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31 January, 2023

No ‘Right to Shelter’ for ‘Asylum Seekers,’ NYC Mayor Says

Illegal immigrants who arrived in New York City from southern border states are not entitled to benefits offered by the city’s “right to shelter” policy, Mayor Eric Adams said on Wednesday.

Speaking on WABC’s “Sid & Friends” radio show, the Democratic mayor was asked if he would ever consider ending New York City’s status as a “sanctuary city,” given that his administration struggles to accommodate the needs of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who have been arriving by bus from border states since last spring.

“We cannot be a sanctuary city and complain,” said host Sid Rosenberg, citing criticisms about the city’s handling of the ongoing illegal immigration crisis. “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be a sanctuary city and then complain about the influx of migrants.”

“The court ruled that this is a sanctuary city,” Adams replied. “We have a moral and legal obligation to fulfill that.”

“We don’t believe asylum seekers fall into the whole right-to-shelter conversation,” Adams said, referring to a 1979 law that requires the city’s homeless shelter system to provide a bed to anyone in need of one. “This is a crisis that must be addressed based on what was created on this national platform.”

Several activist groups took issue with Adams’s comments, arguing that it’s his job as a mayor to follow the law, not to interpret to whom the law applies.

“It’s not up to him to decide who can be excluded based on how they got here,” the New York Immigration Coalition wrote on Twitter. “Seems like his latest tactic to avoid fixing our shelter system—a crisis hurting too many NY families.”

“Flouting the law would accomplish nothing and such a move would only land this administration in front of a judge for contempt,” the Coalition for the Homeless and the Legal Aid Society said in a statement. “The mayor must clarify his remarks from this morning immediately.”

In response to the condemnations, the mayor’s office argued that the Adams administration is working to fulfill its legal obligations amid the overwhelming circumstances that no one could have foreseen.

“Since the beginning of this humanitarian crisis last spring, Mayor Adams and this administration have taken extraordinary measures to provide shelter and support to the approximately 42,000 asylum seekers who have sought help from the city. We have already opened 79 hotels and four humanitarian relief centers, and another is scheduled to open shortly.”

As of Jan. 25, New York City’s shelter system is housing more than 69,000 people, according to the homeless services department’s latest daily report. This number, which is already a record-breaking high, does not account for the more than 40,000 recently arrived illegal immigrants who have applied for shelter.

In September 2022, Adams said the homeless shelter system was “nearing its breaking point” and that the city must “reassess” the way it puts the right-to-shelter policy in practice.

“In this new and unforeseen reality, where we expect thousands more to arrive every week going forward, the city’s system is nearing its breaking point,” Adams said at that time. “As a result, the city’s prior practices, which never contemplated the busing of thousands of people into New York City, must be reassessed.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/no-right-to-shelter-for-asylum-seekers-nyc-mayor-says_5013008.html



30 January, 2023

Mayorkas Smuggled 100,000 Migrants Into the U.S. Through A Hidden Parole Pathway

President Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, reportedly smuggled over 100,000 illegal migrants into the U.S. through a hidden parole pathway.

From May to December, Mayorkas has been welcoming at least 20,000 migrants into the country each month, according to the New York Times.

The NYT was given an official briefing on the pathway, which was name CBP One after many reporters were unable to explain the migration pathway.

The secret pathway delivers more than 240,000 illegal migrants into the U.S. per year under the disguise that they will be used as economically despite a 1986 ban on the corporate hiring of immigrants.

This is in addition to the 360,000 migrants per year that officials will bring in from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua using the same hidden pathway.

Combined, this would add 600,000 extra economic migrants per year to the country’s economy.

This comes as migrants are rushing to fly into the U.S. after 20 Republicans filed a lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s new immigration plan.

Hundreds of immigrants landed at the Miami International Airport this week, coming in from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti, all of which were coming to the states legally under Biden’s expanded parole program, which allows 30,000 migrants from four countries to enter each month.

However, amid the GOP- led lawsuit, the migrants are coming to the U.S.  earlier than expected, fearing the lawsuit could end the program.

According to the lawsuit, Biden’s plan “amounts to the creation of a new visa program that allows hundreds of thousands of aliens to enter the United States who otherwise have no basis for doing so."

Earlier this month, Biden announced the program, saying that it would allow migrants to receive work permits and a two-year authorization to live in the U.S.

The lawsuit was assigned to Court Judge Drew Tipton, a Trump appointee, who has until April 25 to decide whether or not to halt Biden’s program until there is a decision on the lawsuit.

https://townhall.com//tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/01/28/mayorkas-smuggled-100000-migrants-into-the-us-through-hidden-parole-pathway-n2618869

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29 January, 2023

Biden’s dishonest border crisis victory lap — it hasn’t been fixed!

By Mark Krikorian

Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security declared victory over the border crisis this week as a result of recent policy changes. They may come to wish they hadn’t.

With Eric Adams and other sanctuary mayors bemoaning the effects on their cities from a tiny sliver of the border surge, the administration responded with Biden’s short drop-in at the border, and certain policy changes. Those measures, billed as “New Border Enforcement Actions,” included applying Title 42 automatic expulsions to border-jumpers from four countries that had been exempt: Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti.

That’s good as far as it goes. The number of people from those four countries arrested crossing the border illegally has reportedly dropped more than 90% over the past week. Illegals from those four countries made up about 38% of all border arrests in December, so if they’re out of the picture then January could see the lowest number of apprehensions since February 2021, when the new administration sparked the border crisis. The Biden-friendly media duly reported this new storyline, and can now go back to ignoring the border.

But while the administration and its media groupies may not be interested in the border, the border is interested in them. There are two reasons the border crisis isn’t over yet.
First, the arrest numbers will go back up. Border-jumpers from the other 190-odd countries of the world in December totaled “only” 137,000, which is low by the ridiculous standards of the Biden administration, but is still nearly double the number from December 2020, the last full month under Trump.

The four countries Biden targeted did send a lot of illegal immigrants in December, but even that’s a new development; two years previously, they accounted for barely 5% of border arrests.

And just because wannabe illegal migrants from those four countries have decided (for now) to hold back, it doesn’t mean those from other countries are sitting still. While the totals are lower, the number of border-jumpers in December from India and Turkey, for instance, were triple the year before; Peru nine times higher; Colombia 10 times, China 14 times, Ecuador 24 times higher.

And the threat to expel border-crossers from the four countries is based on Title 42, a COVID-related measure that the administration is actively trying to end. What happens when it succeeds, as it eventually must? And anyway, Mexico has agreed to take back only 30,000 illegal immigrants from those countries per month — what happens to Mr. 30,001? He’ll be released into the U.S., of course.

The other reason the border issue isn’t going away is that the threat of expulsions is being offset by a new illegal scheme to just wave in people from those countries “legally.” The administration has no intention of stopping the flow of inadmissible foreigners across the border; instead, it plans to relabel them as legal and — poof! — make problem disappear.

Biden is using something called immigration parole, which Congress created to allow the authorities to let in a handful of emergency cases where there is no time to get a visa. Under Biden this tiny loophole is swallowing the whole immigration system.

Even before this latest ploy to parole in up to 360,000 people from the four countries, Biden has been paroling in hundreds of thousands of others, many of them via an app called CBP One, which is like the OpenTable app but for visa-less foreigners — call it the OpenBorders app.

But that’s not what parole is for. As a congressional committee reported in 1996, “the parole authority was intended to be used on a case-by-case basis to meet specific needs, and not as a supplement to Congressionally established immigration policy.”

It’s for that reason that there are now two lawsuits challenging the administration’s flagrantly illegal use of parole. The state of Florida is suing over the administration’s whole anti-borders agenda, including the abuse of parole, while Texas and 19 other states just filed suit this week to stop this latest parole scheme.

More than 15,000 people from these four countries who would have come illegally have already been paroled in (most from Venezuela, since the program was applied to them starting in October). The likelihood that any of them will leave after their two years of parole is over is basically zero, whether or not they succeed in claiming asylum. But there may not be many more, depending on the outcome of these lawsuits. If the courts do their job, the administration will be foiled in its scheme to hide illegal immigration at the border.

Maybe then it will become clear that the root cause of the border crisis is sitting in the Oval Office.

https://nypost.com/2023/01/26/bidens-dishonest-border-crisis-victory-lap-it-hasnt-been-fixed/



27 January, 2023

US authorities see 97% decline in illegal border crossings by migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela

U.S. authorities have seen a 97% decline in illegal border crossings by migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela since Mexico began accepting those expelled under a pandemic-era order, the Biden administration said Wednesday.

The announcement came one day after Texas and 19 other Republican-led states sued to stop widescale humanitarian parole for citizens of those four countries who apply online, fly to the United States and find a financial sponsor.

The administration said Jan. 5 that it would admit up to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela for two years with authorization to work. At the same time, Mexico agreed to take back the same amount from those countries who enter the U.S. illegally and are expelled under Title 42, which denies them rights to seek asylum, with the stated goal of preventing the spread of COVID-19. Border crossings by migrants from those four nations had risen sharply, with no easy way to quickly return them to their home countries.

"These expanded border enforcement measures are working," said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. "It is incomprehensible that some states who stand to benefit from these highly effective enforcement measures are seeking to block them and cause more irregular migration at our southern border."

U.S. authorities stopped migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela an average of 115 times a day along the Mexican border during a seven-day period that ended Tuesday, down from a daily average of 3,367 during the week that ended Dec. 11.

The Texas-led lawsuit seeks to stop large-scale humanitarian parole for those four countries, which may total 360,000 people a year. It has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton in Corpus Christi, an appointee of Donald Trump who has ruled against President Joe Biden on who to prioritize for deportation.

"This unlawful amnesty program, which will invite hundreds of thousands of aliens into the U.S. every year, will only make this immigration crisis drastically worse," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a news release.

By law, Homeland Security may parole migrants into the United States "only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit."

So far, 1,700 Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians have reached the United States on humanitarian parole under the policy changes announced this month, and thousands more from those three countries have been approved, administration officials told reporters on a conference call on condition of anonymity. The number of Venezuelans was not immediately available.

Roberto Velasco, Mexico Foreign Relations Department's director of North American affairs, echoed Mayorkas’ comments that the recent changes are a success.

"The measures announced by the United States have begun delivering important results with the twin objectives of opening avenues to regular migration and also considerably reducing risks associated with irregular migration flows," he wrote Tuesday in Mexico's Excelsior newspaper.

A surge in Cuban and Nicaraguan arrivals in December led to the highest number of illegal crossings recorded during any month of Biden’s presidency, the administration reported last week. Authorities stopped migrants 251,487 times along the Mexican border in December, up 7% from November and up 40% from the same period a year earlier.

Homeland Security said Wednesday that January numbers were "on track" to be the lowest since February 2021, Biden's first full month in office.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/us-authorities-97-decline-illegal-border-crossings-migrants-cuba-haiti-nicaragua-venezuela

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26 January, 2023

Eric Adams: 'Unfair' for Sanctuary Cities to Carry the Weight of the Border Crisis

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) once again took to the airwaves to say Democratic cities who declared themselves to be a sanctuary for illegal immigrants are being stretched thin due to the large number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

New York City has had to open a fifth shelter for recent arrivals from the southern border, which is in addition to using hotels and homeless shelters to house people coming from Latin America and even parts of Asia.

"Well, I believe that when I took the trip to El Paso, you can see firsthand the impact of how it not only harm the foundation of El Paso, but look at Chicago, Houston, Washington, New York City, this is just unfair for cities to carry the weight of a national problem," Adams told MSNBC on Wednesday. "We’re going to open for more hotels, emergency hotels...This as a major financial impact on New York City and cities across this country that are receiving the brunt of it."

Adams said the Biden White House claims there is a person who is in charge of helping American cities with the immigration problem, but he does not who the person is.

"I was told that we have an individual that’s coordinating the operation. And as I shared with White House officials, why don’t I know who that is? It’s about having a real decompression strategy, looking at who’s coming in and ensuring that it is really a burden by the entire country, not just a few cities, and just the pathway continues to lead to New York," he explained.

He went on to blame Republicans for blocking "comprehensive immigration policies" that caused the massive influx of illegal crossings.

"What’s the short term plan? If my house is burning, I don’t want to hear about fire prevention. Let’s put out the fire."

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2023/01/25/eric-adams-unfair-for-sanctuary-cities-to-carry-the-weight-of-the-border-crisis-n2618741

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25 January, 2023

UK set to crack down on illegal immigrants: block bank access, home rentals, and driver’s licenses

In a bid to crack down on illegal immigration, the U.K. government is blocking access on migrants’ access to bank accounts, home rentals, and their driver’s licenses, among other services.

The country’s immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, is heading a new taskforce to ensure that "only those eligible can work, receive benefits or access to public service," The Telegraph reports.


"We’re delivering on our promise to increase raids on illegal employers: a new Enforcement Taskforce will ensure only those eligible can work, access public services and benefits," Jenrick tweeted Sunday.

The new initiative will include a 50% increase in immigration enforcement visits to construction sites, car washes, and gig economy firms.

The government has already been ramping up enforcement visits in recent months. Since mid-December, there have been more than 1,150 such visits – a 10% increase – since mid-December, according to The Telegraph. This amounts to about 362 arrests.  

Jenrick has argued that black market jobs harm communities by "cheating honest workers of employment, putting vulnerable people at risk, and defrauding the public purse," he said.

"Our Immigration Enforcement teams are working round the clock to bring those violating our laws to justice. It’s our priority to crack down on this crime and empower law enforcement to remove illegal migrants," he said.

"With support from our new enforcement taskforce, we will go further and faster to prevent the abuse of our laws and borders and crack down on individuals exploiting the generosity of the UK taxpayer."

https://www.foxnews.com/world/uk-set-crack-down-illegal-immigrants-block-bank-access-home-rentals-drivers-licenses



24 January, 2023

No End In Sight: Southern Border Exceeds Over 250,000 Encounters

The southern border continues to be overrun by thousands of illegal migrants each day despite President Joe Biden's vowing to do something about the crisis.

However, he does have his hands full after the discovery of classified documents were found in his possession.

Still, that is no excuse for the staggering amount of migrants crossing the southwest border every day.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, data, 251, 487 encounters were stopped during December, marking the tenth consecutive month that topped over 200,000 encounters.

“CBP sources [say] there were over 70,000 known got away at the border in December as well,” Fox News Bill Melugin tweeted.

December 2022 was recorded as seeing the highest number of migrant encounters ever recorded. Between October, November, and December, there have been 717, 660 encounters (not counting got aways) caught at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Despite border encounters being the highest it has ever been in 10 months, CBP Commissioner Troy Miller claimed that their new border enforcement measures are “working.”

“Even as overall encounters rose because of smugglers spreading misinformation around the court-ordered lifting of the Title 42 public health order, we continued to see a sharp decline in the number of Venezuelans unlawfully crossing our southwest border, down 82% from September 2022," Miller said in a press release. "Early data suggests the expanded measures for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans are having a similar impact, and we look forward to sharing the additional data in the next update.”

Even Democrat-run states such as New York City have had it with Biden’s lax border policies.

Democrat Mayor Eric Adams called on Biden to do his job by closing the border to migrants until after their asylum applications can be reviewed— a key proponent of former President Trump’s Remain In Mexico policy.

Adams criticized the Biden Administration for failing to take into account states who are being bombarded by immigrants, severely impacting them.

“You see the support they deserve,” Adams said, adding “and that includes a person with the singular responsibility of a decompression strategy and other methods to address the asylum-seeker crisis we’re facing.”

A recent Yahoo/YouGov poll found that 54 percent of Americans blame Biden for the record-breaking illegal immigration levels, with only 33 percent arguing that the president is not at fault.

Former Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan condemned the Biden Administration's lack of responsibility, blaming the president for allowing illegal migrants to be directly released into American's backyards.

"Most of these 250,000 will be released into the interior and stay here indefinitely,” Homan said, adding “Joe Biden and Secretary Mayorkas have embraced open borders for political benefit, and innocent people are the ones paying the consequences.”

https://townhall.com//tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/01/21/no-end-in-sight-southern-border-exceeds-over-250000-encounters-n2618580



23 January, 2023

Governor DeSantis Announces Major Crackdown on Businesses Not Complying with E-Verify

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is playing hardball with employers who have failed to verify that all their employees are in the country legally.

Officials in the Sunshine State’s Department of Economic Opportunity said they sent out letters last month to six employers that they said had not yet complied with the state’s E-Verify law.

“At the governor’s direction, Florida is cracking down on the unlawful employment of unauthorized aliens in the state of Florida,” DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin said in a statement.

The companies were warned that their state business licenses would be suspended if they continued refusing to comply.   Responses to the notices were due on Monday, according to the report. It was unknown Thursday how many had complied.

The six entities receiving the letters included two from out of state: the American National Red Cross, based in St. Louis, Missouri, and Upperline Health, Inc., of Nashville, Tennessee.

The remaining four based in Florida were MDL Property Maintenance, Inc., of Boynton Beach; Intelycare, Inc., of Clearwater and Quincy, Massachusetts; Prestige Cruise Services, LLC, of Miami; and ScribeAmerica, LLC, of Ft. Lauderdale.

As of Friday, Prestige Cruise Services was the only one of the six that responded with proof of compliance with the law, Florida’s Voice reported.

The department said the next step for the remaining five “is for DEO to notify the agencies that hold their licenses of their noncompliance.”

Those agencies will then suspend “all applicable licenses held by the employer until the private employer provides the department with the required affidavit,” Florida’s Voice reported.

DeSantis signed the bill in 2020 requiring private employers to use  E-Verify to ensure employees’ eligibility to work in the U.S., according to The Center Square.

Unlike his predecessors, DeSantis said at the time, he was able to work with the Florida legislature to get E-Verify legislation passed.

“For years prior to my administration, attempts to pass E-Verify legislation in Florida failed, but I would not yield until this matter was addressed,” DeSantis told Breitbart.

The governor said the use of E-Verify puts “upward pressure [on] Floridians’ wages” and protects public safety, Breitbart reported.

“Assuring a legal workforce through E-Verify is crucial to upholding the rule of law and deters illegal immigration into Florida, which is more important than ever given the border crisis,” he added.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/governor-desantis-announces-major-crackdown-businesses-not-complying-e-verify



22 January, 2023

Another Friday Night Dump: CBP Finally Releases Border Encounters for December

In what has become the standard operation procedure for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal agency charged with securing America's borders and ports of entry released for the official numbers of illegal immigrants Border Patrol encountered along the U.S.-Mexico border during December last year.

Border Patrol had 251,487 encounters with illegal immigrants, breaking yet another record not just for the month of December but also for the entire year in 2022. This is now the tenth month in a row of more than 200,000 illegal immigrant encounters at the southern border. There were around 70,000 gotaways during the same month, according to Fox News reporter Bill Melugin.

The closest month after December was May 2022, with 241,136 encounters. During that month, Title 42 was initially supposed to be lifted before it was blocked by a federal judge at the last minute.

During December 2022, the El Paso Sector saw a sharp increase of illegal immigrants coming into Texas from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. This caused local shelters and Border Patrol facilities being overcapacity, forcing federal law enforcement to release people onto the streets. Since many did not have money to leave the city right away, many slept on the streets of El Paso, often in subfreezing temperatures.

Meanwhile, the Florida Keys saw a significant increase in illegal boat landings coming from Cuba and Haiti. It reached the point to where the usually-liberal area asked for assistance at the state level. Governor Ron DeSantis (R) activated the Florida National Guard and ordered state law enforcement to the Keys to patrol the shoreline to ensure no one landed undetected or were intercepted before they reached landfall.

https://townhall.com//tipsheet/juliorosas/2023/01/20/another-friday-night-dump-cbp-releases-border-encounters-for-december-n2618573

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20 January, 2023

E-Verify: The Key to Deterring Illegal Immigration

Washington, D.C. (January 19, 2023) – The primary reason illegal immigrants come to the United States is jobs, and the best solution for shutting off the magnet of jobs is E-Verify.  This free online system, created by Congress as a pilot program in 1986, enables employers to check whether new hires are authorized to work in the United States by submitting the same information that job applicants provide on the mandatory paper I-9 form. The program then validates applicant details by comparing them against millions of federal and state government identification records.

E-Verify processed 42.5 million cases in FY 2021 with a 99.87 percent accuracy rate. A simple DHS regulatory change or an act by Congress could mandate E-Verify for all states.

This week’s guest, Elizabeth Jacobs, the Center’s Director of Regulatory Affairs and Policy, highlights the benefits that E-Verify affords employers and their communities.  But she emphasizes that the program must be matched with enforcement to be effective in eliminating the job pull factor that brings illegal immigrants to work without authorization, producing unfair labor competition and wage suppression for American and legal workers.

Jacobs also describes a potential work authorization verification process known as “G-Verify” (for “government verification”). G-Verify allows employers to replace employers’ Form W-2, Form I-9, and E-Verify obligations with submission of the same information electronically.

In his closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and the host of Parsing  Immigration Policy,  discusses New York Mayor Eric Adams’ visit to the border in El Paso. His visit, and President Biden’s visit, suggests that local governments have pressured the administration to enforce the border. Krikorian predicts that this pressure may incentivize the administration to step back from its open border agenda as the 2024 elections draw near.

https://cis.org/Parsing-Immigration-Policy/EVerify-Key-Deterring-Illegal-Immigration

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19 January, 2023

Democrats undermine working class with open borders and illegal labor

It is not surprising when Big Business calls for more immigration to keep wages down, but what has happened to the American left?

Last year, nine Democratic senators joined nine pro-business Republicans calling for an increase in the number of workers admitted under the H-2B program, which brings in lower-skilled non-agriculture workers. The Washington Post editorial board in September argued for “higher inflows of legal workers.” Nicole Narea at the liberal news site Vox states, “The federal government can’t force people to work but it can make it easier for immigrants” to come in and fill jobs.

One might think progressive voices would at least express some concern about the enormous decline in labor-force participation among the non-college-educated or the fact working-class wages have not kept pace with inflation. But not today’s left.

There is general agreement that immigration does lower wages. In an article for Foreign Affairs last month, prominent economists Gordon Hanson and Matthew Slaughter called for significantly increasing immigration to “limit wage and price growth.” UC-Davis economist Giovanni Peri makes much the same argument in an interview with NPR.
A comprehensive 2016 report by the National Academies of Science cites numerous studies showing a negative impact from immigration on wages, particularly those with low levels of education. Subsequent research shows the same thing.

But is it really a good idea to use immigration to increase the supply of workers and reduce wages? Wage growth — especially among the less-educated, who have relatively modest earnings to begin with — is almost certainly not a key driver of inflation. Congressional overspending is probably the most important cause, although international supply chain disruptions, pent-up demand during COVID, and the Fed keeping interest rates too low for too long also drove up consumer prices.

Progressives cheered all of the new spending, but now that inflation is roaring, many want to reduce the income of workers, including those who make modest wages. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that median weekly wages did not keep pace with inflation from the third quarter of 2020 to 2022. Even before COVID, the wages had shown little to no growth.

Perhaps worse than stagnant or declining wages is the decades-long decline in the labor-force participation rate of the US-born, meaning the share who are working or at least looking for work. Those out of the labor force do not show up as unemployed because they are not actively looking for work. The decline is especially pronounced among men without a bachelor’s degree. This falloff in labor-force participation causes a host of negative effects on individuals and society. It contributes to substance abuse, welfare dependency, mental health issues, crime, family breakup, and even early death. Getting more working-age people back into the labor force would be good for individuals, the economy and society in general.

Improvement is certainly possible but it will involve the difficult task of reforming our welfare and disability system and addressing the opioid and mental-health crises, and other issues, that have contributed to the decline in work. If the labor-force participation rate of working-age people ages 16 to 64 returned to what it was in 2000 — not exactly an eternity ago — it would add 6.5 million people to the labor force.

A tight labor market is a great opportunity to let wages rise for jobs generally performed by people without college degrees, encouraging more of them to come back into the labor force.

Instead, the Biden administration is encouraging mass immigration of people, many of whom can’t legally work and will pay little in taxes. Increasing the supply of labor lowers wages, particularly in the restaurant and construction industries, for everyone even if they are given work permits.  

How can Democrats call themselves the party of the working class and encourage this?

https://nypost.com/2023/01/09/democrats-undermine-working-class-with-open-borders-and-illegal-labor/



18 January, 2023

A Legal Immigrant’s Lament: Biden’s ‘Parole’ Scheme Makes ‘Patsies’ of Those Who Abide by Law

One thing I have in common with journalist Andrew Sullivan is that we both chose to go through the lengthy process to become American citizens.

As he recently told Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff, the current insanity at the border makes legal immigrants like us “look like patsies.”

When a staunch liberal, a reporter from The Post, and a Heritage Foundation research fellow all agree on something, it may be we’re onto the truth.

President Joe Biden just announced the addition of Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua to his “successful” Venezuela “parole” program. As they watch Biden invent a completely new—and likely unconstitutional—“pathway” to facilitate illegal immigration, I wonder how the millions of Americans, their family members, and others patiently waiting in line for visas must feel.

Patsies? Suckers? Mugs, marks, or saps, maybe?

As someone who not only immigrated legally, but also worked thousands of visa cases as a consular officer, this administration’s arrogant disregard for the law and precedent makes my blood boil.

Here’s how visas work, in a nutshell: Consular officers will issue non-immigrant (temporary tourist, student, guest worker) visas to foreigners if we (1) are satisfied of their identity; (2) believe that they are not criminals or terrorists, and don’t have a contagious disease; and (3) are convinced that they will return home when their temporary purpose ends.

(That last one is the hardest, because a good percentage of people in many countries can’t show that they would return home without working illegally or overstaying, so their visas are denied.)

With a visa in their passport, foreigners can travel to a U.S. airport or border station, where Customs and Border Protection usually lets them in for the duration needed.

For immigrant (permanent) visas, the requirements are the same, minus the need to show intent to return home.

This arduous process—filling out forms, an interview, and getting the visa—must be done outside the U.S. and can take weeks, months, or even years. It costs $160 to apply for a temporary visa and more than $1,000 to get an immigrant visa.

The framework is spelled out in a law passed by Congress, which, under our Constitution, gets to determine who comes to our country and how.

I spent half my career maintaining the integrity of this legal immigration process, as thousands of State Department and Department of Homeland Security employees still do.

But our constitutional and equitable—if swamped—immigration system is being sabotaged.

Biden’s magical new “parole” programs function just like a visa, only quicker. As it appears so far, you apply on the new “CBP One” application from your phone, bypassing the interview, police and medical clearance, and filling out of forms.

Unlike a legal visa, it costs you nothing. You don’t have to navigate jungles, the Darien Gap, or Mexican buses.

If your application is approved, you fly into the U.S. airport of your choice, state that you have a credible fear of persecution and that you want to file for asylum (you can find the right words online from helpful activists and nongovernmental organizations), and in you go.

Soon, you’ll have a work permit valid for two years. You can put your kids in free school, get free emergency medical care, and sign up for public benefits.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the immigration courts are so backed up, you might wait years for your case to work through, but your parole status is almost certain to be renewed, just like the “Temporary” Protected Status, which illegal aliens from some countries have been in for decades and counting.

There is always a wait for some immigrant (permanent) visas, which are limited by class (say, siblings of U.S. citizens) or by annual per-country cap. As for non-immigrant (temporary) visas, applicants could normally apply within a few weeks, but thanks to COVID, there are now delays in most categories.

Still, the reward of a legal visa was always worth the time, effort, and money, versus trying to sneak in illegally.

Biden’s reckless experimentation puts that in doubt.

Not only is the DHS allowing in millions using a parole power intended for only a few individuals, but staff who should be working on legal petitions and credible asylum cases are being diverted to process illegal aliens at the border.

That ought to outrage all the American citizens who will now have to wait years longer for their relatives to immigrate here.

Long visitor-visa wait times are already a thorn in our relations with friendly countries by preventing family visits, hampering trade and investment, and stopping tourists from coming here to spend their money.

Biden’s new program adds 30,000 a month to the “parole-a-palooza,” and rumors are the White House is considering expanding it to more countries and even higher numbers as soon as they can build enough new tent-city processing centers to handle them.

All these people will ride for free, as have the million-plus illegal aliens the DHS has already let into the country since Biden’s inauguration.

Who pays for all this?

American cities and communities pay, in overcrowded schools, underfunded hospitals, higher crime, and drug overdoses from the fentanyl shipped over the border.

U.S. taxpayers pay—through the DHS budget and Federal Emergency Management Agency grants—for the social services, cellphones, medical care, and bus and plane tickets for millions of indigent foreigners.

But that won’t be enough: Congress didn’t give Biden all of the additional $3.6 billion he recently asked to feed the Mayorkas Migration Machine.

So, who will take up the slack? American families and employers who play fair, of course.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently announced increases in fees for visa applications. U.S. citizens who want immigrant visas for their immediate relatives will have to pay 53% more for the paper application and 33% more for the online version.

A U.S. employer who wants to petition for a temporary foreign worker to gut fish will have to pay $1,080—up 135%. An opera house wanting to hire a singer for a production will have to pay $1,055, up 129%.

Some of this is to compensate for inflation, but the DHS is also proposing a new asylum program fee of $600 to be paid by employers who petition for temporary workers. The DHS admits that the new fee is “an effective way to shift some costs to requests that are generally submitted by petitioners who have more ability to pay.”

As the Biden administration tries to replace the legal immigration process with its cobbled-together workaround, getting a legitimate visa to visit, work, or immigrate takes more money and a longer wait.

Biden, the ideologues behind his agenda, and the activist charities who take federal money to facilitate it can all pretend that the deliberate opening of U.S. borders is a victimless crime.

That’s patently false.

American communities, American taxpayers, and American families are all paying the price, and most of the bill has yet to come due.

Only Congress can stop this abuse.

If the American people want to change the number of annual immigrants, or the process by which they come here, then they should vote accordingly. Until then, Biden’s unacceptable parole programs should receive no funding from the 118th Congress.

American citizens, legal visa applicants, and others hurt by the current unfair discrimination in favor of illegals at the border all deserve a return to lawful, orderly, and equitable prioritization of immigration cases.  

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/01/13/a-legal-immigrants-lament-bidens-parole-scheme-makes-patsies-of-those-who-abide-by-law

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17 January, 2023

Eric Adams bucks Biden, labels border crisis a ‘disaster’ as NYC migrants top 40K

He finally said the silent part out loud!

New York Mayor Eric Adams bucked President Biden by saying that the southern US border was in “crisis” — then went even further and declared it a “disaster.”

“Why isn’t this considered a disaster? This is a crisis,” Adams told The Post during an exclusive interview on the mayor’s weekend border visit.

The mayor also revealed that he’ll travel to Washington, DC, this week to meet with the US Conference of Mayors and develop a “real strategy” to deal with the problem.

“No one is coordinating this national effort,” he fumed during a Sunday night phone call from El Paso, Texas.

Adams also took a shot at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has yet to act on his request for $1 billion in aid to pay for migrant housing and services in the Big Apple.

“FEMA needs to step up. That’s their job,” he said.

Adams wouldn’t say if he’ll also seek to meet with Biden, 80, so he can make his case for the emergency funding, which the White House wouldn’t commit to granting when pressed by The Post earlier this month.

City Hall said Monday that its latest official tally showed that 40,200 migrants have arrived since the spring, with 26,900 housed in taxpayer-funded emergency shelters as of Sunday.

Also on Monday, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) blasted Adams for not directly blaming the migrant influx on Biden, a fellow Democrat, despite repeatedly calling it a “national problem.”

“The mayor is right in the sense that he’s saying this is a national crisis but he needs to say that is a national crisis created by Joe Biden,” Malliotakis told Fox News.

“Joe Biden put in place the policies via executive order that created this mess. This was not happening under President Trump. It was not happening under President Obama, and it has reached a record high.”

The White House has repeatedly refused to acknowledge a crisis at the southern border, which Biden visited for the first time as president last week during a brief, tightly controlled trip to El Paso.

Malliotakis also accused Adams of having “incentivized illegal immigration” through the generous benefits New York City hands out as a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants.

“You saw yesterday how people were saying they want to go to New York City with the mayor because they hear that New York City is housing the migrants, and they’re providing for their needs,” she said.

On Sunday, Adams visited El Paso to see for himself why New York has been overwhelmed by migrants, leading him to declare a state of emergency in October.

Hizzoner said he learned that unspecified websites were giving migrants the “false impression that if you come to New York City, everything is fine.”

“We have to give people accurate information,” he said. “In New York, you go there, you’re going to be living in congregate settings [because] there is no more room in New York.”

On Friday, the mayor said he submitted an “emergency mutual aid request” for the state to house 500 of the city’s migrants “beginning this weekend.”

Adams said the Big Apple was “seeing more people arrive than we have ever seen,” including a record “835 asylum seekers arriving on one single day alone” last week.

https://nypost.com/2023/01/16/eric-adams-bucks-biden-labels-border-crisis-a-disaster-as-nyc-migrants-top-40k/



16 January, 2023

Migrants exploiting border wall gaps contaminate crops, threaten nation's food supply

YUMA, Ariz. – The border crisis is jeopardizing the nation’s food security as migrants trespass through farmland, contaminating crops, two Arizona farmers with fields near the southern border told Fox News.

"There's obviously a food safety concern because our fields are monitored and audited and tested for different pathogens," Pasquinelli Produce Company President Alex Muller told Fox News. "If there's somebody that walks into our field and then we don't know about why we put up flags and kind of mark it out and we don’t harvest that."

"That hits the bottom line," Muller said. "It's not sustainable. It's not good for the country."

Yuma — the country's agricultural leader in leafy green production during the winter months — provides about 90% of the nation’s supply of romaine and iceberg lettuce, according to the Department of Agriculture. It supplies around 9 billion servings of leafy greens per year, but farmers fear they will lose crops as more migrants pass through the border wall's gaps and into their fields.

"We've gotten a fair amount of traffic through and around our fields and through the whole entire Yuma Valley," a fifth-generation farmer, Hank Auza, said. His properties cover several thousand acres with fields near Morelos Dam, where gaps in the border wall remain.

Then-Gov. Doug Ducey ordered construction of a container wall in August to plug those holes. But the state agreed to remove the shipping containers by early January as a result of a federal lawsuit.

"Where the gaps are opens up to more farm ground for them to walk across," a fifth-generation farmer, Hank Auza, told Fox News. "We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just on our farm for food safety."

Yuma migrant crossings increased 171% between 2021 and 2022, according to Customs and Border Protection. About 1 million migrants have crossed Arizona's southern border during the Biden presidency.

"This is the largest humanitarian disaster we've had in this country," Auza said. "And part of the country is happy that it's happening. I don't get why."

A neighboring farmer lost nearly $100,000 after a handful of migrants hid on his land for a week, Auza told Fox News. He couldn't harvest the affected crops in case they were contaminated with pathogens that could lead to foodborne illness.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/migrants-exploiting-border-wall-gaps-contaminate-crops-threaten-nations-food-security-arizona-farmers-say

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15 January, 2023

We're in a Crisis: FL Keys Officials Say Illegal Boating Landings Have Become a Major Problem

KEY WEST, Fla. — Officials in the Florida Keys are sounding the alarm over the historic influx of people, mainly from Cuba and Haiti, illegally landing in their small communities as the islands are not equipped to handle such large numbers of people as the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border soaks up most of the attention.

What has been playing out in the Keys is identical to what has been occurring at the southern border since Joe Biden became president: Small towns being unable to deal with large numbers of people illegally entering the country, just with nicer beaches. Key West's population is around 25,000 and Marathon's population is just under 10,000.

"We're in a humanitarian crisis, there's no doubt. We've been building out for months, because we have a very close relationship with our Coast Guard, and they've been seeing an uptick in interdictions that they have not seen in their history, so it's a humanitarian crisis," Key West Mayor Teri Johnston told Townhall.

Johnston said the community has always been welcoming with Cubans who managed to make it to the island but, "It's a situation where we need to follow a policy. We need to have a policy and procedure for people to get here safely and then to become citizens legally."

George Garrett, the city manager for Marathon, said historically it was not an issue in terms of capacity when they would get one boat landing per week or one per month "but when they start showing up in numbers like several per day and you don't know precisely where they gonna come to shore. You see individuals, who many have come ashore, running down the street and you don't know who they are. I don't think personally, or even a standpoint from the city, these are really security issues but you do have people who simply have come from somewhere else."

Over the New Year holiday, Garrett said there were approximately 1,500 people who had illegally landed throughout the Keys and that created capacity issues since law enforcement is not equipped to house that many people while they are waiting to be processed.

"It's not some sort of political issue, which sometimes it's made, it's simply a process issue. How do you manage 1,000 to 1,500 coming to shore when they are being processed and then in that process, they're being held someplace in not ideal conditions always because we're not prepared for it," Garrett added.

Both Johnston and Garrett were happy to see the increased presence from the Florida National Guard and state law enforcement, which will relieve pressure from local police from having to divert manpower to shore duty.

"I certainly appreciate the fact that our law enforcement agencies are getting assistance because they're overwhelmed," Johnston said. "It's really important that we do get some assistance and it's federally backed. And that we continue to receive these people humanely and compassionately."

"The fact that the executive order came out has been made very clear in its result and that is we've got multiple additional personnel and a broad range of agencies showing up in the Keys. There are additional Florida Highway Patrol officers, the city of Marathon has a pod for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at city hall," Garrett explained. "I'm looking out my window, which looks at the Marathon airport, yesterday and I see Blackhawks landing at the airport."

To highlight just how far north some of the boats show up in the Keys, the U.S. Coast Guard and Border Patrol reported on Thursday a boat full of Haitians showed up outside of Virginia Key, which is just off the coast from Miami. They were taken off the boat and into custody.

When it comes to who or what is to blame for the increase in illegal boat landings, Johnston and Garrett did not solely blame one thing.

"You know, something has happened in Haiti. Something has happened in Cuba to make life intolerable for people so that they risk their lives removing themselves from the situation. Immigration policy transcends both parties. I mean, everyone certainly could have done a better job in this to create a situation where we can accept residents from around the world into the United States safely. So I think there's a lot of room for blame to go all around the table," said Johnston.

"I honestly don't know, personally. What happens in Cuba, I don't have a clue," Garrett said, jokingly adding he would not be surprised to see the Cuban military allowing people to leave the country so the government has fewer people to take care of, "Don't know whether if it's true or not but we do know it's a resource based issue."

"We have been overwhelmed by the fact people have been showing up...I don't care whose administration is pointing at whom. The issue is there and we all need to get together and solve the problem and work on it, rather than pointing fingers at each other. We need to be pointing fingers at the problem and solving it," he added.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2023/01/13/we-have-a-crisis-florida-keys-city-leaders-sound-off-on-illegal-boating-landings-n2618241

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13 January, 2023

 Hochul’s myopic migrant view could bankrupt NY city and state

Gov. Kathy Hochul says she didn’t discuss the huge inflow of migrants (40,000 and counting) into the Big Apple in her State of the State address on Tuesday because the problem doesn’t have “broad, statewide interest.” Huh?

Earth to Kate: The downstate migrant crisis is of immense interest to the rest of New York. It’s another case of “if the city gets a cold, the state gets pneumonia.”

First off: Illegal immigrants don’t all stay in the city. MS-13 and other gangs plaguing Long Island are ample testimony to that. And while Hochul won’t entertain inviting migrants upstate from the city, they’re bound to spread as the crisis continues, if only to look for off-the-books work.

Second, the city is the state’s main economic engine. If a growing migrant presence further slows the return to NYC workplaces, the state’s tax take, and economy, will suffer.

Plus, Mayor Eric Adams warns that the Big Apple can’t absorb a continuous inflow of migrants without help from state and federal leaders “without bankrupting the city.” And any city fiscal crisis historically turns into a state one, too.

So far, the feds have allocated just $8 million to help out, and President Joe Biden’s “every city for itself” approach suggests that Gotham will get nothing like the $1 billion that Adams says the crisis will cost this year alone. City Comptroller Brad Lander puts it at $1 billion a year for at lest three years, by the way.

Which suggests the state will need to cough up plenty, also adding to the “statewide interest.”

For that matter, Hochul spent much of her speech talking housing — which is also overwhelmingly a city-driven issue, even if her solution involves some new homes in commuting distance.

The gov’s silence on migrants looks more like another issue she just doesn’t want to push the Legislature on. Or perhaps, like other Democratic pols around the country, she just doesn’t want to embarrass Biden, whose policies are driving the entire mess.

Whatever her motive for dodging, it’s about her political calculations, not what the public cares about.

https://nypost.com/2023/01/12/hochuls-myopic-migrant-view-could-bankrupt-ny-city-and-state/



12 January, 2023

Border Patrol agent describes danger at the border: 'We are paying for this in United States citizens' lives'

National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd warned on "Dr. Phil" Wednesday that the crisis at the border is costing American lives.

In an episode on the instability at America’s southern border, Dr. Phil McGraw turned to Judd for his expertise.

"When you encounter these people at the border what's your experience of them when you meet them?" the host asked.

Judd explained that while that entirely depends upon the person, these encounters can often be fatal for American citizens, "it depends on what we're dealing with, if you're dealing with drug smugglers they're going to be very, very dangerous."

He followed by explaining a specific kind of encounter that routinely endangers bystanders.

"When you look at what's taking place in Arizona right now, the vast majority of times that a border patrol agent tries to pull over a vehicle in a smuggling event, that vehicle will abscond; they will not pull over," he said. "Those vehicles are causing a great many accidents in Arizona."

Judd followed up with a dire warning.

"We are paying for this in United States citizens’ lives right now because these people don't just pull over, they continue to drive, they drive at high rates of speeds, they will cross over the median and drive into oncoming traffic," he said.

Judd then cited a specific incident that caused multiple deaths.

"We just had two United States citizens in the area that I work at, just two United States citizens just died, just a month ago, because of these high-speed chases," he said.

He added that border agents "deal with an awful lot, and we have to make a split-second decision on what we're dealing with. We must be able to enforce the laws properly."

In December, a Border Patrol agent was killed in a high-speed chase of a group of illegal immigrants in Mission, Texas.

"The death of an agent who died while securing our nation's border is a tremendous loss for our organization and our nation," U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said in a statement at the time. "Our prayers are with his family and co-workers during this difficult time."

https://www.foxnews.com/media/border-patrol-agent-describes-danger-border-paying-united-states-citizens-lives



11 January, 2023

‘Tons’ of food gets tossed daily by NYC hotel because migrants won’t eat it

Nearly a ton of taxpayer-provided food gets tossed in the trash every day at a massive Manhattan hotel being used to house migrants — because they’d rather secretly cook their own meals on dangerous hot plates, a whistleblowing worker has revealed.

Disturbing photos show garbage bags full of sandwiches and bagels awaiting disposal at the four-star Row NYC hotel near Times Square, where the city pays a daily rate as high as $500 per room, hotel employee Felipe Rodriguez told The Post.

“It’s a crime to be throwing out so much food,” he said.

City Hall has refused to say how much it pays to rent out the Row or any of the scores of other hotels being used to house migrants.

But Rodriguez said he’s “heard from management it’s between $400 and $500 a night, per room, depending on how big the room is.”

Rodriguez, 57, said he began working at the 1,300-room hotel in 2017 and was shocked by what’s happened since Mayor Eric Adams’ administration began using it as a “Humanitarian Response and Relief Center.”

“What changed in October was dramatic,” he said. “There are some nice migrants in that hotel looking for that American dream, that second chance to make it in society. But there are a lot of migrants there that are causing chaos. We have a lot of fights, a lot of drugs, a lot of sexual harassment abuse.”

The Row NYC is one of four HERRCs that the city has opened in large Manhattan hotels, in addition to renting out 71 smaller hotels across the city, as of Sunday.

The expanding roster of hotels is being used to house about 26,100 of the 38,700 migrants who’ve flooded into the Big Apple since the spring, according to City Hall’s latest count.

Officials initially planned to have migrants undergo processing in the HERRCs for just 72 hours but abandoned that goal after getting overwhelmed by the influx that led Adams to declare a state of emergency in October.

Rodriguez — who was wrongfully convicted in a fatal, 1987 stabbing in Queens and released from prison in January 2017 — said that at least 40 percent of the food supplied to migrants at the Row gets thrown out.

Rodriguez also estimated the amount wasted at “almost a ton” a day.

“How do I know that? Because the sanitation guys go floor-by-floor every day picking up the trash,” he said. “Before, it used to be something like six, seven bags in the back landing of each floor. Now they’re picking up 15-20 bags.

“Anything [the migrants] don’t consume is in those bags, and they’re heavy. I weighed one of the bags full of sandwiches one time and it weighed 60 pounds.”

Rodriguez added: “There have been times when we couldn’t take all of the garbage out because the bins were full, and I’m talking about 25-30 bins of garbage.”

“My problem is, why are we throwing away so much food? Someone from the city should have said, ‘Let’s order less food so we throw less food out.’ But nobody cares,” he said.

At the same time, Rodriguez said, he’s confiscated hot plates, pressure cookers and other forbidden kitchen items from hotel residents at least eight times.

“I felt horrible. They want a hot meal. They don’t want sandwiches. They want a cooked meal like in their own country. And that’s a serious issue,” he said.

In addition to sandwiches and bagels, the migrants are served food including fruit, peanuts, chips, juice, soda and prepared dinners that “you heat in a microwave,” Rodriguez said.

“They don’t like the menu. They just don’t. They want rice and beans, plantains, tostones,” he said.

Rodriguez recalled one incident last month when “I knocked on the door on the 18th floor to deliver a duvet and I saw smoke and could hear a fire alarm going off.”

“I put in my key and pushed open the door, and a whole bunch of smoke came out,” he said. “A lady was there and I said, ‘What are you doing?’ She said, ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘What do you mean nothing? Where’s all this smoke coming from?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’”

Rodriguez said he searched the room and found a pot of burned rice hidden in the bathroom vanity, along with two more pots, a frying pan and “an old hot plate” under the bed.

“It was older than my grandmother, and my grandmother’s been gone a long time,” he said. “I was like, ‘Seriously? This is electrical. If these wires spark and something goes wrong, this whole building will be on fire.’”

Rodriguez — who kept working at the hotel even after scoring a $5 million settlement from the state in April — said he felt so bad that he gave the family $300 the next day and told them to go to a restaurant.

But Rodriguez said he understood why the hotel “can’t allow” the migrants to cook in their rooms.

“They usually put the hot plate on the rug so that nobody can see it and it stays away from the fire alarm,” he said. “If those polyester curtains by the windows touch that red coil, it’s over. It’s a possibility that scares the s–t out of everybody in the Row.

“If you are on the 27th floor, the 28th floor, and a fire breaks out, the elevators are gone. That means you have to use the stairs,” he said. “My biggest concern is the children. We have too many children in that hotel. We have pregnant women in the hotel…The tragedy would be devastating.”

In addition, Rodriguez said that the Row “forgot about the standards we had when we had regular guests.”

“If they got caught smoking in the hotel it was a $500 charge. You could smoke outside, but you couldn’t stand in front so that people wouldn’t get secondhand smoke,” he said “The protocols went down the toilet because migrants can smoke weed, they can smoke cigarettes. You can’t tell them nothing.”

Rodriguez also alleged that he’s seen some residents apparently selling drugs outside the hotel and that he took photos of some scooters that were chained up nearby.

https://nypost.com/2023/01/10/tons-of-food-gets-tossed-by-nyc-hotel-because-migrants-wont-eat-it/



10 January, 2023

DeSantis Calls On the National Guard To Help With the Influx of Illegal Migrants

As the southern border remains open, hundreds of illegal migrants continue to flood the U.S., thanks to President Joe Biden’s open border policies.

On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla) called on the state's National Guard to help provide support as local officials respond to the arrival of hundreds of illegal immigrants in the Florida Keys.

Signing an executive order, DeSantis blamed Biden’s “lawless” immigration policies and criticized his oblivion to the crisis.

“As the negative impacts of [President] Biden’s lawless immigration policies continue unabated, the burden of the Biden Administration’s failure falls on local law enforcement who lack the resources to deal with the crisis,” DeSantis said in a press release.

The order directs Florida law enforcement agencies to supply resources to local governments as illegal migrants attempt to enter the state.

“That is why I am activating the National Guard and directing state resources to help alleviate the strain on local resources. When Biden continues to ignore his legal responsibilities, we will step in to support our communities,” DeSantis continued.

DeSantis will deploy airplanes and helicopters and reinforce marine patrols in an attempt to intercept migrants who are traveling to Florida.

More than 700 illegal Cuban migrants landed in the Florida Keys over New Years' weekend alone, with that number expected to expand in the days following.

DeSantis said that more than 8,000 illegal migrants have been encountered by law enforcement off the coast of Florida since August, which has been “particularly burdensome” for the agency to provide the necessary resources to manage the hundreds of illegals and ensure public safety.

The Florida governor has made it clear that he will not be a puppet in Biden’s agenda. He has made headlines from Democrats in recent months for shipping illegal migrants who arrive in his state to Democrat-run “sanctuary” cities.

https://townhall.com//tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/01/07/desantis-calls-on-national-guard-to-help-with-influx-of-illegal-migrants-n2618016

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9 January, 2023

Cynical El Paso cleanup before Biden’s visit perfectly sums up his pathetic border policy

In his most effective action yet on the illegal-migrant crisis, President Joe Biden on Sunday . . . went to El Paso, for his first border visit since taking office and opening the floodgates.

Yes, it was empty symbolism (and a cynical gambit serving his plans to run in 2024) for barely three hours — but even setting the stage for the gesture had real-world consequences, as border agents and local cops cleared El Paso’s streets of migrants who’d camped out because the city’s shelters are beyond full.

They even sent many back over the border to Mexico, enforcing Biden’s new “get (kind of) tough on refugees from socialist disasters” policy.

Of course, the evicted migrants will start flowing right back as soon as Biden skips town (hint: say you’re Columbia, not Venezuela, or just evade the Border Patrol entirely as hundreds of thousands of others have done). But we’re sure the people of El Paso will appreciate the respite.

Cynics may draw parallels to the way DC cops rousted the homeless from Union Station in advance of the president’s “Republicans hate democracy” speech, and the videos of migrants pleading with cops may break a few hearts — and it won’t do a thing to stop surging fentanyl smuggling — but it’s still Biden’s most effective move yet to stem the tide.

Seriously: The plan he dropped last week is beyond pathetic, merely a recognition that even Democrat pols across the country are finding the influx too much. Biden still shows no sign of rethinking his fundamental “wave ’em in” policy.

Still, we bet every other town on the border is hoping for a presidential visit. At least it’s something.

https://nypost.com/2023/01/08/el-paso-cleanup-before-bidens-visit-perfectly-sums-up-his-pathetic-border-policy/



8 January, 2023

States Must Sue Biden and Invoke the Guarantee Clause to Secure the Border

On January 5, President Biden announced an unprecedented revision to immigration law that will enormously increase the number of immigrants entering the United States, granting them temporary legal status without assurance of compliance with existing immigration laws.  Under Biden’s executive action, some 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela will enter the United States with work permits through a new application process available in their own countries.  

Congress has not enacted any law to permit this change or to otherwise authorize executive branch procedures for new mass monthly immigration (exploding the number of those with work permits by 360,000 new immigrants a year).  To counter this unlawful presidential assumption of congressional power, states victimized need to sue to enjoin the violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine, but they also need to take an additional, novel step.  They should invoke the Guarantee Clause of the Constitution and demand that the federal government honor its guarantee to quell insurrection and violence in the states by enforcing existing immigration law requirements to secure the border.

Biden proceeds by executive order without congressional authorization in an all too familiar pattern of authoritarian governance, in gross violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine.  See the White House press release.  Presumably the 30,000 immigrants per month given authorization to enter will fly directly into the United States from their home countries avoiding extortion payments to cartels and the spectacle of border crossings.  That method will also mask what will be a five-fold increase in immigrant entries to the United States.

No adequate enforcement infrastructure exists to arrest and prosecute those who overstay their two-year work permits and, so, we can predict many if not most will overstay, thus making the new Biden program a de facto form of amnesty, enabling those illegally overstaying to remain indefinitely.  Consequently, Biden’s new gross expansion of work permits is a devious shell game.  

The new migrants availing themselves of this unprecedented expansion of the work permit program are required to have a financial supporter in the United States and pass a background check, but the sheer volume of permit applications anticipated (30,000 a month) makes it highly unlikely that applicant responses will undergo critical examination and verification, particularly given the absence of congressional appropriations necessary to provide needed staffing.  

It will likely be, therefore, that this administration will usher into the interior of the United States tens of thousands of immigrants monthly, migrants without adequate background vetting.  Why should we suspect otherwise from an administration that is presently allowing over 8,000 illegal immigrants to enter the country per day with no vetting at all? Among those entering by either means will be terrorists, individuals with no allegiance to the United States, and other assorted criminals.

President Biden’s fundamental modification of U.S. immigration law, authorizing a new method of mass migration and new procedures to enable that migration, invites legal challenge because it so plainly violates the separation of powers doctrine.  The states adversely affected should promptly sue the federal government for declaratory and injunctive relief.  But more pressure needs to be applied.  Because the numbers now entering through this program atop existing illegal asylum entries will likely reach all-time highs in the range of 270,000 to 340,000 per month, some states will literally witness entire communities and cities be overrun, welfare demands exceed resources, social services taxed beyond functional limits, hospitals overrun, police and ambulance services unable to keep up with demand, and property crimes and violent crimes skyrocketing beyond already high levels.  

In short, lawlessness and anarchy will become more commonplace across the nation.  That means the republican forms of government in the states, which rest fundamentally on their fulfillment of the primary duty to protect the lives, liberties, and properties of their citizens, will succumb to an inability to combat wanton lawlessness.  Over the last two years, illegal entries into the United States have devastated the border states, causing citizens’ rights to life, liberty and property to be deprived without adequate legal redress, thus sacrificing the rule of law in states like California, Arizona, and Texas that cannot handle the influx of aliens.  That anarchistic chaos in border states will be exacerbated and become more prevalent in the interior due to the Biden Administration’s new mass immigration policy.

President Biden’s abdication of his constitutional duty to ensure that the immigration laws are faithfully executed and to safeguard our borders threatens the legal status and security of states, cities, and localities, and not just in border areas.  In addition to challenging the constitutionality of the new executive action under the separation of powers doctrine, it is high time the states invoked Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, commanding the federal government to honor its duty to stem insurrection and violence in the states as required by the Guarantee Clause.  

The Founding Fathers adopted the Guarantee Clause to enable state legislatures to compel federal action to stem insurrection and domestic violence.  Insurrection, a violent uprising against the law or government, is evident across the land due to the unremitting deluge of illegals, leaving in their wake devastation in the form of criminal trespass, looting of private property, rape, murder, burglary, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and gang violence.  Whole towns have been overwhelmed, businesses destroyed, and citizens accosted.  Under Article IV, Section 4, the government of the United States is obliged to “guarantee” each state a “Republican Form of Government” and to protect each state against “Invasion” and “domestic Violence.”  That section reads: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”

The President’s refusal to defend America’s borders and enforce existing immigration laws has resulted in insurrection and domestic violence, not only begetting lawlessness but also disabling the states’ ability to fulfill their irreducible duty to defend citizens’ lives, liberties, and properties.  The state legislatures should pass resolutions declaring the existence of the invasion, documenting the violence and lawlessness, and invoking the Guarantee Clause, insisting under Article IV, Section 4 that the President dispatch the United States military to secure the borders against illegal entry and implement fully the border protective provisions of existing immigration law.  When, predictably, the President refuses, the states may then additionally sue the President under Article IV, Section 4, asking the Court to issue an affirmative injunction or mandamus compelling the President to implement border protections required by existing immigration laws.

https://townhall.com/columnists/jonathanemord/2023/01/07/states-must-sue-biden-and-invoke-the-guarantee-clause-to-secure-the-border-n2618003

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6 January, 2023

There have been more than 4 million illegal border crossings since Biden took office. 2.1 million were released

Since President Joe Biden took office in Jan. 2021, there have been more than 4 million illegal border crossings, according to the latest data by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol from fiscal years 2022 and 2021.

Of those, 1.9 million were deemed Title 8 inadmissibles or Title 42 Covid restriction removals. The other 2.1 million were released into the country.

In the meantime, for fiscal years 2021 and 2022, Immigration Customs and Enforcement has booked in 495,000 illegal immigrants, and of those, 25,000 are currently detained, 458,700 were given so-called alternatives to detention and through the process, 124,000 were removed and 389,000 were released.

Of those released, 38,000 were bonded, 224,000 were released with an order of recognizance, 18,000 were released with an order of supervision and 108,000.

Compared to former President Donald Trump’s administration, removals are down dramatically. At 72,000 in FY 2022, removals by ICE were down a whopping 61 percent compared to FY 2020, when 185,000 were removed.

Of the 2.1 million who were allowed to stay, unfortunately, many of them could wind up being indentured slaves and victims of human trafficking who paid the Mexican drug cartels to get into the U.S. Once here, they are obliged to keep paying protection money.

And then there’s the got-aways. In the just the past three months, although 631,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended, another 212,000 were classified unofficially as got-aways.

According Breitbart.com’s Bob Price and Randy Clark, “Unofficial numbers obtained from Border Patrol officials indicate a total of 844,000 known border crossers during the first three months of FY23. The number represents the reported apprehension of 631,000 migrants and an additional 212,000 migrants classified as known got-aways.”

Price and Clark added, “Gotaways are an estimate by Border Patrol officials of migrants that are either seen and not apprehended or are counted by other means including technology and tracking. These are migrants who illegally cross the border with no intention of surrendering to law enforcement to claim asylum, officials previously told Breitbart.”

Meaning, for every two illegal immigrants captured, another one gets in scot-free. And those are just the ones they tracked via technology or visually and then lost track. If that ratio held true throughout the Biden administration, that would mean as many as 1.3 million illegal immigrants got away and were never caught.

That would increase the number to 3.4 million in terms of the total increase of the population of illegal immigrants. But as the data on got-aways remains unofficial, until Congress spends money to get official data tabulated by the Customs and Border Patrol, the true number will remain a mystery.

Sadly, many of them are sex slaves. In the year 2000, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimated as many as 50,000 women and children are smuggled to the U.S. every year to serve as prostitutes and forced laborers in violation of the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of slavery and indentured servitude.

After more than 20 years, that would mean there are more than 1 million slaves in the U.S. and likely, given the numbers we are seeing presently at the border, there are many, many more than that.

And the Biden administration is just letting it happen and by opening the border, accommodating an abhorrent crime against humanity.

According to a report by the Organization of American States on human trafficking, the conditions of these slaves are atrocious: “The victims, mostly women and children, are often deceived about the true nature of the work. They are exploited in slavery-like conditions. The traffickers grow rich, but the victims are held in debt bondage… Some are abducted and sold, some are deceived into consenting by the promise of a better life or a better job, and some feel that entrusting themselves to traffickers is the only economically viable option.

Regardless of the route of entry, most women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation suffer extreme violations of their human rights, including the right to liberty, the right to dignity and security of person, the right not to be held in slavery or involuntary servitude, the right to be free from cruel and inhumane treatment, the right to be free from violence, and the right to health.”

The report continued: “Why can’t they just leave? Some trafficking victims are physically imprisoned by locks, bars or guards. Those with apparent freedom to leave are controlled by other means. Physical, sexual and psychological violence are employed against them effectively.”

Former President Trump effectively dealt with Mexico through a combination of threatening massive tariffs if they would not deploy their military to secure their side of the border. The Migrant Protocols and the Remain in Mexico policy were adopted by both countries, and apprehensions dropped substantially.

Now, with Remain in Mexico just a memory, and 2024 on the horizon, under Biden catch and release has skyrocketed. The question is whether the American people will continue to tolerate such a level of inattention to securing the nation’s borders. It was a key issue for former President Trump’s successful 2016 bid, and with Trump having already announced his candidacy against Biden next year, it will almost certainly be a central issue in the campaign. Stay tuned.

https://dailytorch.com/2023/01/there-have-been-more-than-4-million-illegal-border-crossings-since-biden-took-office-2-1-million-were-released/

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5 January, 2023

Fed Up Western Democrats Turn to GOP Tactic of Busing Migrants to Northern Cities

The Democratic governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, is borrowing a page from his Republican counterparts on the southern border and beginning to bus some of the thousands of migrants arriving in his state to large cities in the Northeast.

Mr. Polis said about 70 percent of the immigrants arriving in Denver from points south do not intend to stay there, so his office is working with “culturally competent navigators” to help with transportation to their desired final destinations. Many, apparently, want to go to New York, Chicago, and other eastern cities, and those cities are not happy about it.

“The stories I’ve heard firsthand from migrants are heartbreaking and we are helping these individuals complete their long and arduous journey,” Mr. Polis said in a statement. “States and cities cannot continue to bear this burden alone and Congress needs to finally step up — we need an immediate route to work permits, and to finally enact better border security and immigration reform.”

In a radio interview Tuesday, New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, reiterated his frustration with the tactics of the western state governors and described the ongoing crisis at the border as a national embarrassment. He said the city has received at least 30,000 migrants in recent months and is struggling to provide shelter, health care, and other vital necessities to the impoverished arrivals.

“This is just unfair for local governments to have to take on this national obligation. We’ve done our job. There’s no more room at the inn,” Mr. Adams said on WABC, a refrain he has repeated often of late. “This is a national issue. It must have a national response …  I think the president has an obligation to deal with the immediate concerns. But when we talk about immigration, it is going to take a combination of the executive and the legislative body. We have to address this.”

Denver’s Democratic mayor, Michael Hancock, announced that 100 migrants were put on state-chartered buses headed to eastern cities on Tuesday. He said the city’s shelters are beyond capacity and called on the federal government, nonprofits, and businesses to assist in dealing with the influx of homeless migrants.

Denver has assisted more than 3,600 migrants since December 9, Mr. Hancock said, and nearly 850 are still housed in shelters run by the city. Another 871 are living in emergency shelters set up by partners in the private and nonprofit sectors.

“States and cities not on the border are ill-equipped to address these challenges, and absent federal support and leadership, we’re left to strategize and take actions to ensure this vulnerable population — people who’ve come here with no resources or means — are safe and treated humanely,” Mr. Hancock said. “I’ve talked with other mayors around the country and we’re united in our call for Congress to work with the Biden administration to provide the assistance we need to manage this situation.”

During the last fiscal year, which ended September 30, a record 2.4 million migrants were stopped and processed by the Border Patrol at America’s southern border. As many as 600,000 were reported to have evaded capture and faded into the country’s interior cities. The numbers arriving in the first two months of the current fiscal year have been even higher.

To date, the response from the Biden administration to the influx has amounted to little more than a shrug. In Tuesday’s press briefing, the White House spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Pierre, said the administration’s hands are tied by recent rulings from the Supreme Court that keep pandemic-era border restrictions in place and insisted that the administration is doing everything it legally can to “manage the border in a secure, orderly, and humane way.”

“To truly fix our broken immigration system, though, we need Congress to act,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said. “The Supreme Court’s order gives Republicans in Congress plenty of time, we believe, to move past political finger-pointing and join our Democratic colleagues to fix and to work to fix this problem and come forth with a comprehensive way to move forward.”

Mr. Biden announced Wednesday that he would likely be visiting the border for the first time in his presidency next week before or after a summit of North American leaders in Mexico City.

https://www.nysun.com/article/fed-up-western-democrats-turn-to-gop-tactic-of-busing-migrants-to-northern-cities

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4 January, 2023

Illegal Immigrants Aren't Just Swarming the Southern Border

The crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is the epicenter of the historic wave of illegal immigration but it is not the only place at America's borders that has seen an increase in traffic.

The coastal sectors in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea have seen their fair share of people making landings on United States territory to take advantage of the Biden administration's relaxed border enforcement. In the Miami Sector, Chief Patrol Agent Walter Slosar tweeted multiple times towards the end of 2022 about the multiple landings illegal immigrants made, mostly coming from Cuba and Haiti.

The most significant landings within the past week have occurred at Dry Tortugas National Park, which is located to the west of Key West. At least 300 people landed at the island, forcing the park to shut down to allow law enforcement and medical personnel to process them.

Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay, whose jurisdiction includes the Florida Keys, criticized the federal government for the situation, saying it's causing a humanitarian crisis, according to Fox 13.

"Refugee arrivals require a lot of resources from the Sheriff’s Office as we help our federal law enforcement partners ensure the migrants are in good health and safe," said Ramsay. "This shows a lack of a working plan by the federal government to deal with a mass migration issue that was foreseeable."

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2023/01/03/border-patrol-increasingly-encountering-illegal-immigrants-at-costal-sectors-n2617817

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3 January, 2023

Nearly 500 migrants come ashore in Florida Keys, forcing major park to close

A massive wave of migrants arrived in the Florida Keys over the weekend, as some 500 people believed to be from Cuba and other parts of the Caribbean came ashore in what local officials described as a major “crisis.”

The arrivals forced authorities to close Dry Tortugas National Park, where some 300 migrants arrived over New Year’s and were met by first responders who did their best to provide aid, including food and water.

At about the same time, another 160 migrants landed by boat in other parts of the Florida Keys, officials said.

Then on Monday, two new groups of migrants that made up about 30 people were found in the Middle Keys.

Officials with Dry Tortugas National Park said the park would be closed to the public for “several days” while efforts are made to assist and process the migrants.

The national park, which is 70 miles west of Key West, is only accessible by boat or seaplane. It is made up of seven small islands.

“The closure, which is expected to last several days, is necessary for the safety of visitors and staff because of the resources and space needed to attend to the migrants,” park officials said in a statement.

“Like elsewhere in the Florida Keys, the park has recently seen an increase in people arriving by boat from Cuba and landing on the islands of Dry Tortugas National Park. Park first responders provide food, water and basic medical attention until the Department of Homeland Security arrives and takes the lead.”

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said in a Monday statement it was assisting federal authorities with a sharp increase of Cuban refugees since Saturday going into Monday. The office said it was told by US Border Patrol some migrant landings might have to wait for federal help until the next day causing the situation to get worse.

The office called it a “federal failure” that is leading to a “humanitarian crisis.”

“This shows a lack of a working plan by the federal government to deal with a mass migration issue that was foreseeable,” said Sheriff Rick Ramsay.

He also noted in a statement, “Refugee arrivals require a lot of resources from the Sheriff’s Office as we help our federal law enforcement partners ensure the migrants are in good health and safe.”

Border Patrol and the Coast Guard have been dealing with the largest spike in migration by boat in South Florida and the Keys in almost a decade with hundreds of interceptions in recent months. Most of the people have been from Cuba and Haiti.

Rear Adm. Brendan McPherson, commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District and director of Homeland Security Task Force, said in a statement to ABC News his task force, the Coast Guard, and other federal, state and local officials are working to recover people stranded on Dry Tortugas National Park and the Marquesas.

The migrants will receive food and first aid before they are transferred to federal authorities in the Keys, he reportedly said.

“From there, they will be transported for processing by regional US Border Patrol stations to determine their legal status to remain in the United States or be processed for removal and repatriation to their country of origin,” McPherson told ABC News. “Irregular, illegal maritime migration is always dangerous and very often deadly. Do not take to the seas.”

https://nypost.com/2023/01/02/dry-tortugas-national-park-closes-after-migrants-reach-florida/

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2 January, 2023

'Controversial' to Put Brakes on the Border?

When he reflected on his time as treasury secretary under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, William Simon joked the media called him "controversial William Simon" so much he thought "controversial" sounded like his first name.

"Controversial" can certainly be an accurate adjective, but that doesn't mean it isn't wielded very deliberately to define what liberal journalists don't like. On Monday, CNN morning anchor Christine Romans reported on Twitter under Elon Musk "reinstating controversial figures, including former President Trump." That's true -- Donald Trump is controversial -- and it sounds like CNN finds that Musk move objectionable.

Minutes later, Romans reported on President Joe Biden demanding in recent months that the oil companies pump more oil: "He did the same of Saudi Arabia during a controversial visit in July." Wow, Biden did something controversial -- but put an asterisk on it because journalists are especially angry over the Saudi crown prince ordering the gruesome murder of Qatar-backed Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

NBC's "Today" used the C-word accurately in describing Netflix shows on Jeffrey Dahmer and on Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle.

But this week, TV networks overwhelmingly employed the word to describe Title 42 as the Supreme Court upheld it. CNN reporter Sara Sidner explained on Monday's "CNN This Morning" that "the Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether to keep the controversial Trump-era border restriction known as Title 42 in place." One could joke that this is the only COVID restriction that the media didn't like.

When the high court ruled 5-4 to keep it, networks sounded the alarm. On ABC's "World News Tonight," fill-in anchor Mary Bruce led off the show: "Breaking news, as we come on the air tonight, the Supreme Court announcing that a controversial Trump-era policy, allowing asylum seekers to be quickly turned away, known as Title 42, can remain in place." Notice that "controversial" and "Trump era" fit perfectly for them.

On Wednesday's "Today," NBC co-host Kristen Welker lamented "the Supreme Court handing down a ruling that would keep the controversial Title 42 policy in place by a tight 5-to-4 vote until they can take up the case and make a permanent decision next June. It comes as the immigration crisis at many border towns around the country has reached a breaking point."

But here's the strangest part: It's "controversial" when the "immigration crisis" reaches a "breaking point" and someone puts the brakes on the surge?

MSNBC host Alex Witt used this framing on Tuesday's "Andrea Mitchell Reports." She said: "Left in limbo! The Supreme Court is keeping the controversial Title 42 policy in place for at least another six months. What it means for thousands of migrants desperate for asylum and the communities struggling to provide basic humanitarian needs." The flood of "desperate migrants" are the sympathetic victims of "controversial Trump-era" policies.

Fox News Channel has also used the C-word on Title 42, but the spin is different. On Wednesday's "Special Report," Bret Baier announced, "Breaking tonight, a controversial COVID emergency immigration policy remains in place. Yet the southern border crisis shows no signs of slowing down, and a plan for how to manage a post-Title 42 border is nowhere to be found, at least not yet."

As a candidate in 2019, Joe Biden openly encouraged a surge. "I would make sure that there is, we immediately surge to the border all those people seeking asylum," Biden said. "They deserve to be heard. That's who we are. We're a nation that says, 'If you want to flee, and you're fleeing oppression, you should come.'"

Guess what that is not? "Controversial."

https://townhall.com/columnists/brentbozellandtimgraham/2022/12/30/controversial-to-put-brakes-on-the-border-n2617707

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1 January, 2023

Here's Why Border Crossings Near El Paso Are Reportedly ‘Plummeting’

The Texas National Guard has installed two miles of border fencing near El Paso and is expected to add more as migrants in Mexico continue to wait for the end of Title 42.

The barbwire fencing now spans two ports of entry, according to Border Report. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shared that border crossings in the area have “plummeted” as a result.

A Texas National Guard spokesperson told CNN this week that more fencing will be constructed ahead of the end of Title 42.

Title 42, which was initially scheduled to end last week, will be kept in place due to a recent decision by the Supreme Court. Julio reported that as many as 18,000 border crossings were expected per day once the policy expired. The day before Title 42 was supposed to be lifted, there were reportedly 20,000 migrants near El Paso waiting to cross the border.

Though Title 42 is still in place, El Paso has been overwhelmed with migrants. Before Title 42’s expected expiration date, El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said that shelters on the other side of the border were “completely full.” When temperatures dropped last week, El Paso opened up its convention center and closed down school buildings to house migrants.

This week, it was revealed that a massive tent was being constructed near El Paso in preparation for an influx of migrants once Title 42 eventually ends. The facility will operate as an “overflow” processing center for migrants.

El Paso’s Deputy City Manager Mario D’Agostino said on Friday that El Paso’s central processing center has a capacity of 1,400 with a “breaking point” of 5,000, according to the New York Post.

“It’s still going to get worse before it even gets better, and that’s what we’re preparing for,” Leeser told reporters on Friday.

Security guards at the tent city outside El Paso told Daily Mail that the facility could be in place for “a few weeks, six months, we don’t know.”

This month, the Biden administration sued the state of Arizona for constructing a border wall out of shipping containers in an effort to stop the influx of illegal immigrants. The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Arizona, alleges that the shipping containers trespass federal lands that the state is not authorized to use, according to CBS.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2022/12/30/national-guard-putting-up-fencing-at-us-mexico-border-n2617728

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