Tag: Department of Homeland Security
‘I Want Answers’; Rep Jim Jordan Sends Scathing Letter to DHS Sec Mayorkas Over Border Crisis
MATT GAETZ TO DHS SEC MAYORKAS: ‘It Would Take 14.5 Years to Deport the Illegals DHS Has Released Just Under Biden’
READ THE DOCS: GOP House Judiciary Committee Sends Scorching Letter to DHS Sec Mayorkas Demanding Answers on Border Crisis
BATTLE FOR THE BORDER: Illegals Surge Border As Border Patrol Agents Are ‘Pulled From Field’
MISSION, TX (The Western Journal)– A new video revealed illegal immigrants moving easily across the southern border from Mexico into the U.S. on Monday morning as Border Patrol agents are reportedly being pulled from the field to assist with paperwork.
“This morning, a group of illegal immigrant runners passed by us and disappeared into a nearby cotton field here in Mission, TX,” Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin reported from the Rio Grande Valley.
“There were no Border Patrol agents around. Many agents in the RGV have been pulled from field patrol to help w/ processing & paperwork,” he added.
Melugin also retweeted his interview on Monday on “Mornings with Maria” on Fox Business on the issue.
“Border Patrol agents at the Del Rio Sector are overwhelmed by high numbers of migrants. The 245 miles is only patrolled by 12 agents.@BillFOXLA is covering the story in Mission, Texas with wild video from just this morning,” the program tweeted.
Melugin commented, “We had a group of runners come zipping across right in front of us. It was a group of maybe six to 10 illegal immigrants who very clearly did not want to be caught by law enforcement.”
He added, “They ran right in front of us. They took off into a cotton field right by us and disappeared. There were no Border Patrol agents anywhere near us.”
The Washington Post reported earlier this month, “The number of migrants detained along the Mexico border crossed a new threshold last month, exceeding 200,000 for the first time in 21 years, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection enforcement data released Thursday.”
The Post added, “Among the 212,672 migrants taken into U.S. custody in July were 82,966 family members and 18,962 unaccompanied teenagers and children — an all-time high.”
Three weeks ago, Border Patrol apprehended a record 834 unaccompanied children along the nation’s southern border in a single day.
“Biden’s open border policy is a disaster,” Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted at the time.
The record number does not even include children from Mexico, most of whom, a Homeland Security report stated, “will be repatriated and will not remain in CBP custody.”
In addition to the 834 unaccompanied migrant children, 2,784 children were in the custody of Customs and Border Protection and 591 transferred out of CBP custody.
A total of 14,523 migrant children were in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services, while 612 children were discharged from HHS care.
The updated statistics also noted the 30-day average of unaccompanied children apprehended and placed into CBP custody had reached 512 children per day.
‘PHASED WITHDRAWAL’: Feds To Pull Out Of Portland As Riots Rage On, Says Oregon Governor
PORTLAND — Federal agents sent in by President Donald Trump to secure the city will begin a “phased withdrawal” from Portland, Oregon Governor Kate Brown said Wednesday.
The agents, who have frequently clashed with protesters, will begin leaving the city limits on Thursday.
The news comes the same day that Trump warned the “Beaver State” that either Oregon officials get a grip on the rioting that has shook the city in recent weeks or the federal government will.
“Either they’re gonna clean up Portland soon, or the federal government is going up, and we’re gonna do it for them. So either they clean out Portland — the governor and the mayor, who are weak — either they clean out Portland or we’re gong in to do it for them,” Trump told reporters Wednesday before departing on a trip to Texas.
In a statement, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said a plan negotiated with Brown over the last 24 hours includes a “robust presence” of Oregon State Police in downtown Portland to quell the violence.
“State and local law enforcement will begin securing properties and streets, especially those surrounding federal properties, that have been under nightly attack for the past two months,” Wolf said.
The riots, which began shortly after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, have led to multiple deaths, hundreds of injuries and millions of dollars in property damage.
REPORT: Dispute over ‘family separations’ forced Nielsen’s resignation as Homeland Security Secretary
WASHINGTON — Last week’s resignation by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was prompted in large part by her refusal to enforce president Donald Trump’s policy of separating illegal immigrant families at the border, says an NBC report.
“I have determined that it is the right time for me to step aside,” Nielsen wrote in a resignation letter to Trump, according to a report published by The New York Times. “I hope that the next secretary will have the support of Congress and the courts in fixing the laws which have impeded our ability to fully secure America’s borders and which have contributed to discord in our nation’s discourse.”
White House insiders say the president’s no-nonsense approach to illegal immigration was just too tough for Nielsen to abide by. Her resignation comes just days after Trump rallied against the crisis at the border, demanding that Mexico “to their part” in curbing the influx of illegals crossing the southern U.S. border.
Undeterred, President Trump confirmed Nielsen’s resignation on Sunday, announcing that Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan will take over as Acting Secretary.
“Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen will be leaving her position, and I would like to thank her for her service,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. “I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary for @DHSgov. I have confidence that Kevin will do a great job!”
A senior administration official told NBC the president feels strongly that family separation has been the most effective policy at deterring illegal immigration.
Democrats have often called out this policy as “racist” and declared enforcement of such policy as “unconstitutional.”
“Hampered by misstep after misstep, Kirstjen Nielsen’s tenure at the Department of Homeland Security was a disaster from the start,” Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement.
“It is clearer now than ever that the Trump administration’s border security and immigration policies — that she enacted and helped craft — have been an abysmal failure and have helped create the humanitarian crisis at the border.”
President Trump campaigned heavily on promises of securing the nation’s borders during his 2016 presidential campaign. The issue will remain a large part of his efforts at re-election in 2020.
DHS Chief Nielsen: Trump sending “emergency” officers to secure nation’s border
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has ordered the deployment of hundreds of officers to secure the southern US border and will immediately expedite the returning migrants seeking asylum to Mexico, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced Monday.
“The crisis at our border is worsening, and DHS will do everything in its power to end it,” Nielsen said in a statement. “We will not stand idly by while Congress fails to act yet again, so all options are on the table.”
The deployment of 750 officers to process a surge of migrant families entering the United States was announced last week and Nielsen says they plan to reassign more than 2,000 more.
“We will immediately redeploy hundreds of CBP personnel to the border to respond to this emergency, the statement reads. “We will urgently pursue additional reinforcements from within DHS and the interagency. And we will require those seeking to enter the United States to wait in Mexico until an immigration court has reviewed their claims.”
Liberal organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have sued the Trump administration in the past, claiming such strict immigration policies are “racist” and violate US law.
The news comes just one week after President Trump threatened to shut down parts, if not all, of the border if his demands for stricter border control efforts were not met.
“If Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States through our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week,” the president tweeted.
“I am not kidding around,” the president told reporters. “It could mean all trade. We will close it for a long time.”
The “surge” in new officers is expected to focus primarily in border areas in California and Texas, where a large portion of illegal immigration occurs.
Trump campaigned heavily on securing the nation’s border as part of his “Make America Great Again” 2016 presidential campaign. The issue is expected to remain a focus in his 2020 re-election agenda.
TRUMP TO MEXICO: ‘Ship migrants home or face permanent shut down of border’
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday warned Mexican officials to send migrants massed in Tijuana and threatening to crash the U.S. border “back to their countries” or face a permanent closure of the border.
“Mexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries,” the president tweeted. “Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the Border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!”
The president’s comments come in response to a wave of backlash from left-leaning news agencies and political pundits who criticized Trump’s authorization of tear gas use on migrants who stormed the border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it suspended northbound and southbound crossings for both pedestrians and vehicles at the San Ysidro port of entry at the president’s order.
A CBP spokesperson added that some demonstrators “attempted to illegally enter the U.S. through both the northbound and southbound vehicle lanes at the port of entry itself. Those persons were stopped and turned back to Mexico.”
U.S. border agents confirmed Monday that they had shot several rounds of tear gas at migrants who began throwing rocks at U.S. authorities and who had attempted to break through secured points along the border.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen also confirmed through a statement that some migrants “attempted to breach legacy fence infrastructure along the border and sought to harm CBP personnel by throwing projectiles at them.
“As I have continually stated, DHS will not tolerate this type of lawlessness and will not hesitate to shut down ports of entry for security and public safety reasons,” Nielsen said. “We will also seek to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who destroys federal property, endangers our frontline operators, or violates our nation’s sovereignty.”
President Trump has characterized the vast majority of asylum claims as fraudulent and said use of deady force would be authorized if necessary to secure the U.S. southern border.
REPORT: Weekly border crossing numbers ‘dwarf’ that of caravan
WASHINGTON (Daily Caller) — The massive procession of migrants winding through Mexico may be weeks away from the southwest border, but a “caravan”-sized number of people cross into the U.S. illegally every single day.
That fact has been overshadowed by coverage of the 4,000-strong caravan and President Donald Trump’s reaction to it, particularly his deployment of thousands of active duty troops to three border states. Commentators are quick to note that the caravan is still hundreds of miles from the nearest U.S. port of entry, and its members are unlikely to swarm across the border when it does arrive.
But the caravan is only a small — if highly publicized — part of a much larger phenomenon that has completely swamped the U.S. asylum system.
After falling to historic lows in the early months of the Trump administration, illegal immigration across the southwest border has risen in nearly every single month since, driven largely by a wave of people traveling together as families. Arrests of so-called “family units” — the vast majority of them from Central America — have now reached unprecedented levels, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) figures.
In October, the Border Patrol arrested 23,121 migrant family members, the highest one-month total ever recorded. It was a 39 percent jump over the 16,658 such migrants arrested in September, which was also a record for a single month. (RELATED: DHS: More Than Half A Million People Arrested, Denied At Border In FY2018)
When the family unit arrests are added to other categories — single adults and unaccompanied minors — the total number of people caught trying to cross the southwest border illegally in October was about 51,000, or 1,700 per day.
That means the number of migrants arrested along the southwest border in an average week — 11,900 — is about three times as many people traveling in the highly publicized caravan. Put differently, the equivalent of about 13 caravans is caught after crossing the border illegally every month.
Historically speaking, illegal immigration remains well below numbers seen at the turn of the century, when border authorities were regularly arresting more than 1 million migrants per year. While overall arrests have declined since then, the demographics of illegal immigration have changed in ways that make it harder for the system to absorb the latest wave of migrants.
In 2000, more than 95 percent of border arrests were Mexican nationals, mostly single men looking for work. Today, migrants from Central America have surpassed Mexicans as the majority of illegal border-crossers — 56 percent of CBP arrests at the southwest border in FY2018 were of Central Americans.
Family units and unaccompanied minors accounted for about half of the arrests within the Central American group, meaning about a quarter of all border apprehensions triggered special detention procedures required by law for migrant families and children. These complicated cases have outstripped the government’s limited detention space for families, so most of them are released pending an immigration court date months in the future.
As the demographics of illegal immigration have changed, so has the aim of the migrants themselves. Until recent years, most migrants arrested at the border were men who were obviously looking for work, often in agriculture or construction.
Today, there are economic migrants among those in the caravan and among Central American migrants more broadly, but just as often the people crossing the southwest border illegally are asylum seekers. And unlike previous waves of illegal immigrants, many aren’t trying to avoid arrest by the Border Patrol — they want to turn themselves into federal authorities at first chance.
That’s because, under U.S. law, a person can petition for asylum as long as he is in U.S. territory, regardless of how he got there. When a migrant claims “credible fear” of being persecuted in his home country, the arresting agent must refer him to an asylum officer for screening.
The Trump administration contends that this arrangement leads to abuse of the asylum system by meritless applicants. As evidence, it has pointed to the wide disparity between credible fear pass rates and successful asylum determinations for Central American applicants. In FY2018, 89 percent of migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador received a positive credible fear interview, but only 9 percent of those who were referred to an immigration judge ultimately received asylum.
The White House has called on lawmakers to change immigration laws to make it easier to detain families together and raise the bar for a credible fear determination, but those policy recommendations face insurmountable opposition in Congress. As a result, the administration has moved to change asylum polices via regulation — most recently on Friday, when Trump issued a proclamation making most migrants who illegally cross the border ineligible for asylum.
The ACLU and other groups challenged the order almost immediately, asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California for a nationwide injunction. A judge has yet to rule on the motion.
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