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The Media Willfully Ignores the Connection Between Killer Drugs and Illegal Immigration

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Organized crime cannot exist without political protection. That is an old law enforcement adage you can take to the bank when studying the nexus of illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Both are among the highest-profile, most visible, and most preventable forms of crime — if our politicians actually wanted them stopped. Meanwhile, the media is continuing to distract people by debating how much of the actual drug product comes in between points of entry, as opposed to at points of entry, rather than focusing on the people who actually organize, produce, and traffic the drugs and the politicians who protect them.

Our country is no longer facing a simple drug crisis, it is facing a chemical warfare crisis from Mexican cartels and the illegal aliens who peddle the drugs, usually coming in between points of entry. First it was the fentanyl-laced heroin, then it was the bizarre mix of meth or cocaine with fentanyl (an opioid with a psychostimulant); now they are marketing fake blue “Mexican oxy” pills that kids take for a “buzz” but all too often are found dead because they are really mixed with fentanyl to varying degrees.

Over the weekend, the AP reported on the surge of fentanyl deaths in Arizona and how young kids are now dying from these Mexican oxy pills that are laced with fentanyl and produced by the Sinaloa cartel. I confirmed with the Phoenix DEA office that the main hubs for trafficking these drugs into the country are in Tucson and Phoenix, where high-level “wholesale” cartel officials are operating and shipping to distributors in the Great Plains, the Midwest, and the East Coast after the drugs are brought across the border. According to the Arizona DEA, in fiscal year 2017, they seized 45,940 pills. That number shot up to 379,557 in FY 2018 and stood at 123,000 just for the first three months of FY 2019. It’s all coming from the Sinaloa cartel and is brought in mainly in the Nogales area and sent to the vast network of cartel officials in the major Arizona cities. They also confirmed that the increase is driven by fake Xanax pills as well as fake oxy.

What the media and most in Congress have missed about this poly-drug crisis (not opioid crisis) for the past few years is that it’s not being fueled by chronic pain patients on painkillers. It’s the worsening of the culture among our youth who are seeking a buzz or an out from their mental and emotional problems. That cultural demand is being met by the deadliest drugs we’ve ever been confronted with. This is why as synthetical opioids have surged, Arizona state and federal officials have seized 124 percent more meth in FY 2018 than in the previous year. Meth has the opposite effect of opioids and would certainly not be sought out by pain patients.

This is why there are major problems with drugs in schools in San Luis, a border town in Yuma County. The Yuma Police Department put out a warning this month about “recent overdose incidents in San Luis, Arizona” from ingested pills that look like oxys but contain fentanyl. We can intimidate doctors into never prescribing pain medication and we could harm post-operation and cancer patients from now until the end of time, but it will do nothing to protect our youth who get ensnared into the culture of drugs so long as the cartels are able to operate with impunity and make the price of these drugs cheap and therefore accessible to kids.

But the problem is not just in border counties and states. That is the wholesale point for the cartels, and funnily, they try to keep the violence to a minimum so as not to disrupt their operation. It’s more at the destination and distribution level on the East Coast where the violence of transnational gangs mixes with drug distribution for the cartels.

This is where we see that cartels not only have control of our border, but operate with latitude on our shores and have endless illegal alien and transnational criminal networks working for them in all our major cities and even mid-sized cities on the East Coast. This is the key to understanding how illegal immigration is driving the drug crisis.

A network of six drug traffickers in the Carolinas working for Cartel Jalisco New Generation, one of the rivals of the Sinaloa cartel, was recently broken up by federal authorities. They were moving large amounts of meth and cocaine for this brutal cartel, and all of them were illegal aliens. Central North Carolina is now dealing with cartel violence.

So why do liberals continue to deny that illegal immigration is driving the crisis?

To begin with, as we’ve pointed out before, the entire notion that drugs only come in at points of entry is laughable. Tell that to the ranchers who deal with the drug trafficking every day. Obviously, we don’t have hard statistics because we catch almost none of those drugs, given that the cartels purposely use illegal immigrants to tie down the border agents while they strategically bring in the drugs and the criminals who cook, distribute, and collect profits from them. As Mark Morgan, Border Patrol chief during the Obama administration, told CR, “There is no way with any degree of certainty to know the quantity of drugs entering our country because at least 50 percent of the southwest border is wide open.” He explained how “we know the cartels exploit this vulnerability every day while using illegal immigration as a diversion.”

“Additionally, the irony with this false narrative is the same people who acknowledge massive amounts of drugs are seized at the POEs to debunk the need for a physical barrier are the same individuals who deny there is a crisis.”

Robert Murphy, special agent in charge of Atlanta’s DEA office, told CR in an exclusive interview last week, “We are arguing about the wrong thing here. It’s not the product that matters. The product doesn’t sell itself or produce itself. It’s the people who make the cartel run, collect the cash, do the distribution, engage in violence, and run operations for the cartel.” And while a lot of the drugs come in at points of entry, “the people coming across the border to make and distribute the drugs are coming here illegally.” As Murphy warned, “The people who are here operating the networks are all illegal immigrants” and “are not coming in at checkpoints.”

Illegal immigration fuels the cartels in multiple ways. The magnets that attract illegal immigration give the cartels billions in revenue to produce and grow their drug trafficking. The cartels orchestrate strategic diversions of illegal immigrants engaging Border Patrol agents. Also, teenagers often serve as drug mules because the cartels know we won’t prosecute them. Even the more innocent illegal immigrants are often forced to report to stash houses on our side of the border after being released by agents pursuant to court orders in order to pay off their debt.

It’s really simple. If we pursued interior enforcement, banned sanctuary cities, and ended catch-and-release at our border, which enables the cartel smuggling, they wouldn’t have a profitable drug network that could operate in this country. It’s not about the product; it’s about the people doing it, and the people doing it always have political protection in the illegal immigration issue.

Immigration and drug officials in New England have told me they could clean up the drug problem there in no time if they had the license to actually follow immigration law and simply remove all those aliens engaging in drug trafficking in Lawrence, Massachusetts, many of whom have family or organizational ties.

Why don’t we do it? Because illegal immigrants and drug traffickers have political protection. The whole reason the war on drugs has been unsuccessful is because the combined elements of law enforcement have not been focused on the human chain between the border and point of ingestion of the illegal drugs.

Look no further than the local politics of the Rio Grande Valley, which has been the hot spot of illegal immigration for years. How can human and drug smuggling continue to thrive out in the open? The New York Times summed it up this week in lessons learned from the El Chapo trial:

El Gallo — Tomas Reyes Gonzalez, a drug trafficker now in federal prison — supplied the cash to the former Hidalgo County sheriff, Guadalupe Trevino, for his re-election campaign. Another former Hidalgo County sheriff took bribes to allow a convicted drug dealer to have conjugal visits at the county jail, including in the jail library and in the sheriff’s private office. Yet another former sheriff in neighboring Cameron County protected and assisted cocaine dealers, and is now Federal Inmate No. 51689-179.

The corruption that took down those three border sheriffs in 1994, 2005 and 2014 continues today. Next month, the former police chief in the town of La Joya is scheduled to go on trial, after he was indicted on drug charges and accused by federal authorities of helping a drug-trafficking organization transport narcotics while working as a police sergeant in Progreso, Tex.

Now, keep in mind that the liberal Rio Grande Valley is the only region where the budget bill allows Trump to build fencing, yet local officials are purposely given veto power. Jaeson Jones, a retired captain for the Texas Department of Public Safety who directed counter-narcotics and counter-smuggling operations for years, told me that local officials in these counties wouldn’t even allow them to cut down the tall grass around the Rio Grande River where the cartel operatives would hide out.

In other words, the lesson of drugs and migrants is that the flow can only continue if the political powers both in Washington and around our border want it to. And they do.

What would you call this statement made by Elizabeth Warren?

With the incontrovertible data that prescriptions have plummeted and that most overdose deaths are due to illicit drugs trafficked by illegal alien networks, for a politician to say we need to stop focusing on Mexican cartels and start focusing even more on cutting off pain medication to those in need is the ultimate political corruption.

Until we address the systemic upstream political corruption, the drug issue will only intensify along with the illegal immigration crisis. (For more from the author of “The Media Willfully Ignores the Connection Between Killer Drugs and Illegal Immigration” please click HERE)

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House Conservatives Urge Trump Admin to Declare Cartels Terror Organizations

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Drug cartel operations have made a mockery of our laws, flooded our streets with deadly illicit drugs, and endangered our citizens for years; now, two conservative lawmakers want the Trump administration to give them the same treatment as terror groups.

House Freedom Caucus members Mark Green, R-Tenn., and Chip Roy, R-Texas, announced Wednesday that they would send a letter asking Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to designate dangerous drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The letter claims several cartels already meet the three criteria for FTO designation and makes the case that it would give law enforcement even more tools to combat the cartels’ deadly, dangerous, and destructive operations:

“Numerous drug cartels employ terrorist tactics that clearly fit this definition,” it reads. “These groups use terror to intimidate and advance their agenda. They threaten the stability of governments across the globe.”

“These cartels have utilized barbaric tactics including those adopted by ISIS and al Qaeda – murdering and torturing innocents, destabilizing countries and assassinating members of law enforcement,” reads a press release from Green’s office. “Moreover, they threaten our homeland security. Our communities suffer from the powerful and dangerous drugs cartels make available to our citizens. Fentanyl and heroin overdoses have taken thousands of lives.”

Green is a former Army ranger and was deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Cartels are the problem and it is time we started acting like it,” Roy said in a statement about the letter. “Cartels are endangering American citizens, our Mexican neighbors, and the migrants who seek to come here.”

Conservative Review senior editor Daniel Horowitz made the case for designating the cartels as terror groups in a January article.

“Imagine for a moment that groups of Islamic terrorists set up shop at our border, killed tens of thousands of Mexicans, mutilated bodies, controlled a flow of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants every year over our border, and flooded our country with drugs and gangs,” Horowitz wrote. “Now look at the reality. All of this is happening at our border and in our communities, with one exception. The perpetrators are not Islamic terrorists.”

“Although many of these groups have already been designated as Transnational Criminal Organizations,” he explains, “we will not be able to defend our national integrity and security with the tools we have, such as special operations strikes, until they are designated as terrorists.”

According to Green and Roy’s press release, the FTO designation in this case would make it unlawful for any person who knowingly assists a cartel to enter the U.S., while also barring any known member from legal entry. It would allow the Treasury Department to block all cartel assets, and it would also “further stigmatize these groups both at home and abroad.”

The proposal even has the support of Obama administration Border Patrol chief Mark Morgan, who told Blaze Media that simply putting more resources at the border, while important, “will not stop the Mexican cartels’ efforts to threaten our country” and that they “will continue to develop new tactics and techniques.”

“The cartels must be targeted … with the same level of commitment and tenacity as we have against terrorist organizations,” Morgan continued. “To successfully eliminate the threat cartels bring to our country, we must do everything we can to actively destroy them as an organization.” (For more from the author of “House Conservatives Urge Trump Admin to Declare Cartels Terror Organizations” please click HERE)

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Border County Commissioner: Ranchers Are Scared to Report Drug Trafficking Crimes

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If ranchers in our own country are scared to report crimes, not of internal criminals, but of foreign invaders at our border, is that a national emergency? And if their properties are being used for drug smuggling, does that count as drugs coming in between ports of entry in the minds of the media? And if you live in a poorer county at the border in New Mexico, are you as much of a citizen as a resident of Maryland or Virginia?

In a wide-ranging conversation with Joel Edwards, one of the county commissioners in Hidalgo County, New Mexico, he expressed deep concern for his constituents in this hard-hit county. “One of my primary responsibilities is to try to see that the residents of my county can enjoy a solid quality life and they don’t have to live in fear for their lives,” said Edwards. “You know, they shouldn’t have to live in fear that somebody is going to steal their vehicle or their four-wheeler or their horses, just because they live on an international border.”

Edwards explained that the folks in Washington live near counties that are completely protected and have robust resources to deal with internal crime, yet his county is left in the lurch dealing with “sophisticated cartels” coming over an international border. And that is scaring his residents. “Some of them are afraid to even come forward because they live right there on the border,” said Edwards of the ranchers encountering drug traffickers dressed in paramilitary getup. “Some of my residents go back and forth across the border because they actually have some family on the other side of the border, and they fear retaliation from the cartel if they cooperate and [try] to do something about the border problem.”

As I’ve reported before, Hidalgo County has just four sheriff’s deputies for a county of several thousand square miles, with no law enforcement presence in the border ranch areas south of Highway 9. The county has money to add only two more deputies, a drop in the bucket for an area that size. “You know, we’re a poor county. The average income in this county is small, considerably small compared to the part of the country where the media lives,” said Edwards.

Perhaps that is why the media sees no emergency at the border. Hidalgo County alone has been forced to absorb roughly half of the more than 60 groups of 100-300 migrants at a time being smuggled through by the cartels since last October. While the cartels strain our Border Patrol with the health care and welfare of the migrants, they engage in their other criminal activity.

Edwards called the media’s assertion that drugs only come in at the points of entry “asinine” and invited anyone from the media to come on a tour with him and his rancher constituents.

“You know, we visited ranchers that actually showed us pictures of the drug trafficking and told us stories about it. The cartels have a lot of the latest technology; the people that are coming across, they have sophisticated communication equipment. They’re not just desperate migrants. These people are … up on technology, they’re up on weaponry. Their loads that they’re carrying are worth thousands and thousands of dollars. They are protecting it because that’s how they’re making their money.” . . .

They are at least one or two hours away from any civilization, with no cell phone reception. Given that there is no permanent federal, state, or county law enforcement presence to protect them, Edwards told me his ranchers are too scared to share their stories with the media. But he did direct me to a Facebook post of Kari Wade, a constituent in his county, who responded to those who don’t see any emergency at our border:

Isn’t this why we have a military? Why are our own citizens less worth protecting than citizens of foreign countries in the Middle East?

This is not even right at the border. Edwards tells me that anything south of Interstate 10 is within the drug trafficking corridor. That is roughly 70 miles into the state. Yet the state’s governor doesn’t even think there is a problem!

Many of the illegal aliens passing through are growing bolder and more belligerent. Tisha Green, who is the county manager appointed by Edwards and his two colleagues on the county commission, told me the ranchers have witnessed a disturbing change in the migrants’ attitudes, which is further concerning the ranchers. “When ranchers would encounter criminals on their property, in the past, they used to ask to use the rancher’s phone, ask for food, water, and/or transportation. Now they demand it, by stating you will give me a ride, you will give me food, and you will give me your phone.”

What about fencing? As I reported in my last article on Hidalgo County, Edwards warned that the fencing is so poor that the cartels even drive vehicles over the wired fencing and place ramps over the Normandy barriers. That “happens a lot” in his county.

What allows the cartels to tie down border agents, who are essentially the only law enforcement lifeline for the ranchers? The endless flow of the migrants and the caravans. Last week, El Paso Sector Border Patrol Agent Fidel Baca told Fox News that the large groups of migrants are not showing up specifically in this remote location “by coincidence.” It’s the criminal organizations taking advantage of the remoteness of the area to do their work.

Thus, as long as the magnet of catch-and-release continues, the cartels will have their strategic diversion to tie down the agents and endanger the local residents with their smuggling activity. Yesterday, Breitbart Texas posted leaked photos of the overcrowded conditions in the El Paso CBP detention center. But a large number of those migrants initially pass through Hidalgo County, New Mexico, which has much fewer resources and is being strained every day. David Whipple, the head of the seven-man EMS team in Lordsburg, the Hidalgo County seat, confirmed to me last week that the migrants are usually transferred to El Paso after about three days. Thus, everything you see in the large holding facility in El Paso begins as a colossal strain on a county of 5,000 residents.

This is important as the president considers his next steps following his declaration of an emergency at the border. While a border wall is effective, catch-and-release is the cause of the problem and something that can be ended using executive power. Moreover, we need the military to protect these residents as Border Patrol deals with the legal land mines of asylum processing. This is why we have a military. This is not about using military personnel for immigration processing, but to repel what is quite clearly a foreign invasion of paramilitary groups.

The media and politicians living in their gated communities could never relate to what Edwards deals with as a county official at our frontier, because to them, an emergency is if they only get three bars of signal on their phones one day. (For more from the author of “Border County Commissioner: Ranchers Are Scared to Report Drug Trafficking Crimes” please click HERE)

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Democrats Don’t Want ICE Notified When Illegal Aliens Try to Purchase Guns

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By Townhall. As the debate over illegal immigration continues to rage, Democrats continue to prove they are proponents of open borders and lawlessness.

The latest example comes from Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, who is berating Democrats for protecting illegal aliens who attempt to purchase firearms and fail a background check.

Last year a record number of illegal aliens, millions of them, tried to purchase firearms in the United States. Not only is it illegal to enter the United States without permission, it’s also illegal to purchase or possess a gun.

(Read more from “Democrats Don’t Want ICE Notified When Illegal Aliens Try to Purchase Guns” HERE)

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ICE Detainees Stage Partial Hunger Strike Over ‘Sarcastic Remarks,’ ‘Weird’ TV Sounds

By Boston Herald. ICE detainees in Boston say they’re on a hunger strike, citing a range of grievances including “sarcastic remarks” from guards, bland food, insufficient bathroom breaks and “weird”-sounding TVs — though some are eating food bought from the canteen.

The detainees — held at Suffolk County House of Correction while awaiting deportation and immigration hearings — wrote in a Feb. 10 letter to the sheriff’s office and ICE: “Food is always bad. There is no energy. Most of the time, the food is bland and there is no condiment such as salt and pepper. The food portion is very unbalanced. One tray might have a very small portion while others might have a very ridiculously big portion. There is no fruit.”

The list also has complaints such as, “When buzzed, the C.O. takes too long to open the door,” and that three TVs “make weird sounds. It’s hard to watch them without getting annoyed.”

Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. (Read more from “ICE Detainees Stage Partial Hunger Strike Over ‘Sarcastic Remarks,’ ‘Weird’ TV Sounds” HERE)

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The Hidden Amnesty Provision in the ‘Border Security’ ‘Deal’

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We’re finding more and more problems in the proposed “border security” “deal” being peddled by congressional negotiators and leaders.

Not only does it fund a laundry list of government programs rather than fully securing the southern border, it also contains a pretty stunning amnesty provision.

Initially flagged by Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, section 224(a) of the almost 1,200-page spending proposal would prohibit federal immigration enforcement from detaining anyone who has any sort of relationship with an unaccompanied alien child (UAC), even as a “potential sponsor” or “member of a household of a sponsor or potential sponsor.”

“That’s de facto sanctuary for anyone near a UAC,” Vaughn said of the measure on social media. “Ridiculous.”

Here’s the text of the section (emphasis mine):

None of the funds provided by this Act or any other Act, or provided from any accounts in the Treasury of the United States derived by the collection of fees available to the components funded by this Act, may be used by the Secretary of Homeland Security to place in detention, remove, refer for a decision whether to initiate removal proceedings, or initiate removal proceedings against a sponsor, potential sponsor, or member of a household of a sponsor or potential sponsor of an unaccompanied alien child ( as defined in section 462 (g) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 U.S.C. 279(g))) based on information shared by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

This would make obvious further mockery of U.S. immigration law. Additionally, children are already being exploited and trafficked in order to manipulate the loopholes in America’s asylum system. This is a proposal to turn children into the ultimate human shields against deportation for would-be illegal immigrants and cartel traffickers. One can only imagine that will do to the rates of near-border kidnappings and human trafficking associated with illegal immigration. (For more from the author of “The Hidden Amnesty Provision in the ‘Border Security’ ‘Deal'” please click HERE)

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What Happens When Illegal Aliens and Mexican Cartels Shut Down Our Government?

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Why is it that the media and politicians are terrorized at the prospect of a partial government shutdown at the end of the week? Presumably, because they fear certain nonessential functions of government will halt and eventually some essential functions could be slowed down as well. But why is there no concern when brutal Mexican cartels are able to shut down basic services in border counties with waves of hundreds of impoverished and sick migrants, strain their social services, and fleece the pocketbooks of American taxpayers? Isn’t that the shutdown we should be addressing?

Hidalgo County, which fills out the bootheel of New Mexico, has four sheriff’s deputies, seven emergency medical services personnel, a small health clinic in Lordsburg, and a few volunteer EMTs who provide health care out of their homes or in clinics in rancher villages like Animas. It might seem like subpar infrastructure for health and public safety, but it is enough for 5,000 peaceful citizens used to living a life of rugged individualism. However, what happens when cartels target that county for an invasion of at least 28 groups of 100-400 volatile migrants at a time within a period of four months? What happens to their services then? You might call it a government shutdown.

It’s bad enough when such a volume of illegal immigration is driven into more built-up counties along the border with greater infrastructure, such as Yuma County, Arizona. In southwest Arizona, there is a city right at the international port of entry in San Luis with a substantial CBP headquarters to process the illegal immigrants. Yet it’s still a strain on the local counties. As Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot said on my podcast last month, the migration just in Yuma is costing about $1.2 billion. He noted that “the Border Patrol has to buy diapers, feminine hygiene, hot meals, etc.” and “have essentially turned into a bed and breakfast and transportation hub for the cartels to further their criminal enterprise.”

While most of this cost is eaten by federal taxpayers, it also strains the local government. “Just last year alone, the Border Patrol took 1,700 illegal immigrants to our local hospital, which took about 10,000 Border Patrol man-hours off the field, and it cost us taxpayers $700,000 in medical bills,” said the sheriff.

Now picture Hidalgo County, New Mexico, with 5,000 people in 4,200 square miles with not a single village, never mind a town, anywhere in the southern part of the county, and a tiny CBP headquarters at a border crossing that has nothing but a single building with no city around it. Antelope Wells point of entry was originally manned by a single agent and saw, on average, four vehicles per day pass through the checkpoint. The main CBP headquarters, which in itself is not big, is a 90-minute drive northwest in Lordsburg. The nearest hospital is roughly the same distance northeast in Deming, which is in neighboring Luna County. The Deming hospital itself only has a few physicians on staff now treating all these illegal migrants.

This is why an invasion of thousands of migrants is so devastating to this particular county. As migrants come in with influenza, scabies, flesh-eating bacteria, and all sorts of sicknesses, not only has the Border Patrol been commandeered into an EMT service, as it has been in all border sectors, the paltry services of Hidalgo and surrounding counties are marshalled into this free service for illegal aliens as well.

I spoke with David Whipple, the head of the seven-man EMS team in Lordsburg, the Hidalgo County seat, and he told me that while CBP has stepped up in recent weeks to provide its own EMTs, his tiny ambulance service has had to drive all the way down to the border, pick up sick migrants together with at least two border agents at a time, and drive them to the hospital in Deming and then back again.

“That is a six-hour trip, so it takes one crew and ambulance out of service for six hours for just one patient. That definitely strains us because we have a crew gone for so long. … We might only leave two people in our service area during these trips.”

Hidalgo County can bill Border Patrol for the cost, but the feds don’t pay back in a timely fashion. This small service is owed between $40,000 and $50,000, according to Whipple. But the lost time that endangers county residents who pay taxes can never be paid back. “We can take care of our own with limited staff; we have the same staff now as we had back when I started 30 years ago, and we did fine until this hit. We might have to add more EMS staff in the future if this doesn’t let up.”

Joel Edwards, a retired teacher in Hidalgo who now serves as one of the three county commissioners, expressed his frustration with the lack of resources and attention to the plight of his county. “The clinics try to squeeze everyone in, including the migrants coming with border agents. Nobody is being turned away, so they are doubling and tripling up during the same appointment times and some of our residents are getting irritated for having longer wait periods and less time with the physician.”

Even more disturbing is the fact that for those illegal immigrants who aren’t as severely sick, Border Patrol will often take them to the tiny clinics in Lordsburg (pop. 2,500) and Animas (pop. 237). The facility in Lordsburg has two physicians, and the one in Animas has one nurse practitioner. Local citizens have to wait in line while those who violate our sovereignty get served for free and expose the staff to diseases that we thought were long eradicated.

“We would like to think that we have a safe environment; we’ve vaccinated our kids and eradicated many of these diseases we’ve stopped worrying about,” said Edwards. “Now our population is subjected to having to rub elbows with people who have various diseases, and some of these diseases, we don’t know what they are. Just like with the drugs, we are worried about the safety of our residents.”

Edwards also discussed concerns about the lack of local law enforcement to deal with the cartel activity threatening the ranchers at the border. “Some people think that these ranchers down on the border are a bunch of whiners, but I’m here to tell you they are tough people. They are not used to having to ask for stuff; they are self-sufficient. All they want is an opportunity to ranch and farm their land in a safe manner.”

Edwards confirmed that the ranchers are calling for barriers that will effectively “restrict this illegal traffic coming across with drugs and human smuggling.”

“When you head towards Hachita, the fence disappears and there’s nothing but a barbed-wire barrier. I can walk through that fence without it even slowing me down. There are places where you can just walk under the fence.”

Edwards noted that the low wired fences are even worse than the Normandy barriers because they can’t even fully stop vehicle traffic. “There are places where they simply take the ties off of the barbed wire as it goes onto the ‘T’ posts. They undo the ties and hold the wire down, standing on it, while someone else drives a vehicle over it. After they cross, they turn it loose and put the wire back, so you can’t even tell without close inspection that they took the wires off the post.”

“I’ve heard this all from the ranchers. … We are a real soft spot at the border.”

This the most basic shutdown of the federal and local government, and it’s being done by belligerent and dangerous cartels.

“We had asked for help and didn’t even get an answer to our letter,” said the commissioner, referring to a letter his county manager wrote to state and federal officials asking for more resources.

In the Declaration of Independence, one of the indictments against King George is that he failed to protect the colonists from the Indians at the frontier and even incited their invasions. The core reason why we formed a federal government 13 years after the revolution is because we needed a stronger government to protect the sovereignty of all the states and counties. This is why we have a government. So that ranchers at our border can feel just as safe from foreign cartels and their evil activity as those living in the Acela corridor of the northeast. We don’t have a government to get involved in every aspect of our society and economy. And when the federal government fails to do its job in deterring external chaos, it hurts the internal affairs of counties like Hidalgo. That is the true government shutdown that few in Washington care about. (For more from the author of “What Happens When Illegal Aliens and Mexican Cartels Shut Down Our Government?” please click HERE)

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New Mexico Gov. Grisham Is Allowing the Invasion of Her State

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If a governor wishes a border invasion away, does that make her state safer? In the case of New Mexico’s Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, it appears so. Her method of dealing with the plea of her citizens in border counties for more resources is to yank even the existing insufficient resources while proclaiming that no border emergency exists.

Last week, I profiled Hidalgo County, New Mexico, as the hot spot for human and drug trafficking by the Sinaloa cartel. Despite what Gov. Grisham says, the numbers don’t lie. There has been an unconscionable 1,602 percent increase in family units crossing in the El Paso sector for the first three months of this fiscal year relative to this time in FY 2018. The number of unaccompanied alien minors also spiked the most in this sector. While illegal immigration has spiked in most border sectors since last year, no other border sector comes close in terms of increase in trajectory. The El Paso sector includes three border counties in New Mexico and two in west Texas. Most of the latest criminal activity appears to be coming in on the New Mexico side because the state lacks the political will Texas has to deter the cartels and also has limited resources in its border counties.

But in response to a letter written by Hidalgo County officials pleading for more resources to deal with the crime, health concerns, and sanitation problems both from the migrants and the cartel criminals, the governor rudely rebuffed the request and accused the local ranchers of being anti-immigrant stooges of President Trump. Now she has announced she is pulling the National Guard troops away from the border. The guard troops have been there since last April, when the president ordered the deployment in concert with the state governors.

“I’m not going to participate, nor do I think it’s appropriate in any shape or fashion to use the National Guard to attempt to militarize the border where we’re dealing with asylum seekers who their constitutional rights continue to be breached,” Grisham said at a press conference.

Well, the fact that she is at least admitting that there are now record numbers of asylees coming over is an improvement from her denying the crisis altogether. But she is purposely ignoring the fact that the cartels are using the bogus asylees as diversions to bring in all the criminal activity. I’ve got news for Grisham: the cartels have already militarized the border.

An open invitation to the cartels

Maybe Grisham should speak with border agents in the area. She might then understand that thousands of “asylum seekers” don’t just come over on their own. Ramiro Cordero, a local border agent, told the Albuquerque Journal that the cartels are bringing over drugs when agents are tied up with the asylum seekers, especially in areas with no fencing. He explained that this is why we are actually hardly catching any drugs between points of entry any more – because the cartels have our agents strapped down managing the invasion rather than deterring it:

Such seizures have become less common, however, Cordero said, due to the number of agents “busy” with large migrant groups crossing the southern border.

In 2006, he said most migrants were Mexican nationals and could be turned back to their country of origin, but now many are from Central America and have to be detained.

“You can imagine what that does to personnel,” he said. “This is what we’re facing.”

Yet Grisham opposes more manpower and more fencing at the border. As of now, Hidalgo County has either Normandy-style vehicle barriers or barbed-wire fencing only a few feet high that anyone can walk across. . .

The chicken wire will really stop them! The governor feels no need for a real wall or for the National Guard to help those border agents overwhelmed by the invasion.

County Manager Green, a registered Democrat (no tool of President Trump!), told me that her county is “nowhere close to where we need to be” in terms of resources from the state and the feds. She said she has just four sheriff’s deputies to deal with the increased crime from the cartels, and the state has only provided six troopers from the Department of Public Safety and 12 National Guardsmen.

“We still receive calls from ranchers who don’t feel they have been heard,” said Green. “Nor do they feel like a real solution is in the works by the state. This has been problematic for years, yet it seems to be more pronounced over the last three months. Most ranchers are fearful for several reasons to report incidents that continue to occur; therefore there isn’t an accurate data collection of actual occurrences they are faced with daily!”

Green bemoaned the fact that the cartels know they have absolutely no law enforcement on duty from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. every day.

The cartels have already targeted New Mexico as the new soft spot of our border, and this decision will only further embolden them. Jaeson Jones, retired captain for the Texas Department of Public Safety, who actively monitors cartel movements through a series of informants, was very concerned about the growing trend of migration in New Mexico due to the dynamics of the cartel warfare. “The decision to pull our military off the border in New Mexico will have serious consequences for American citizens,” said Jones. “The cartels had already begun moving more people toward New Mexico to avoid the buildup of military along the Texas/Mexico border and to avoid cartel-on-cartel violence in Tamaulipas, Mexico. Illegal apprehensions crossing into New Mexico have risen by hundreds of percent in the last few months. The cartels will exploit this troop withdrawal, and crime across New Mexico will increase dramatically.”

Indeed, the stepped-up enforcement in Texas has already worked to drive the migration westward. Reuters is reporting that between the extra-military presence in Central Texas, the violence of the Zetas splinter cartels on the Mexican side, and the promise from the governor of the Coahuila state to block all migrants, the latest caravan of 1,700 Central Americans is looking to head west. The New Mexico governor’s decision to pull back the troops is an invitation for them to come through the neighboring Mexican states controlled by Sinaloa and enter the U.S. at Antelope Wells in Hidalgo County.

So, if more manpower or fencing is not needed, what is Grisham’s plan to protect her state?

She has none.

Evidently, Grisham feels that she represents 7.8 billion people of the world but not her own citizens, whom she swore an oath to protect. She believes that the Constitution grants an affirmative right for anyone to demand immigration status, but not for ranchers to be protected from the cartels and a U.S. county to be shielded from an external invasion.

The president can act and fill the void of Grisham’s betrayal

It’s time for the president to take over the New Mexico Guard and do the job the governor refuses to do. Last April, when President Trump called out the Guard to help assist the border patrol, he did so using Title 32 authority, which works with the consent of the governor while keeping the individual state Guard units under the control of the governors. However, with Gov. Grisham refusing to cooperate, President Trump can use Title 10 status to federalize the Guard units and keep them solely under his control at the border (the same way he can deploy them to Afghanistan or elsewhere) if he feels we are facing an invasion or problems that cannot be dealt with by civilian law enforcement.

This law is pursuant to Congress’ enumerated power in Art. I Sec. 8 to “provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions” and “to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States.” The reason why we have the National Guard, referred to as “organized militias” during our Founding, is precisely to repel this sort of invasion from belligerent criminal organizations. While there was much debate among our Founders, and even concern, about the power to use the militia internally to deal with rebellion, nobody doubted its use to repel foreign invasions like those we are experiencing today from the Mexican cartels.

As then-Vice President James Monroe wrote to the chairman of the Senate Military Committee in February 1815, “The power which is thus given to Congress by the people of the United States, to provide for calling forth the militia for the purposes specified in the Constitution, is unconditional.” He explains that it is “a complete power, vested in the National government, extending to all those purposes” because if it were “dependent on the assent of the Executives of the individual States it might be entirely frustrated.”

During his visit today to El Paso, Trump would be wise to call the National Guard into federal service and designate the cartels as terrorist groups. These are all powers he holds unquestionably, and using them would be an effective leverage point in budget negotiations over the border wall.

Hidalgo County, in many ways, reflects America. It has picked the winner of the presidential election in almost every race since 1932. The county officials are of mixed background and work together. They have enough resources to deal with 5,000 peaceful citizens, but they don’t have the resources to protect 5,000 square miles from paramilitary organizations invading their jurisdiction. County Manager Tisha Green told me that “to ensure the safety and welfare of its citizens” they are “hiring two additional officers out of our general fund budget.” But they need more, and they shouldn’t have to pay for a federal and state responsibility dealing with an external challenge to national sovereignty. If the New Mexico governor wants to bury her head in the sand, President Trump should act on their behalf. (For more from the author of “New Mexico Gov. Grisham Is Allowing the Invasion of Her State” please click HERE)

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Stacey Abrams Forgets the Obama Administration Put Kids in Cages

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. . .During her remarks about immigration, [Stacey] Abrams conveniently gave credit to President Barack Obama for “humane” policies.

From 2014:

According to sources on the ground in Nogales, who have asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing their jobs, 1000 OTM (other than Mexican) unaccompanied juveniles from Central America are already being sheltered in a warehouse and Border Patrol agents are expecting 2000 children by the end of next week. Estimates show overall 60,000 unaccompanied juveniles will illegally cross into the United States this year.

“It’s just chain-link cells so we have aliens sleeping all over the floor and they told us to probably expect another thousand over the next week, week and a half,” another Border Patrol agent tells Townhall. “We have these huge chain link cages, 20-feet tall with razor wire around them, this is inside a warehouse. They are probably 50 by 100 [feet] and there’s probably 10 or 11 of these big cages like that and so there’s probably 100-200 aliens in each cell, or cage and there’s just park benches right down the middle, two rows of park benches and then they give them these little rubber mats, a little foam pad to lay on. We don’t have enough blankets so they’re issuing out those foil blankets, it’s like a piece of tin foil and that’s all they get. There are so many people crammed. The smell is just horrendous, horrendous.”

(Read more from “Stacey Abrams Conveniently Forgets the Obama Administration Put Kids in Cages” HERE)

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SOTU: Trump Calls on Congress to Put Drug and Human Traffickers out of Business at the Border. Kamala Harris Shakes Her Head ‘No’

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As President Donald Trump addressed the illegal immigration issue in his State of the Union address, Democrats were notably silent, refusing to stand or clap.

At one point, after Trump called on Congress to “confront an urgent national crisis” and “secure our very dangerous southern border” and said we should be committed to putting “the ruthless coyotes, cartels, drug dealers, and human traffickers out of business,” Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., actually shook her head “no.”

Trump will have no problem running against Democratic candidates this radical. (For more from the author of “SOTU: Trump Calls on Congress to Put Drug and Human Traffickers out of Business at the Border. Kamala Harris Shakes Her Head ‘No'” please click HERE)

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Non-Citizens Voting in Our Elections Is a Huge Problem

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Let’s just imagine for a moment that there weren’t millions of criminals among the illegal aliens invading our country. Let’s assume that we are not dying from drugs, gangs, and diseases brought in and that there are no violent cartels bringing them in. By itself, the fact that illegal immigrants are likely voting in our elections is a national emergency in its own right that should demand immediate attention from our political leadership. The latest news from Texas’ election officials should raise the prominence of this most odious manifestation of stolen sovereignty, but thus far, aside from a Trump tweet, it has not blown up into a national issue.

Over the weekend, the Texas Department of Public Safety released the details of a voter registration analysis showing that 95,000 registered voters are suspected of having registered to vote as non-citizens. They further found that 58,000 of those registered voters cast ballots at least once since 1996.

Attorney General Ken Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott immediately highlighted the importance of this finding and how urgent it is that the state act upon it:

The state government is calling on all the counties to send out letters to those people on this list and ask them to respond to an inquiry whether they have indeed become naturalized citizens. The 11-month investigation ordered by Paxton showed that these 95,000 individuals who applied for driver’s licenses as aliens registered to vote at some later date. According to the Longview News-Journal, the Texas Tribune contacted 13 of 15 counties with the highest numbers of these registered voters. Only one county, Galveston, said it is sending letters immediately.

Amazingly, within hours of the release, the Texas Tribune sought to “fact-check” this assertion and suggested that this is not really as much of a problem as the headline number indicates:

The Tribune is claiming that these numbers don’t prove much because they are a count of those who provided immigrant identification documents, such as green cards and work permits, as documentation for driver’s licenses. Therefore, the Tribune reporters are suggesting that some of them may have become naturalized but offered immigrant documents to verify their identity at the department of motor vehicles.

It’s amazing the lengths to which the liberal media will go in order to deny the problem of non-citizens voting, just like they deny the illegal alien crime wave. Aside from the absurdity of suggesting that a significant number of naturalized citizens would offer such documentation, they are missing the more important point. The fact that someone who is applying for the ultimate right of a citizen can merely rely on his driver’s license, which was issued upon a showing of immigrant documentation, is in itself a threat to our franchise. How have we come so far that not only is proof of citizenship not required for voter registration, but individuals can offer documents that prima facie indicate they are not citizens, yet still successfully register to vote without showing that they became naturalized citizens? Sure, a minority of them might have later become naturalized, but the fact that we have an “honor system” for voting is insane.

Moreover, the bigger problem is that the same liberals who deny the extent of the problem of non-citizens voting also oppose any effort not just to combat it but to even uncover data exposing it. Harris County, by far the biggest county in Texas, which contains a large foreign-born population, has refused to publicize the data that would allow outside groups to compare driver’s licenses against voter registration records to identify potential non-citizens. “This shows why Harris county must release the alien voting records we have sought for a year,” Public Interest Legal Foundation general counsel and President J. Christian Adams said in a statement. “We all know they exist. We all know aliens are voting in our elections. It’s time Harris and other [counties] stop hiding the documents.”

Adams’ group has filed a lawsuit against Harris and other major trouble spots in the country that refuse to comply with the National Voter Registration Act’s (NVRA) mandate to cleanse voter rolls of fraudulent voters and to allow public access to maintained records.

Here’s the problem that nobody is effectively combatting on the national level. Despite liberal grousing to the contrast, it is now easier to vote than ever. Between technology and a number of social services practically begging you to sign up to vote, it’s almost impossible not to register. Some states are now automatically registering anyone with a driver’s license. At the same time, there is no effective front-end or back-end check against non-citizens voting, and the courts have outright blocked states from requiring proof of citizenship, even though the federal registration form established by motor voter laws has a box asking if the applicant is a citizen!

With a record number of foreign nationals in this country – both legal and illegal – it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a number of non-citizens will be seamlessly shunted into the voter registration system, often even without intent to violate the law. Worst of all, photo ID laws (the ones still standing after judicial nullification) don’t help for this form of voter fraud because these individuals have driver’s licenses with legitimate names and addresses.

Consider the fact that Texas doesn’t even automatically register voters, and you see how bad the problem is. Can you imagine what California looks like? A dozen states hand out driver’s licenses to illegal aliens – more than a million in California alone – and other states are being forced to do so by the courts.

Republicans had two years to fix this travesty, whether it’s requiring proof of citizenship, blocking the courts from interfering with photo ID laws, or discounting illegals in the Census. Now Democrats are seeking to make the problem worse. Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on a bill that, among other things, would force automatic voter registration on the states, mandate that they accept same-day registration on Election Day, and strip them even of the existing avenues to clean their voter rolls. It’s no surprise why this bill is named “H.R. 1,” because Democrats prioritize any effort to get more votes, even if it comes at the expense of our sovereignty. Republicans, on the other hand, never prioritized protecting our franchise from fraud. The more this goes on, the less likely that they will ever get that opportunity again, because they will permanently be in the minority. (For more from the author of “Non-Citizens Voting in Our Elections Is a Huge Problem” please click HERE)

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