infrastructure, and timber, at a cost of hundreds of millions “hidden in the U.S. Forest Service’s budget.”

Furthermore, he asserted that when the smugglers get into the territory, this allows the cartel members already in the country and operating in the bigger cities to come pick them up in areas where they can circumvent the checkpoints. “The cartels have cellphones and communicate with each other and split up so that the agents need to scatter even when they do apprehend them.”

Judy Keeler, a prominent cattle rancher in New Mexico’s Hidalgo County, an area that has been flooded with illegal aliens this year, corroborated Chilton’s concern over CBP’s strategy of not holding the line at the border in her state as well. She owns two cattle ranches, parts of them further north and parts closer to the border. “Just north of Highway 9, we always have a lot of Border Patrol activity on our ranch. We’d always wondered why they waited to get after the people crossing the border, until we asked an agent, one of the Border Patrol’s finest, the boots on the ground. He told us they were not allowed to apprehend anyone until they had crossed Highway 9. Even though they have the technology to watch them crossing into the U.S., the boots on the ground cannot apprehend them until the immigrants have walked the five miles from the border.”

In Keeler’s opinion, “This only makes the jobs of the boots on the ground more difficult.”

“Several years ago, when we had a wave of human crossings, the Border Patrol’s agent in charge admitted at a Border Task Force meeting in Deming, New Mexico, that they were only able to apprehend one group out of every ten crossing Highway 9.”

For his part, Chilton and four other local ranchers in Arizona have formally petitioned CBP to construct fencing, roads, and technology, as well as “forward operation bases near the border barrier to effectively secure the international boundary between Nogales and Sasabe, Arizona.”

When I interviewed Jaeson Jones, a retired captain in the Texas Rangers who coordinated numerous counter-smuggling operations with Border Patrol during his career, he confirmed that this is indeed the strategy of Border Patrol.

The perception that the U.S. Border Patrol holds the line across all of the southwest border by having agents and assets preventing anything from crossing is not based in the reality of daily operations. The current model employed involves agents who mostly respond to investigate sensor hits, tower cameras, aerostats, aircraft, and even sign [foot] traffic that has detected someone who has crossed or is fixing to cross the border. From that point, agents then respond between the ports of entry to the location where people or contraband are most likely to be intercepted who are already on U.S. soil.

Many agents might not like being treated like soldiers on war footing rather than domestic law enforcement. A number of former border agents I’ve spoken to over the years have disagreed with the contention of the ranchers that they could park themselves on the border. They have defended the “depth in defense” tactics. Some have suggested it’s too dangerous for them to be right on the border in the isolated areas and that they lack the resources to do so anyway.

But if it’s too dangerous and uncomfortable for them, what about the ranchers and what about the rest of America that has to deal with border-jumpers and the crime they bring when they get away from the agents who aren’t holding the line?

This is where the military comes in, according to Chilton. “This is a national crisis, an emergency. We need the military at the border. But our experience in the past with the Obama administration when he called up the National Guard is that the poor guys died of boredom because they never saw action, even though the cartels were already watching them five miles into the border.”

“The National Guard was on a hill where they had a couple of miles between them and the border, and the two guys had orders not to fire unless fired upon. All a sudden they saw 100 or so people coming across the border with guns walking right toward them. They jumped into their vehicle, set off the alarm, and Border Patrol and the Sheriff’s Department and other officials rush to the spot. They never found anybody because it was a decoy action, where the Border Patrol focused on that spot while they were running drugs far away.”

Jaeson Jones agrees with the concerns of the ranchers and notes that it’s time for a multi-layered approach that will allow a mixture of local law enforcement, Border Patrol, and the military to hold the line of scrimmage. “The 21st-century model that should be employed is a preventative model, one that does not allow for the movement of any person or contraband between ports of entry by holding the line at the border,” he said. “While there are many logical reasons for the current approach – from lack of manpower [to] outdated equipment and even outdated agency outcome measures from the agency – what is clear is the need for a proven strategy of collaboration. It would fill the void for the lack of manpower, utilizing all agencies of the Homeland Security Enterprise (HSE) to help hold the line. This would include all federal government agencies and would require the assistance of local and state law enforcement. If we are to protect our border, then a preventative approach will be required.”

Indeed, the president has the power (8 U.S.C. § 1103(a)(10)) to deputize local law enforcement to “to perform or exercise any of the powers, privileges, or duties” of immigration enforcement in the event that the attorney general determines that there is “an actual or imminent mass influx of aliens.” He can also marshal all park rangers and Bureau of Land Management assets into securing the border together with the military.

With the lack of funds for more fencing and agents, Trump can beef up the line with local and state law enforcement as well as an unlimited deployment of the military.

As we continue to debate a border wall, which requires more appropriations from Congress, it might be worthwhile for the administration to explore what the executive can do with Border Patrol and the military to more aggressively block the actual invasion right at the border, a goal that would not require more funding from Congress. (For more from the author of “Arizona Border Rancher: Our Border Agents Patrol ’10 Yards Behind the Line of Scrimmage'” please click HERE)

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Funding U.S. Sovereignty

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We were a Nevada family when promoters first floated the idea of a high-speed magnetic-levitation (“maglev”) rail project between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It would travel across the desert at speeds up to 300 mph, arriving in Anaheim in 81 minutes.

We were stoked. My grandsons would be surfers! But like most such proposals, this one couldn’t find adequate financial backing.

A more recent fast-rail proposal would connect Los Angeles to San Francisco, 380 miles distant, at speeds up to 220 mph. This one found financing aplenty, but lacked adult supervision.

The initial 2008 estimate was $33.6 billion in construction costs. That’s what California voters agreed to. Completion was projected by 2028. By 2012, the California government said make that $53.4 billion. Then last year, they said – what the heck – make it $63.2 billion, but it won’t be finished until 2033. The boondoggle’s other legs lift the overall cost to $98.1 billion.

Former California Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown apparently wasn’t cut out for managing large projects like this one. Current Gov. Gavin Newsome pulled the plug shortly after his inauguration in January. “There’s been too little oversight,” he said, “and not enough transparency.”

But “before you celebrate the sudden outbreak of common sense in California,” as Investor’s Business Daily cracked last month, Newsome made the astonishing announcement that he still wants to build the bullet train from Merced (pop. 83,000) to Bakersfield (pop. 380,000).

In between the two is Fresno (pop. 512,000). It’s extremely unlikely that these populations will yield enough ridership to keep the rail system solvent. That’s $10.6 billion down the drain, just in construction costs, and then a system that will almost certainly bleed red ink deep into this century.

Far be it from me to stigmatize mental illness, but this appears to be lunacy. Can we at least agree that we don’t want our accountants to be lunatics? Still, it’s California. If you live in a different state, why should you care about the latest outbreak of moon-barking on the Left Coast? Because you’ve got $3.5 billion “skin in the game.”

Yes, your federal government has participated in the funding for this proposed project. It was supposed to be a matching grant, dollar-for-dollar. But by the end of last year, the state of California had spent $3 billion on the project, and only 15 percent was California money. The rest, a little over $2.5 billion, was your money.

Democrat Newsome has clung to the Merced-to-Bakersfield black hole because quitting would trigger “sending $3.5 billion in federal funding back to Donald Trump.”

This is a disturbing rationale. An American public official would rather pour $10.6 billion of hard-earned taxpayers’ money into a guaranteed failure than to return it to the people who may have better uses for it, maybe even an urgent need for it?

But I have to thank Gov. Newsome for provoking me to think that through. What could we do with $3.5 billion on the federal side?

Well, Congress said we can’t afford to fund $5 billion in border fencing. We only appropriated $1.375 billion for 55 miles of new fencing at the border. That’s $25 million per mile of fencing. At that rate, we could build another 140 miles of fence, for a combined total of 195 miles fenced this year.

But why does it cost so much? In 2007, when fencing was built under the Secure Fence Act of 2006, it cost $2.8 million per mile. By 2008, it cost $3.9 million per mile. I understand that labor costs escalate, and perhaps we’re building a higher quality of fence nowadays. But if the fence cost $10 million per mile, we could build 137 miles of fence with the Congressional appropriation, and 420 miles of fence with the repaid California rail grant. Even at $12.5 million, we could build 110 miles with the Congressional appropriation and 280 miles with the repaid California rail grant.

In the long run, we should finance the fence and all the necessary manpower and technology at the border by a tax on foreign remittances to the sources of illegal immigration.

That’s a tax on Western Union, Moneygram, bank transfers and money orders originating in the U.S. and destined for any of the countries that benefits from their citizens extracting wealth from our country and sending it home.

This is a fair tax because it burdens the groups that make immigration enforcement expensive. It doesn’t focus unfairly on Mexicans, but also on Central American sources of illegal immigration.

It also burdens illegal immigrants who have not come across the southern border, but have overstayed student and tourist visas. There are more illegal immigrants here from India, for example, than from Nicaragua.

It’s less fair that the tax on foreign remittances can’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. Even U.S. citizens would have to pay the tax to send money to friends and family in countries that are sources of large numbers of illegal immigrants. But the fact remains that they are removing wealth from our economy and our communities, on a one-way trip to foreign countries. We’re entitled to take that into account.

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Trump Admin Extends TPS Amnesty and Bows to Judicial Supremacy

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Once again, the executive and judicial branches have gotten together to nullify a sovereignty statute and grant indefinite amnesty to illegal aliens while saddling Americans with the cost and citizen children of illegal aliens who wrongly were awarded temporary legal status. We have a government of, by, and for illegal aliens.

Remember when Trump offered Democrats amnesty plus extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in exchange for wall funding? Well, yesterday his DHS secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, agreed to illegally extend this program for free simply because the powers that be in this administration support the amnesty agenda and the stealing of American sovereignty. This is a scam of issuing work permits for primarily illegal aliens who take advantage of a program designed for legal visitors who can’t return home because of a natural disaster. After promising to end it, Trump’s DHS extended TPS for 300,000 nationals of Sudan, El Salvador, Haiti, and Nicaragua. The overwhelming majority are from El Salvador, among them those with proven ties to MS-13. Pursuant to law, TPS should have expired for Sudan in 1997, Nicaragua in 1998, El Salvador in 2001, and Haiti in 2010.

The administration decided to give in to Judge Edward Chen of the Northern District of California, who illegally ruled that Trump must continue a program over which the judiciary has no control.

This decision is destructive on many levels, both to Trump’s immigration promises and to the growing tyranny of the courts. Trump is giving in to an illegal injunction issued by a single district judge in what is probably one of the worst abuses of power from a court in modern history.

Consider the following:

TPS is a discretionary act of leniency written into immigration code, not a mandatory In fact, it is only a temporary visa for those who cannot return home because of natural disasters or “other extraordinary and temporary conditions.” To use this program for illegal aliens and 20 years after a natural disaster in some cases is a violation of statute. For a district judge to then mandate that the administration violate statute on something that, even under the right circumstances, is only discretionary is legally unprecedented.

According to law (INA §244 (b)(1)), TPS may not be designated if the DHS secretary finds that allowing migrants to temporarily stay in the United States is against the national interest or for individuals with criminal convictions. This is solely up to the administration, not the courts.

Most egregiously, not only is a universal injunction by a district judge unconstitutional, as Clarence Thomas observed, statute explicitly bars the courts from reviewing complaints against termination of TPS. 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(5)(A) states unambiguously, “There is no judicial review of any determination of the [secretary of Homeland Security] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state under this subsection.” For a district judge to rule on this case last October is a violation of law. The judge should be removed from office, not legitimized with this decision.

By far, El Salvador is the home country of most of these bogus TPS claims. It is also the home of MS-13. As Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies has warned, by liberal judges conferring official status on these people, they have ensured that MS-13 gangsters here illegally are not deported. This is a classic example of how, much as with asylum and unaccompanied alien children, the liberal judges and past administrations have interpreted a statute in the exact opposite manner to its intended purpose. TPS, precisely because it’s not an immigration or amnesty program but rather a temporary dwelling, doesn’t require the applicants to show “good moral character.” Yet the Left has turned it into a permanent amnesty program that still, of course, does not require a showing of good character, which makes it much harder to get rid of the bad guys.

This decision of the administration is even more damaging on the judicial front than on the immigration front. It sets a baseline precedent that there is nothing a district judge can do that is out of bounds and that even if judges violate statute, not just on the merits but on their power to even hear the case, their illegitimate rulings will be countenanced as law. Trump is confronted with a challenge no other president has faced with a judiciary literally engaging in civil disobedience against immigration law. It’s understandable why, given the decade-long lionizing of judicial supremacy, he would be reluctant to pick a fight. But if he fails to do so, he will permanently set the baseline of judicial power over immigration. He has no choice but to fight.

As a result of this decision, the baseline is set that jurisdiction-stripping statutes mean nothing.

As a result of this decision, the baseline is set that universal injunctions are the law of the land.

As a result of this decision, the baseline is set that there is no area of immigration law and sovereignty off limits to the courts.

As a result of this decision, the baseline is set that courts can once again use Trump’s political statements against him as means of canceling his lawful powers, in contravention to the majority opinion in Trump v. Hawaii just last year. Judge Edward Chen, in his October ruling, said that Trump’s decision to use his unquestionable authority was “based on animus against non-white, non-European immigrants in violation of Equal Protection guaranteed by the Constitution.” Never mind the fact that, around the same time, the administration continued TPS for the country of Somalia.

The other point being missed here by some defenders of the White House is that Trump is destroying any shred of negotiating leverage he has with the Democrats over the wall. Just like he constantly renews DACA, he is now renewing TPS, thus giving Democrats what they want for free. Therefore, they have no incentive to play ball and offer him concessions in return for permanent amnesty when he is already agreeing to de facto indefinite amnesty. When a president blinks the first few times on ending an amnesty of previous administrations, there is not much fear from the Left that it won’t get extended forever.

It’s hard to tell which is worse: this administration’s affinity for amnesty or its ceding of power to the courts. Either way, the American citizen is left holding the bag, paying for the rope for MS-13 to hang us with, while their kids become citizens on our dime and our laws are unilaterally canceled by the unelected branches of government.

The problem in this administration is not the deep state. It’s the shallow state in the White House and in the Cabinet appointed by the president himself. Conservatives remain silent in deference at their own peril. (For more from the author of “Trump Admin Extends TPS Amnesty and Bows to Judicial Supremacy” please click HERE)

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