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26 September, 2024

Roosevelt professor: Chicago mayor may find help for migrant issues at U.N.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has joined members of the Mayors Migration Council at the United Nations in New York.

Johnson did not have public events scheduled Tuesday, although his press office confirmed that he would join mayors from around the globe at the U.N.

La Vonne Downey, professor of Public Administration and program director of Health Science Administration at Roosevelt University, said the mayor might have addressed the challenges Chicago faces as a sanctuary city.

“He might also want to talk about how we have or haven’t done a good job with being that. If he’s being forthcoming, he will talk about some of the issues with being that kind of sanctuary city in the sense that people who are already here don’t feel that they have the same access to services that migrant populations might have coming in, even if those are provided by nonprofits,” Downey said.

Illinois policies prohibit local law enforcement from working with federal immigration officials to enforce immigration law. As a sanctuary city, Chicago has received more than 45,000 non-citizens from the southern U.S. border where communities were inundated with border crossers. Just in Illinois, the taxpayer cost over the past two years to assist non-citizen migrants in the state is more than $1 billion.

Downey said Johnson was part of a wider effort to get work permits for Venezuelans in the U.S. and may have wanted to address the issue at the U.N.

“He’s actually been part of pushing policy on migration, too, so he’s got his fingers in lots of different places,” Downey explained.

The professor said that visiting the United Nations could help Johnson deal with the city’s migrant issues, because many non-governmental organizations attend the U.N. meetings.

“He might be accessing more international non-government organizations that could give money or expertise or technical assistance to him. If you’re in the vicinity, you get to talk to those people. That may be a way to raise money or to get what we would call technical assistance, so they could help him with finding housing, job training, all of those kinds of things because they’ve done this globally,” Downey said.

Downey said Johnson won’t be the only one looking for aid.

“Every country except for the places people are migrating from is trying to address this issue. The E.U., probably, their representatives are also going to be at the U.N. because they also have this as a big, hot-button political issue,” Downey said.

Illinois U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson, D-Chicago, of Illinois addressed immigration issues in a social media post Tuesday. Jackson said the Biden-Harris administration has taken decisive executive action to stem the tide of immigrants coming across the southern border of the country.

Vice President Kamala Harris is running against former President Donald Trump. Trump has been critical of the Biden-Harris administration for more than three years of lax policies that lead to millions of crossings.

https://www.thecentersquare.com/illinois/article_2405579c-7ac2-11ef-a138-27feb5c93f63.html

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September 25, 2024

Chicago Teachers Instructed to Pass Migrant Students Despite ‘Severe Academic Deficiencies’

Teachers in Chicago are the latest to voice their concerns over how illegal immigration is changing the landscape in America. Or in this case, how it’s shaping what’s happening in the classroom.

According to WGN Radio, teachers in the city have revealed that “they were instructed by school administrators to give their migrant students a 70% in every subject and pass them on to the next grade … even if their migrant students displayed severe academic deficiencies.”

It appears “Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez assured that migrant students were held to the same standards as Chicago’s American students.” However, it was only last month that a study from the University of Illinois System proved there was not much of a standard to live up to.

Even beyond the migrant students, many of whom reportedly do not speak English, numerous students throughout the city of Chicago “are still struggling to catch up academically from the learning loss that occurred when schools were forced to close” due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the study found, “[O]nly about one-fourth of all public-school students are back to pre-pandemic performance levels in English language arts, while even fewer have returned to pre-pandemic levels in math.”

So, while it’s not looking good for the Chicago public schools as it is, teachers have further admitted that part of their orders to pass migrant students has led to “deliberately falsifying grades”—which applies to both classroom grades and academic standardized testing scores.

Sylvia Snowden, a reporter who spoke with several Chicago teachers, explained, “When the tests have been proctored, after they’ve been evaluated, the teachers are able to see the scores. And when the teachers saw the scores, they saw that the students were not at grade level, yet they were instructed to give them 70% in every single class, which is the minimum C and pass them on to the next grade.”

When asked for an explanation, the Chicago Public Schools responded with this vague statement:

Chicago Public Schools aims to provide a rigorous, welcoming, inclusive pre-K through 12 environment for all students, including those who are newly arrived in Chicago with their families from around the globe.

As a district, we have high expectations for all students and policies and promotion guidelines in place that are modified to serve the specialized needs of our English language learners, and offer in-school, after-school year-round interventions developed with the principal/counselor/teacher and parents to target the students’ described deficiencies.

As Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at the Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand, “This report of teachers being instructed to pass students should invoke concern, regardless of the type of student involved.” She emphasized that “moving underperforming students through the system robs them of their education” because “they are denied the chance to understand, comprehend, and build understanding and command of facts that build culture and the ability to contribute to society and one’s own success.”

But amid the ongoing learning issues at hand and the concerns that go with them, a quick glance at what Chicago has endured in recent years demonstrates how its education department is not the only area tainted by the border crisis.

Millions of illegal immigrants have flooded into the country, and Chicago, being the self-designated sanctuary city that it is, has taken in nearly 50,000 migrants since 2022. In only two years, $400 million have gone toward funding the migrants, which has put a significant dent in the city’s money and resources.

Nearly all aspects of life in Chicago have been affected by the newcomers.

“People are angry about the lack of resources in their community,” said Richard Wallace, a man involved with organizing community affairs. “People are angry about joblessness. People are angry about the cost of living skyrocketing.”

Evidently, the decisions affecting the American education system and overall quality of life are not free from having long-lasting consequences—particularly for the younger generations, Kilgannon emphasized. Considering the failing test scores and poor learning environments, she concluded, “When Gen Z ‘quietly quits,’ they are simply following the example that was set for them by a public school system that quietly quit teaching them.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/24/chicago-teachers-pass-migrant-students-despite-deficiencies/

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September 24, 2024

Poll: Americans Aren’t Fooled by Immigration Enforcement Claims

Media outlets have been claiming for more than a year that the Biden-Harris administration is ramping up removals, with a July Reuters “fact check” claiming more aliens are now being deported than under the Trump administration (which my colleague Jon Feere and I quickly debunked). The latest poll from the George Washington University Society of Presidential Pollsters and Harris X reveals American voters aren’t buying it — and that they have a dour view of ICE, the agency charged with conducting such removals.

That poll was conducted online among 1,505 U.S. registered voters, and it has an overall margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points — not that it matters much, as I’ll explain.

The Administration’s Handling of Immigration. The poll started by asking respondents whether they approved or disapproved of President Biden’s handling of immigration, and the results are unsurprising.

The question actually covered 12 different issue areas, from “racial equity” (where the administration received its best score of “just” 51 percent disapproval) to “abortion” (54 percent disapproval) to the “Israel-Hamas conflict” (63 percent of voters disapproved).

When it came to disapproval, “immigration” and “inflation” tied for first (or last, from the White House’s likely perspective): 64 percent of respondents disapproved of the administration’s handling of each.

And disapproval of the administration’s handling of immigration came from all quarters: Republicans (88 percent disapproval); Independents (67 percent disapproval); and Democrats (37 percent of whom disapproved).

In fact, 37 percent of respondents who said they’d be voting for Kamala Harris for president took a dim view of the administration’s handling of immigration, which likely explains why the current vice president avoids the issue every chance she gets.

“Working or Not Working as an Institution”. The poll quickly gets interesting, however, when it asks respondents whether 17 specific “institutions” — including Congress, the Supreme Court, IRS, the EPA, and “the federal bureaucracy” writ large — are “working or not working”.

Our men and women in uniform receive the best grades, with 78 percent of voters saying that the U.S. military is working. Intelligence agencies (the FBI and the CIA) also receive high marks, with 60 percent of those polled saying that each is “working”.

Things go south, however, once respondents are asked about elected (and unelected) representatives and immigration.

Just 48 percent stated that “the presidency” is working, only slightly more than claimed that “the federal bureaucracy” is working (45 percent), while just 39 percent described Congress as “working”.

Then, there’s the immigration-enforcement agencies. Only 46 percent of respondents believe that “Homeland Security Department/Border Protection” (CBP) works, while the very lowest “working” grade among those 17 institutions overall was “earned” by ICE — 37 percent.

Only a quarter of GOP voters (25 percent) and just a third of Independents (33 percent) thought that ICE was working, which means that the agency likely would have scored even lower if more than half (52 percent) of Democrats didn’t like the way it handles its duties.

Should ICE and CBP Have “More or Less Power”. Admittedly, there are a lot of reasons that span the ideological spectrum that would lead voters to believe that ICE is not working. “Progressives”, for example, may think that ICE is removing too many illegal aliens, while conservatives may think its officers aren’t removing enough.

Fortunately, Harris X asked respondents a similar question about those 17 institutions: “Regardless of who is leading them at any given moment, should [they] have more power, less power, or the same power as now?”

Only 13 percent of voters polled wanted the federal bureaucracy to be given more power, and just 14 percent wanted either the IRS or Congress to be more powerful than they are already.

So, which institutions do voters think should be given more power than they already have? You guessed it — CBP and (in particular) ICE, though you have to dig through the data to get there.

Nearly half of respondents, 49 percent, thought that CBP should have the same power that it has right now, 36 percent want CBP to have more power, and 15 percent believe that the agency is too powerful (including, interestingly, 19 percent of Independents and 17 percent of GOP voters).

That latter response likely has something to do with the agency’s “catch and release” border and port policies, particularly given that just 10 percent of Democratic voters wanted a less powerful CBP.

And 39 percent of respondents said that ICE should be more strongly empowered — the biggest “more power” response among those 17 institutions that the poll queried. That includes 29 percent of Democrats, 36 percent of Independents, and more than half — 51 percent — of Republicans.

By the way, “likely voters” were also more likely (41 percent) to say that ICE should be given more power, whereas 45 percent of this cohort wanted the agency’s power to remain the same and only 14 percent wanted ICE to be less powerful.

In other words, if you feel like you are paying more for immigration enforcement and getting less of it, you’re not alone.

https://cis.org/Arthur/Poll-Americans-Arent-Fooled-Immigration-Enforcement-Claims

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September 23, 2024

Majority of Democrats Vote Against Bill That Would Deport Sex Offenders

The U.S. House passed a bill last week to deport and make inadmissible criminal foreign nationals convicted of domestic violence and sex-related offenses, including sex crimes against children. It passed with bipartisan support but with the majority of Democrats, 158, voting against it.

The bill would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act “to provide that aliens who have been convicted of or who have committed sex offenses or domestic violence are inadmissible and deportable.” This includes stalking, child abuse, child neglect, child abandonment, violation of protective orders, including credible threats of violence, repeated harassment, and conspiracy to commit a sex offense as grounds for deportation, according to the bill language.

It also includes crimes defined in the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006: child sex offenders, sexual predators, child sex traffickers, using minors in a sexual performance, soliciting a minor to practice prostitution, producing or distributing child pornography, transporting with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, among others.

The greatest number of Democrats by state who voted against it are 36 from California, 13 from New York, 12 from Illinois, and nine from Texas, according to an analysis of the vote by The Center Square. In Massachusetts and Maryland, where violent offenders are being arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, eight and seven Democrats, respectively, voted against deporting such offenders.

These Democrats voted against some current practices of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers who, under the Biden-Harris administration, are arresting sex offenders thousands of miles from the border in major cities. In Boston, Baltimore, and New York, for example, ICE ERO agents are arresting foreign nationals who illegally entered the country after being previously deported and who were convicted of crimes in other states.

In Massachusetts, ICE ERO Boston officers recently arrested a Brazilian national charged with indecent assault and battery against a Nantucket resident over age 14. They also arrested a Salvadoran national charged with numerous sex crimes against a child on Nantucket Island, including child rape and indecent assault and battery.

They also recently arrested a Guatemalan national convicted of molesting a Missouri minor. He was previously deported, illegally reentered the country, and has an extensive criminal history, according to ICE.

In another case, they arrested a Guatemalan national charged with raping a Massachusetts resident. This is after he was convicted of assault and battery on a family or household member and arraigned on two counts of rape and indecent assault and battery on a person over 14. ICE said, “He posed a significant threat to the members of our community.”

In another case, they arrested an 18-year-old Haitian national charged with indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 in Massachusetts.

In Maryland, ICE ERO Baltimore officers apprehended a Mexican national in Gaithersburg convicted of sex crimes against a minor. He illegally entered the U.S. at an unknown date and location and has an extensive criminal history. They also arrested a sex offender from Honduras who was convicted of sex crimes against a minor. He was previously deported and has an extensive criminal record.

They also arrested a Honduran national illegally in the U.S. who was convicted of raping a Maryland resident. His “landmark arrest” was the 153rd noncitizen sex offender arrested in Maryland this fiscal year, ICE reported.

ICE ERO New York officers recently arrested a Honduran man and sex offender who was previously deported four times. He was most recently convicted by a court in Philadelphia for unlawful sexual contact with a minor, indecent assault of a person less than 13 years old, among other charges. He also has an extensive criminal history.

Several House Democrats said they voted against the bill because it would hurt victims. Others said it was a political bill in an election year and attacked its author, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C. Others claimed the bill didn’t close a loophole in the law that Mace and others claim it does.

Despite their claims, ICE field office directors repeatedly argue it is necessary to deport sex offenders. In their press releases, they repeatedly describe the violent crimes committed against Americans and against migrants, including children.

Their focus as law enforcement is “on prioritizing public safety by apprehending and removing egregious noncitizen offenders” who present a “significant threat to our youngest residents and the community as a whole.”

ICE agents will “relentlessly pursue heinous predators who prey on our children and remove them from the United States,” they maintain.

The 158 Democrats voting against the bill “shows the American people they care more about illegal aliens than our women and children,” Mace said.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/23/158-house-democrats-vote-against-deporting-sex-offenders/

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September 22, 2024


Frank Luntz Warns Harris Border Visit Will Remind Voters About Immigration Crisis Under Biden Admin

Pollster Frank Luntz said Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris will call attention to bad “immigration statistics” during a planned visit to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Harris reportedly plans to visit the southern border while on a campaign trip to the swing state of Arizona. Luntz said that Harris’ visit should have taken place earlier in her tenure as vice president.

“I actually would advise against it, that her time to have gone to the border was last year or the year before that,” Luntz told “CNN News Central” host Brianna Keilar. “And now, it only highlights the fact that she hasn’t really focused on this issue, even though she had some, we can’t determine what, the actual responsibility was that she had in the administration because it’s been muddied, but this is an area that Donald Trump can say, just look at the numbers, look at the immigration statistics, look at the illegal immigration that took place under his administration and under the Biden-Harris Administration.”

Illegal immigration is a prominent issue in the 2024 campaign. Border Patrol agents have encountered over 7 million illegal immigrants since the start of fiscal year 2021, according to figures released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Residents of Springfield, Ohio, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that an influx of Haitian migrants led to an increase in traffic accidents and skyrocketed housing prices. Some crimes, including auto theft and shoplifting, climbed in Springfield after the migrants arrived.

Residents blamed the city’s struggles on the Biden administration’s border policies.

Crime involving illegal immigrants have also made national headlines, including the murders of Rachel Morin, Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/09/24/frank-luntz-warns-harris-border-visit-remind-voters-immigration-crisis-biden-admin/

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September 19, 2024

Haitian migrants eating pets? Here’s the even more serious story about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio

It’s a wild viral claim that has been snapped up and memed by Elon Musk, Republican influencers and even made it onto the presidential debate stage — but it also stems from a serious problem.

Are migrants from Haiti grabbing pets out of yards and ducks from public parks so they can eat them?

Follow The Post’s live updates from the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris

Police in Springfield, Ohio, told the Springfield News-Sun that migrants turning pets into pâté was “not something that’s on our radar right now.” A city spokesperson said, “There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

The tale, however, hints at much larger concerns about the recent influx of migrants into Springfield — a city of 60,000 people about 45 minutes west of Columbus.

Officials say up to 20,000 Haitian immigrants have flowed into the city in the last several years, putting a huge strain on city services.

The craze began with an August meeting of the Springfield City Commission, where a 28-year-old man claimed — without evidence — that Haitian migrants were beheading ducks at local parks and taking them home to eat.

“They’re in the park grabbing up ducks by they neck and cutting they head off and walking up with them and eating them,” the man said, imploring the commission to rein in the migrants.

Another woman at a previous meeting said she’d seen migrants field-dressing roadkill on the side of the highway, and snatching park birds to cook up in “some barbaric stew.”

Also spreading online are grabs of a post made by someone in a Springfield Facebook group claiming a friend’s cat went missing — and then was purportedly seen strung up and butchered for dinner in a Haitian migrant’s yard.

One of the videos that went viral with the claims shows a woman who was arrested for allegedly eating a cat last month.

The clip appears to show 27-year-old Allexis Telia Ferrell, who, according to Fox 12, was charged after a maddened Aug. 16 rampage in which she allegedly stomped on the cat and then devoured it in front of her neighbors.

However, records do not indicate the woman is either Haitian or a migrant — and she was arrested in Canton, about three hours from Springfield.

Another image that is part of the viral story, of a man holding a goose, appears to originate from an August Reddit post in a group dedicated to Columbus, where the poster provided no context beyond bewilderment.

On Tuesday, an Aug. 26 police 911 call from Springfield emerged in which a resident said four Haitian immigrants were off with geese at a local park.

The report, obtained by the Federalist, came with a recording of a man reporting the incident to a local dispatcher.

“I’m sitting here, I’m riding on the trail, I’m going to my orientation for my job today, and I see a group of Haitian people, there was about four of ’em, they all had geese in their hands,” the caller said, explaining he saw the Haitians drive off with the birds.

A super viral claim

J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate and an Ohio senator, was one of the first major politicians to amplify the reports of migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

“People have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country,” Vance wrote on X Monday.

Musk has also jumped on the bandwagon — commenting on or reposting AI-generated images of Trump saving ducks and kittens.

Vance has defended his amplification of the claims.

“Senator Vance has received a high volume of calls and emails over the past several weeks from concerned citizens in Springfield: his tweet is based on what he is hearing from them. The city has faced an influx of 15,000-20,000 Haitian migrants over the past four years, stressing public resources and leading to housing shortages, all thanks to Kamala Harris’s policy of extending temporary protected status designations,” a Vance spokesperson told the Hill.

“Many residents have contacted Senator Vance to share their concerns over crime and traffic accidents, and to express that they no longer feel safe in their own homes. Unlike the liberal media, JD takes his constituents’ concerns seriously.”
The presidential stage

The unsubstantiated claims about migrants eating went even more mainstream during the second presidential debate on Aug. 10, when Trump faced off against Kamala Harris for the first time.

Within minutes of the debate kicking off, Trump pushed the pet-eating claim and said Harris and Biden were to blame for “our country being lost” by allowing migrants in.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame,” he said.

Harris laughed off Trump’s comments, while debate moderator David Muir repeated statements from Springfield officials saying there were no reports of pets being harmed by migrants.

Springfield has long been a largely white city — 70% of residents were white as of 2022, according to Data US, compared to 17% black, and 5% reported being Hispanic.

But that white majority has been declining over the last 10 years — slowly but steadily — while minorities have been growing.

Some social media commenters have said the claims of Haitian immigrants eating pets are nothing more than racist, xenophobic responses to Springfield’s shifting demographics.

“This is the same old anti-black playbook that we’ve seen for hundreds of years in Ohio being rolled out to divide and create hate, especially around election times,” Erik Crew, an attorney for the Haitian Bridge Alliance, told the Hill.

“White supremacist and anti-democratic movements have always used the claim that so-called black savages are coming to destroy, especially when political power is up for grabs. This is no different.”

Scores of blatantly racist memes have cropped up on the heels of the pet-eating claims, including one that shows shirtless black people chasing Trump as he flees with ducks and kittens under his arms.

The issue of Haitian migrants has become a flashpoint in Springfield — a former manufacturing hub of 60,000 between Dayton and Columbus.

Over the last four years, the city’s migrant Haitian population has grown by 15,000 to 20,000 people — increasing Springfield’s population by as much as one-third, according to city officials.

Many residents and local politicians — including Vance — have expressed outrage at the influx, claiming the Haitian population has strained the city’s services and left legal Americans in the lurch.

Tensions have been heightened since August 2023 after a 36-year-old Haitian immigrant, Hermanio Joseph, lost control of a minivan he was driving without a valid US license on a highway near Springfield and strayed into the path of an oncoming school bus.

The bus driver swerved to avoid Joseph, and went careening off the road, throwing 11-year-old Aiden Clark from a window and fatally crushing him as the vehicle rolled.

Twenty other kids were hospitalized.

Joseph had been living in Springfield for over a year at the time of the accident, according to Spectrum News. He was sentenced to at least nine years in prison.

Whatever the veracity of the pet-eating claims, the attention they’ve brought to Springfield has spurned action in the small city.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced Tuesday that he was sending $2.5 million over two years in health care aid to the beleaguered city, along with state troopers to help enforce traffic problems officials have said are being caused by migrants unfamiliar with US driving laws.

https://nypost.com/2024/09/09/us-news/all-about-viral-claims-of-haitian-migrants-eating-pets-in-springfield-ohio/

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September 18, 2024

Shoplifting and Vehicle Thefts Soared as Haitian Migrants Poured Into Ohio Town, Police Data Shows

Reports of shoplifting and vehicle theft increased considerably in Springfield, Ohio, following the arrival of thousands of Haitian refugees, according to data obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation through a records request.

The town, which had a population of 58,622 in 2020, has taken in between 12,000 and 20,000 Haitian refugees over the past three years, marking a population increase of between 20.4% and 34.1%. From 2021 to 2023, Springfield also saw a 51.5% jump in motor vehicle theft reports and a 112.8% spike in reports of shoplifting, data provided by the Springfield Police Division shows.

Springfield residents previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the influx of Haitians has resulted in an uptick in car accidents, increased housing prices, and strained public services. Bryan Heck, Springfield’s city manager, sent a letter to Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott in July requesting federal assistance to deal with the pressure migrants had placed on the housing supply.

Inhabitants of the town also told the Daily Caller News Foundation that they had observed Haitians engaging in sex acts and other vices in public. The Daily Caller News Foundation was unable to verify claims made by the town’s residents about Haitians engaging in public debauchery.

Springfield’s police department declined to comment on the crime data, which does not include information on the immigration status or demographics of offenders.

Springfield had a higher crime rate than the nation at large even before Haitians began moving there in large numbers. In 2019, for instance, the town had a violent crime rate of 493.8 per 100,000 residents, compared to the United States’ rate of 366.7 per 100,000, according to data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The number of motor vehicle thefts reported in Springfield increased from 324 in 2021 to 491 in 2023, according to police data. Shoplifting reports, meanwhile, jumped from 295 cases in 2021 to 628 in 2023.

Large numbers of Haitians began arriving in Springfield to meet the demand for labor after the city’s chamber of commerce successfully attracted new businesses to the city, according to The New York Times. While the migrants have attracted the ire of some residents, many are paying taxes to support the community.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has set aside $2.5 million to help Springfield deal with the migrant surge and announced last week that he would deploy the Ohio State Highway Patrol to assist with traffic enforcement in the municipality. The issue of poor driving among refugees became a flashpoint in the community after a Haitian national driving a minivan without a license swerved in front of a school bus in August 2023, killing an 11-year-old boy and injuring roughly a dozen other students.

One Springfield resident, a pastor, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the town had accidents every day as a result of the influx of Haitians. A local towing employee confirmed that there had been an uptick in wrecks.

Police recorded just two reported cases of animal cruelty in 2021 and none in 2022 or 2023, failing to provide evidence for rumors of Haitians stealing and eating residents’ pets. The number of reported murders and assaults in the town went more or less unchanged between 2021 and 2023.

Immigration authorities have had over 7 million encounters with migrants at the southern border since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, according to Customs and Border Protection data. Beyond small towns like Springfield, the large number of migrants entering the country has caused budgetary strains in major cities like New York and Chicago as they attempt to accommodate the new arrivals, Bloomberg reported.

The Biden-Harris administration awarded Haitians Temporary Protected Status for the first time in 2021 and later extended that designation until 2026, protecting them from deportation and allowing them to work legally. The number of people on government benefits also increased considerably as Haitians moved into Springfield, Reuters reported.

As of April, the Biden-Harris administration had flown over 400,000 migrants into the United States, 154,000 of whom originated in Haiti. The administration halted the flight program after an internal report uncovered rampant fraud but has since allowed it to resume.

“We’re tired—help,” one Springfield resident told the Daily Caller News Foundation when asked what message he wanted to send to the country. “Send help. Help us fix this.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/17/shoplifting-and-vehicle-thefts-soared-as-haitian-migrants-poured-into-ohio-town-police-data-shows/

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September 17, 2024

Texas OLS officers continue to apprehend human smugglers, find stash houses

Texas Department of Public Safety officers working through Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security mission Operation Lone Star continue to apprehend human smugglers and find stash houses in border counties.

In three recent cases, alleged smugglers were women from a town north of Houston: a Mississippi man, and two Mexican nationals in the country illegally.

In Val Verde County, during a traffic stop on US-277, a DPS trooper pulled over a female driver from Shepherd, Texas. When asked why she was there, she said her boyfriend lived there. When he asked her where he lived, she struggled to answer the question. She looked at her phone, attempting to say Carrizo Springs, which is located in Dimmit County roughly two hours from Del Rio, 45 minutes from Eagle Pass and one hour from Piedras Negras, Mexico.

Shepherd is located one hour north of Houston and is roughly a 6-hour drive to Carrizo Springs.

Highway 277 is a common smuggling route stretching from Eagle Pass to Del Rio, OLS officials have explained to The Center Square. It parallels the Rio Grande River along the southernmost part of Uvalde and Kinney counties.

The trooper also noticed three people attempting to conceal themselves in the back seat. He called for backup and the driver and passenger, also a female from Shepherd, were questioned. When asked what her boyfriend’s name was, the driver said it was Juan but couldn’t pronounce his last name. Her response was similar to others who’ve been caught lying to OLS officers, The Center Square has reported.

While being questioned outside of the vehicle, and while several officers were standing right next to it, two inside burst out and ran towards the brush attempting to evade capture. They were caught.

Both women were arrested on three counts of smuggling of persons. All three inside were Mexicans in the U.S. illegally and were handed over to Border Patrol.

During a traffic stop on US-277 in Val Verde County, a DPS Trooper discovered three illegal immigrants from Mexico attempting to conceal themselves from view in the rear seat of a Toyota Corolla. Two of the three illegal immigrants attempted to evade and bail toward the brush but were apprehended. Troopers arrested the driver and passenger, Callie Chreene and Mikayla Bogany from Shepherd, Texas, for three counts of smuggling of persons. All three illegal immigrants were referred to Border Patrol.

Also in Val Verde County on US-277, a DPS trooper pulled over a driver of what appeared to be a Lowe’s home improvement store delivery truck at night near Del Rio. After consenting to a vehicle search, the trooper entered the truck, which appeared to be empty. She called for backup and OLS officers used a crowbar to pull apart a fake wall.

“I see bodies,” she said. They found 17 people crammed inside a three-foot wide space with no air ventilation.

The driver, from Jackson, Mississippi, was arrested and charged with smuggling of persons with the likelihood of serious bodily injury or death. He was not a Lowes delivery driver; the truck was not a Lowes vehicle.

The 17 crammed inside, citizens of Columbia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, were turned over to Border Patrol. Several were treated for dehydration.

Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Troopers working Operation Lone Star recently discovered 17 illegal immigrants being smuggled inside a hidden compartment in a cloned home improvement store delivery truck during a traffic stop in Kinney County.

In Starr County, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers located a stash house where 11 citizens of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, all in the U.S. illegally, were being held. When the officers arrived, they found them sitting on the floor of a bedroom. They were handcuffed in the kitchen and then brought outside, where they were turned over to Border Patrol.

One of the alleged stash house operators, a female Mexican citizen in the U.S. illegally, was arrested and charged with operating the stash house. One of the alleged smugglers, a Mexican citizen in the U.S. illegally, who was waiting in a vehicle outside of the stash house, was arrested and charged with smuggling of persons.

DPS Troopers recently recovered a dozen illegal immigrants in stash house in Starr County. The group of 12 were from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. One of the illegal immigrants found inside, Eliuth Gomez-Cavazos from Mexico, was arrested and charged with operating the stash house. Additionally, Giovany Abiel Lugo Gomez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was waiting in a vehicle outside of the home, was arrested and charged with smuggling of persons. The 11 other illegal immigrants were referred to Border Patrol.

Since Gov. Greg Abbott launched OLS in March 2021, officers have apprehended more than 518,900 illegal foreign nationals and made more than 46,300 criminal arrests, with more than 40,200 felony charges reported, as of Sept. 13, according to the governor’s office.

They’ve also seized more than 521 million lethal doses of fentanyl, enough to kill everyone in the United States and Mexico combined.

https://www.thecentersquare.com/texas/article_d0e78984-746a-11ef-9cba-ebf5bc5c0412.html

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September 16, 2024

Springfield’s Immigrant Crisis Spreads to Nearby Town, Courtesy of Biden-Harris

Over the past three years, the Biden-Harris administration has imported roughly 20,000 Haitian immigrants in the small Ohio city of Springfield. Now, a nearby community is also suffering the effects of the immigration influx. Tremont City, a village outside Springfield with a population of less than 400, has been impacted by the reckless driving of mass-imported Haitian immigrants.

Tremont City Council president Tony Flood recently told Blaze Media that he and others have urged Springfield to do more to prevent traffic accidents caused by the immigrants. “The city refuses to do that. This is spilling out. They do illegal U-turns all up and down the road. I don’t know how many times I’ve about got hit pulling out of the lot myself,” Flood reported. He explained that immigrants halted for unsafe driving are towed “because you’re not allowed to let an unlicensed driver drive the car, or the village is liable if they get in a wreck.”

Flood’s son, Tony Flood II, the mayor of Tremont City, said that he’s “scared to death” of his wife and daughter being killed by an immigrant while driving in Springfield. “Any day you get in a car, it’s a risk. But now it’s even worse, especially if you head that way,” the younger Flood said. “Honestly, it pisses me off that we’ve allowed it to hit this point.”

Tremont City Police Chief Chad Duncan urged Springfield to begin towing immigrants, as Tremont City does, in order to mitigate the reckless driving. “The accidents we’re having around here can be prevented if everybody would get on the same page, all law enforcement, and start towing these vehicles. I know it seems like we’re singling people out, but we do it the same no matter what race, nationality, creed, doesn’t matter,” Duncan said.

Last year, a Haitian immigrant named Hermanio Joseph, driving on a Mexican driver’s license, crashed into a school bus, injuring 20 children and killing 11-year-old Aiden Clark. Tremont City resident Mark Sanders said that his daughter saw the accident from another school bus and was traumatized by the sight. Ever since then, Sanders has been driving his daughter’s school bus. “There are things that can be prevented. That guy should not have been in the country. He shouldn’t have been driving. He was working for a company, local, that was actually supplied to them,” Sanders said.

Author and podcast host C. Jay Engel noted that McGregor Metal, a Springfield manufacturing company, had been financially failing for years, but restructured and wound up with a $10 million expansion, which is being staffed by Haitian immigrants. “And who do they hire for this new expansion?” Engel asked. “They hire from among the 20,000 Haitians in the recent third-world drop. They completely bypass Ohioans, refuse to invest in them, to uplift their community. They hire from among the invaders.”

In Tuesday night’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump noted the stories of immigrants in Springfield and the surrounding area stealing and eating locals’ pets and eating ducks and geese from the park. ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis tried to “fact check” Trump, but numerous reports from Springfield residents — including a police report obtained by The Federalist — suggest that immigrants have been taking locals’ cats and dogs and eating them, as well as taking and decapitating ducks and geese in parks and neighborhoods.

After the debate, CNN asked Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance (R), about the reports. Vance replied, “We’ve heard from a number of constituents on the ground … who, both firsthand and secondhand reports, saying this stuff is happening. So they very clearly, the people on the ground dealing with this, think that it is happening.” The Ohio native continued, “This town has been ravaged by 20,000 migrants coming in. Health care costs are up, housing costs are up, communicable diseases like HIV and TB have skyrocketed in this small Ohio town. This is what Kamala Harris’s border policies have done.” Referring to increasingly popular memes depicting Trump rescuing cats and ducks, Vance added, “The media didn’t care [about] the carnage wrought in these communities until we turned it into a meme about cats.”

https://washingtonstand.com/news/springfields-immigrant-crisis-spreads-to-nearby-town-courtesy-of-bidenharris

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September 15, 2024

Albanian migrants trying to avoid being kicked out of the UK are told on TikTok to pull their teeth out to get them to an easier-to-escape hospital

Albanian migrants looking to avoid being deported were told to pull their own teeth out in order to be transferred to a more easily-escaped hospital.

Two men held at Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre near Heathrow having come to the UK illegally were given the advise on a TikTok call with someone who claimed to have escaped the unit in 2018.

The migrants are due to be returned to Albania in accordance with its returns agreement with the UK, allowing Albanian nationals found in the UK illegally to be repatriated.

They were also advised on how to smuggle pliers into the removal centre and which jobs available to detainees would allow the best opportunity to escape.

However, there is no evidence to suggest that the proposed methods would work although the men have seemingly been able to illegally smuggle a mobile phone inside the facility previously.

In a live TikTok exchange seen by The Telegraph, four Albanians understood to be convicted criminals spoke in detail about the layout of Colnbrook and its security measures.

Speaking to those on camera, using a profile with the name 'Xhovani', a man with an account nicknamed 'The Sting' advises his compatriots to pull teeth out in order to be moved to hospital, adding that he escaped in 2018 - though here is no public record of an Albanian escaping the centre that year.

He said that this method would allow the men to 'disappear' past CCTV.

However, it seemed that the two sides of the conversation disagreed on the level of security at Colnbrook, suggesting it may have been made more secure in the last six years.

Colnbrook is one of the Home Office's seven immigration removal centres which hold illegal migrants and foreign criminals before they are deported.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13849767/Albanian-migrants-avoid-kicked-UK-TikTok-pull-teeth-escape-hospital.html

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September 13, 2024

PRM: The Obscure State Department Bureau That Fosters Global Illegal Migration

It is remarkable how many well-informed conservative foreign policy strategists have never even heard of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM).  Even those who closely follow immigration and border issues rarely understand the role PRM plays in accommodating and promoting the worldwide movement of illegal migrants.  

PRM should not be confused with State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, which is in charge of issuing visas to foreigners to enter the United States and is known in Foggy Bottom as “CA.” Because so many interest groups constantly want more visas to be issued, CA gets its fair share of scrutiny from the media, lobbyists, and members of Congress. The PRM bureau has nothing to do with visas, and so it often flies under the conservative policy radar.

PRM manages, along with DHS, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Under Biden-Harris, PRM currently resettles around 125,000 refugees annually. Trump had cut admissions down to 15,000.

While 125,000 a year is not an insignificant number of admissions—and Biden-Harris want it to massively grow—the figure is still small potatoes compared to the millions of illegal and quasi-legal migrants that this administration has admitted into the country.

Thus, even more consequential than PRM’s refugee admissions is the bureau’s diplomatic support and international grant-giving to the worldwide “irregular” migration industry. PRM doles out around $4 billion annually, mainly to establishment international organizations such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).  

These multilateral organizations, funded by Washington, do more than manage genuine refugees and displaced persons. They are the juggernaut of today’s open-border ideology, taking resources from donor governments to promote concepts that chip away and undermine national borders, while advancing a global “right to migrate.”

https://cis.org/Linderman/Oped-PRM-Obscure-State-Department-Bureau-Fosters-Global-Illegal-Migration

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September 11, 2024

Small Ohio Town Reels from Biden-Harris Immigrant Dump

Residents of a little city in the Buckeye State may soon have to start hiding their cats and dogs, as the Biden-Harris administration has dropped thousands of Haitian immigrants into the suburbs of small-town USA. Since taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have imported over 100,000 Haitian immigrants into the U.S. Nearly 20,000 of those Haitians have been settled in Springfield, Ohio over the course of the past three years under Temporary Protected Status, increasing the city’s population of 60,000 by a third, overwhelming municipal services, and causing a spike in traffic accidents and crime.

According to locals, the massive influx of immigrants is crippling Springfield’s municipal and social services. Dr. Millie Chamberlin, a former high school principal, told The Washington Stand, “I think the overwhelming concern is that there was no preparation, no planning, no anything to help the schools or help the citizens adjust and accept this huge wave of people. And so now we have this burgeoning population that started a few years ago when a former mayor agreed to bring in 10,000 Haitians without telling anybody.”

On the first day of school, public school hallways were full of Haitian immigrants seeking to register their children for classes: within the first week of school, over 350 new students were registered. The public school system had to hire dozens of Haitian-Creole interpreters and new teachers to handle English as a second language. Over the past three years, the county school system has reportedly registered at least 1,600 non-English-speaking students, and 20-year-old Haitians are being placed in freshman high school classes with 13-year-olds.

At a Springfield City Commission meeting two weeks ago, residents explained that immigrants are being given preference over U.S. citizens for social services. “I have a 20-year-old granddaughter who works two jobs, pays city tax, a 23-year-old grandson who also pays city tax and federal, state and all the other stuff,” said Lisa Hayes, noting that immigrants are being given better benefits first. “She works two jobs, she’s pregnant, and it took us four months to get Medicaid for that young lady. And she couldn’t get any of her tests done.” It is estimated that 90% of those waiting in line for welfare and social services are Haitian immigrants, who cause hours-long wait times due to the language barrier and the fact that they bring no paperwork with them to collect welfare.

Dr. Yamini Teegala, CEO of the Rocking Horse Community Health Center, a federally-subsidized health center open to all, said that the strain placed on the city by the Biden-Harris administration’s shipment of immigrants is “not sustainable.” She explained that the average 15-minute consultation time has jumped to a new standard of 45 minutes, usually due to the language barrier, and that Rocking Horse Community Health Center has gone from spending $43,000 on translation services four years ago to $436,000 in 2024 alone. Hospital wait times have increased and American taxpayers are forced to fund health services for non-citizens, and often find that those services are so overwhelmed by immigrants that citizens themselves cannot access them.

One longtime Springfield resident explained that his new Haitian neighbors are being given $3,000 a month, in addition to food stamps, for meals and rent, while he himself is only offered $76 monthly in food stamps. Due to the money provided them through government programs, the immigrants are emptying out grocery store shelves and, in many cases, are able to pay higher rent than their working-class American neighbors, leading landlords and realtors to give preference to immigrants over Americans.

In some cases, landlords have even had American families vacate properties in order to rent them to higher-paying immigrants, and at least 200 properties in Springfield have been removed from a federal housing-voucher program for low-income families in order to profit from immigrants flush with government cash. Michelle Lee-Hall, executive director of Springfield’s housing authority, explained, “Here in Springfield, the new homeless are people who can’t afford to pay $2,000 or $3,000 a month in rent.”

Others are being forced from their homes and neighborhoods not by rising rent prices, but by the sheer chaos caused by the immigrants. One elderly Springfield resident told a commission meeting that she and her husband have been forced to leave their home of nearly 50 years because it has become “so unsafe in my neighborhood.” She explained that immigrant squatters camp on her front lawn, ignore her pleas for them to leave, and litter in her yard and on her street. “I have men that cannot speak English in my front yard screaming at me, throwing mattresses in my front yard, throwing trash in my front yard,” she recounted. The woman asked the mayor and commissioners, “I don’t understand what you expect of us as citizens. I understand they’re here under Temporary Protected Status and you’re protecting them… But who’s protecting us? If we’re protecting them, who’s protecting me?”

Additionally, Springfield residents say that Haitian immigrants are stealing local animals and eating them. In a Springfield neighborhood community group on Facebook, one local related how her friend’s cat had gone missing. “One day, she came home from work, as soon as she stepped out of her car, looked towards a neighbor[’]s house, where Haitians live, & saw her cat hanging from a branch, like you’d do a deer for butchering, & they were carving it up to eat.”

The Springfield resident added, “I’ve been told they are doing this to dogs, they have been doing it at [S]nyder park with the ducks & geese, as I was told that last bit by Rangers & police.” Another resident, Anthony Harris, told a Springfield City Commission meeting that immigrants are “in the park grabbing up ducks by their neck and cutting their head off and walking off with them and eating them.”

https://washingtonstand.com/news/small-ohio-town-reels-from-bidenharris-immigrant-dump

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September 10, 2024

Blue City Reportedly Giving Migrants $4,000 Cash Payments, Gift Cards To Move Out Of Shelters

New York City is giving out payments and gift cards to migrants to obtain permanent housing and move out of city-operated shelters, Fox News Digital reported on Saturday.

The NYC Department of Homeless Services (DHS) offered 150 families $4,000 each through the Asylee Moveout Assistance (AMA) program to pay for housing, as well as up to $1,000 in gift cards for necessities and moving expenses, according to Fox News Digital. The AMA program pilot began in December 2023 in partnership with city shelters that housed asylum seekers. 

“The city is using every tool at its disposal to implement innovative and cost-effective solutions to help recently-arrived asylum seekers residing in shelters take the next steps in their journey,” a Department of Social Services (DSS) spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “Since December, DSS has been working with a few not-for-profit providers operating emergency sites to pilot a new effort to reduce barriers to obtaining housing by helping asylum-seeking families who have identified permanent housing with the upfront cost of moving into their new home.”

To be eligible for the payouts, the migrants must be asylum seekers or pregnant women in select DHS shelters who have identified permanent housing, according to Fox News Digital. The $4,000 can cover security deposits, moving expenses, first and last month’s rent and household necessities.

“This is a very small pilot only available to asylum-seeking families in select emergency shelters operated by DHS,” the DSS spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “This is not a citywide effort and not available to migrant families residing across the shelter system,”

Migrants who return to the shelters would not be eligible to receive the payment again, according to Fox News Digital. The funding for the program comes from existing funds within the agency and no city funding is used, the DSS spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

Since the spring of 2022, at least 201,200 migrants have come to New York City, with more than 65,000 in the care of the city, ABC 7 reported in June. New York City has spent $4.6 billion on projects, a city spokesperson told the outlet.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/09/07/blue-city-migrants-4000-cash-payments-gift-cards-move-shelters/

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September 5, 2024

Mexico Busing ‘CBP One’ Migrants from Guatemalan Border to U.S. Ports of Entry

I recently theorized that the Mexican government may be moving illegal “other than Mexican” (OTM) migrants who had scheduled interviews at U.S. Southwest border ports of entry using the CBP One app through the country. In fact, a recent article in Border Report reveals that the Mexican government is busing those OTM migrants north to the U.S. border — apparently part of a deal struck with the Biden-Harris administration to hide the true scope of illegal immigration to the United States.

The CBP One App Interview Scheme. On January 5, 2023, the White House issued a fact sheet titled “Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces New Border Enforcement Actions”, which explained:

When Title 42 eventually lifts, noncitizens located in Central and Northern Mexico seeking to enter the United States lawfully through a U.S. port of entry have access to the CBP One mobile application for scheduling an appointment to present themselves for inspection and to initiate a protection claim instead of coming directly to a port of entry to wait. This new feature will significantly reduce wait times and crowds at U.S. ports of entry and allow for safe, orderly, and humane processing.

Many of the “facts” in that “fact sheet” aren’t “factual” per se.

For example, there’s the contention that would-be illegal migrants would only be able to schedule appointments for interviews at the border ports of entry once “Title 42 lifted”, which occurred on May 11, 2023.

In reality, that program had already been ongoing on a limited basis when that announcement was made, as my colleague Todd Bensman reported months earlier, and it was expanded to all would-be migrants just a week after that fact sheet was issued, on January 12.

Moreover, the claim that CBP One app users are “seeking to enter the United States lawfully” is legally and factually untrue. By definition, none of them are seeking lawful entry because they don’t have the documents — visas and passports — needed to be admitted to the United States lawfully.

In any event, CBP currently makes 1,450 CBP One daily interview appointments (529,250 per annum) available to those aliens, and not just for migrants in “Central and Northern Mexico”, anymore.

On August 23, CBP began allowing OTMs “to request and schedule appointments from the Southern Mexico states of Tabasco and Chiapas”. If you’re not familiar with the geographical location of the 31 Mexican states, Tabasco and Chiapas are the two southernmost ones, bordering Guatemala.

As of the end of July, more than 765,000 illegal migrants have made appointments at the ports using CBP One, and congressional disclosures reveal that nearly 96 percent of CBP One migrants have been paroled into the United States — where they will remain indefinitely, if not forever.

There is still a CBP One “dead zone”, however, in the Mexican states immediately north of Tabasco and Chiapas — Oaxaca, Veracruz, and Guererro — before coverage picks up again in Puebla (just south of Mexico City).

All of that raises the question of how OTM migrants who made port appointments using the CBP app after entering Mexico illegally from the Guatemalan side of the border would then transit north to the U.S. Southwest border.

“Mexico Busing Asylum-Seekers to Border Appointments”. I tried to answer that question in an August 19 post discussing CBP’s July border numbers and the then-planned expansion of coverage: “The CBP One app spits out an interview notice migrants can present at the ports, and if I had to make a guess that notice also serves as a de facto transit visa through Mexico”.

It turns out that — as crazy as the Mexican government allowing illegal OTMs to simply traipse through its sovereign territory sounded — I wasn’t going nearly far enough.

The Border Report article I referenced in the first paragraph is captioned “Mexico busing asylum-seekers to border appointments”, and it begins:

The government of Mexico says it will provide safe and free bus rides to asylum-seekers headed to appointments at U.S. ports of entry.

The Ministry of the Interior said a new Emergency Safe Mobility Corridor will focus on ensuring the safety of families who would otherwise be traversing Mexico on their own. Foreign nationals making such a trip often are preyed on by criminals who extort or abuse them, according to migrant advocates and observers in the U.S.

“The objective of the project is to safeguard foreign persons who decide to travel by land to the port of entry where they are expected. Priority will be given to families traveling together,” the ministry and the National Migration Institute (INM) said in a joint communique on Monday.

None of this makes sense, but then the CBP One app expansion to Tabasco and Chiapas doesn’t make much sense either — except as a way for the Biden-Harris administration to hide the actual number of migrants who continue to enter the United States illegally, even as Border Patrol apprehensions have declined in recent months. (This is similar to the “controlled flow” policy in Panama and Costa Rica Bensman wrote about several years ago.)

Start with the fact that if any of those OTMs are truly in need of humanitarian protection, they can — and should — first seek it in Mexico itself.

The United States is not the only country in the world that provides asylum, and in fact Mexico acceded to the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention — the international instrument governing such protection — more than 24 years ago.

https://cis.org/Arthur/Report-Mexico-Busing-CBP-One-Migrants-Guatemalan-Border-US-Ports-Entry



September 4, 2024

Migrants Make Up Roughly 75% Of Arrests In Midtown Manhattan, According To Estimate

Migrants reportedly make up roughly 75% of arrests in Midtown Manhattan and a large bulk of other New York City (NYC) neighborhoods, according to the New York Post.

Illegal migrants and other foreign nationals living in shelters are flooding New York City’s criminal justice system, according to law enforcement sources who spoke anonymously with the Post. These migrants are being arrested for robbery, assault, domestic violence and other crimes across the city. (RELATED: Teen Girl At Baseball Game Randomly Stabbed By Previously Deported Illegal Migrant, Police Allege)

“I would say about 75% of the arrests in Midtown Manhattan are migrants, mostly for robberies, assaults, domestic incidents and selling counterfeit items,” a Midtown officer stated to the Post. The source explained that number is an estimate because “you can’t be 100% sure [they’re migrants] unless you arrest them in a shelter or they’re dumb enough to give you a shelter address.”

Police officers are prohibited from asking about the immigration status of crime victims, witnesses or suspects and therefore the New York Police Department (NYPD) doesn’t track data pertaining to immigration statuses, a law enforcement spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation on Tuesday.

Migrants bused from Texas arrive in New York City
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – AUGUST 29: Port Authority police officers wait for the arrival of buses from Texas carrying arrested migrants that have been bused to New York City by Texas on August 29, 2022 at the Port Authority bus station in midtown New York City, New York. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Another law enforcement officer added that the rate of local arrests in Manhattan involving migrants is “easily” 75% when you exclude petty larcenies at drugstores because they prefer more high-end merchandise, according to the Post.

“They can’t be bothered with lower-end stores. They like Lululemon and Sunglass Hut,” the source stated, claiming that migrants are involved in the majority of pickpocketing and chain and phone snatching cases with the NYPD.

Border Patrol agents have encountered more than seven million migrants illegally crossing the southern border since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, and hundreds of thousands of other foreign nationals have entered the U.S. through other programs created by the White House. A large number of these migrants have zeroed in on New York City, with city officials saying over 200,000 migrants have arrived since 2022 — costing the city roughly $1.5 billion in 2023 alone.

The sheer volume of migrants flooding the city has been followed by numerous high-profile crimes.

A homeless illegal migrant in Brooklyn was arrested last month for allegedly raping a woman at knifepoint, with the case attracting widespread attention upon the discovery that he had been previously arrested for another rape and released by law enforcement. In other cases involving migrant crime in the the Big Apple, a group allegedly went on a shoplifting spree and beat down an NYPD officer, another illegal migrant allegedly fired at two cops during a foot chase and another illegal migrant allegedly raped a 13-year-old girl at knifepoint.

“New York City eliminated a tool to get rid of violent criminals. What a mess,” Jim Quinn, a veteran former prosecutor at the Queens District Attorney’s Office, stated to the Post.

“The sanctuary city law is pathetic. It’s disgusting. It’s crazy,” Quinn continued.

Mayor Eric Adams has increasingly voiced support for rolling back the city’s sanctuary laws, and a group of moderate members on the NYC Council have put forward legislation to do just that. However, these efforts so far have fallen flat as the bill aiming to undo the sanctuary city laws is expected to go nowhere and a proposed referendum on the laws did not make it on the upcoming November ballot for NYC voters to directly decide.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/09/03/migrants-midtown-manhattan-reportedly-75-percent-arrests/

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September 3, 2024

Panama Border Security Chief Says Many U.S.-Bound Terror Suspects Caught in Darien Gap Region

In April 2022, the American public finally heard the sound of national security alarms about the U.S. southern border, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection began publishing, on a monthly basis, the numbers of FBI watch-listed terrorists caught illegally crossing (a record-breaking 378 from FY2021 through July 2024).

But what most Americans do not know is that many more terrorism suspects en route to the U.S. border could be added to that alarming number, except these ones were caught in Panama coming out of the notorious Darien Gap jungle, pulled off the migrant trails, and never accounted for in CBP’s public data reports.

New official information about these additional terrorism suspects interrupted on their way to the American border comes by way of an exclusive Center for Immigration Studies interview with the chief of Panama’s National Border Service (SENAFRONT), Director General Jorge Gobea, at agency headquarters just off the Panama Canal.

Asked to comment about SENAFRONT’s reported August arrest of three Afghan terror suspects whose biometrics were taken and checked at a Darien Province immigrant reception station (described in the SENAFRONT tweet below), Gobea responded that the report was “not fake”.

“We did take and profile a few members of a terrorist cell from … Afghanistan,” he said. “We linked and we profiled them to be members of an active cell. They were members of a Salafist group, and they had links with different activities.”

But then Gobea added that this was far from a one-off.

“We have many stories of that. We don’t just have one. We have many stories of that, from Somalia, from Yemen … from Syria, from Africa.”

Gobea would not put a number on the “many stories”.

But for all those good-news stories of short-circuited U.S. border-crossings by known terrorist suspects, he also suggested that the record-breaking flood hundreds of thousands of migrants a year from 150-plus nations that began pouring through the Darien Gap from Colombia in 2021 has severely hampered the very counterterrorism screening programs that catch them and get them off the trails early.

”3 Percent in This Moment” — The Broken Counterterrorism Dam. I knew exactly what Gobea was talking about. Following a previous trip to Panama in 2018, I produced reporting about those counterterrorism programs. This was several years before the historic mass migration event that the Biden-Harris administration would unleash starting in 2021. (See 2019 video below.)

Since 2011, SENAFRONT has worked closely with in-country FBI and DHS agents on counterterrorism programs that use U.S.-provided equipment to collect migrant biometrics like fingerprints and photos and run them through terrorism databases looking for positive hits before the foreign nationals move on north.

But SENAFRONT’s director general indicated that so many began coming through the gap during the historic mass migration to the U.S. border that Central American authorities are scarcely able to screen even a fraction of them.

“Maybe at this moment … we can check like 3 percent and, in the worst moment, 1 percent,” Gobea told me. “We don’t have the capability to screen everybody.”

So many are coming that agents on the ground are left to “profile” immigrants for priority collection and checks, probably meaning if they are young men from Muslim-majority nations. But eyeballing always eludes perfection.

”Throughout the Years, We Were Catching a Lot … Hundreds.” This profound reduction in coverage to 1 percent or 3 percent in Panama stands in contrast with a 90-percent rate of screening immigrants in the country when the program started in 2011, when flows were usually well under 10,000 per year.

This is according to Edward Dolan, a former Homeland Security Investigations agent who worked deeply with these programs while later serving as DHS’s Regional Attache for Central America in the U.S. embassy in Panama City. Dolan retired from service in 2019 but still lives and works in Panama, where I met with him in a coffee shop.

“Throughout the years, we were catching a lot” of watch-listed terrorists, Dolan told me. “From like 2015 to 2019, it was hundreds.”

But checking the 550,000 immigrants that crossed in just 2023 and almost 250,000 so far in 2024?

“That’s insurmountable,” Dolan said. “I can’t imagine trying to manage what they have now.”

Dolan said those low screening rates in Panama help explain the record-high number of terror suspects getting caught and counted illegally crossing the U.S. border.

“All you have to do is look at what’s being reported at the southwest border and then go back and look at the numbers in 2019 [zero] and 2020 [three],” Dolan said. “That tells the story itself.”

Delayed Counterterrorism Responses from Colombia to Texas. So many are coming in through the Darien Gap, Gobea confirmed, that “active terrorist” migrants are sometimes mistakenly freed to proceed to countries north before biometric information submitted in Panama produces a positive hit.

A red flag goes out then, of course, and with a little luck, “they take them from the migrant flow”, Gobea explained, for interviews with American and local agents, the eventual deportation to “their official port of entry. Maybe it’s in Africa. Maybe it’s Bosnia. We return them to their previous position.”

Clearly, however, many are too long gone and don’t get caught until they hit the American border, if ever. On August 5, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee issued an interim report revealing that since January 2021, CPB released into the United States “at least” 99 border-crossing immigrants who were on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist database.

The entire multinational counterterrorism net now stands reduced in capability, and the bad guys know it, Dolan said.

“If you’re a terrorist,” he said. “this is how you’re going to come to the United States.”

https://cis.org/Bensman/Exclusive-Interview-Panama-Border-Security-Chief-Says-Many-USBound-Terror-Suspects-Caught

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2 September, 2024

Biden admin restarts "legal" immigration program

The Biden administration is restarting an immigration program that allows migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to come to the United States, and it is including “additional vetting” of their U.S.-based financial sponsors following fraud concerns.

The Department of Homeland Security had suspended the program earlier this month to investigate the concerns but indicated that an internal review found no widespread fraud among sponsors.

“Together with our existing rigorous vetting of potential beneficiaries seeking to travel to the United States, these new procedures for supporters have strengthened the integrity of these processes and will help protect against exploitation of beneficiaries,” the agency said.

The program launched in January 2023 and is a major piece of the Biden administration’s immigration policies that create or expand pathways for legal entry while restricting asylum for those who cross the border illegally.

The policy is aimed at countries that send large numbers of people to the United States and generally refuse to accept those who are deported. It is paired with commitments from Mexico to take back people from those countries who cross the U.S. border illegally.

Under the program, the U.S. accepts up to 30,000 people a month from the four countries for two years and offers eligibility for work authorization. To qualify, migrants must have a financial sponsor in the U.S. who vouches for them and fly into an American airport at their own expense, rather than crossing at the southern border. Those acting as sponsors and the migrants hoping to come to America undergo vetting by Homeland Security.

Republicans have repeatedly criticized the program as an end-run around immigration laws. They immediately attacked the administration when the program was suspended early this month, pointing to it as further validation of their concerns about whether migrants were properly vetted. And they criticized the decision announced Thursday to restart.

“Instead of scrapping the clearly flawed program, the department is allowing it to continue without rooting out the fraud or putting adequate safeguards in place to prevent exploitation by sponsors here in the United States. But fundamentally, there would be no fraud to prevent if DHS simply stopped importing 30,000 inadmissible aliens every month in the first place,” said Republican Rep. Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday that the additional vetting would include more scrutiny of the financial records that U.S.-based sponsors are required to submit as well as their criminal backgrounds. Sponsors will be required to submit fingerprints, and the agency will bolster steps to identify sponsors who are fraudulent and when one files numerous applications.

DHS said an internal review found some cases of fraud, such as sponsors using fake Social Security numbers, but that the majority of cases it investigated had a reasonable explanation, such as a typo when a sponsor was submitting information online

https://apnews.com/article/biden-immigration-sponors-cuba-haiti-nicaragua-venezuela-34b8b79d57a3ccff49cd89ea224a2748

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