Tag: MEXICO

{THE SWAMP} – US Chamber of Commerce Opposes Border Shutdown, Supports ‘New NAFTA Agreement’ to End Tariffs

The Chamber is using its lobbying power to stifle President Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda with great effectiveness.

By Shane Trejo

The US Chamber of Commerce is not happy about President Donald Trump’s threats to close down the US southern border, and the organization is using its tremendous lobbying power to curtail Trump on immigration and trade issues.

“Even threatening to close the border to legitimate commerce and travel creates a degree of economic uncertainty that risks compromising the very gains in growth and productivity that policies of the Trump administration have helped achieve,” said Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer.

Thomas Donahue, CEO for the US Chamber of Commerce, appeared on CNBC yesterday where he attempted to downplay his organization’s opposition to the President’s agenda. Still, he expressed some concerns with Trump’s tough talk on Mexico.

“We don’t want to shut down the people that come to the United States everyday to work here across the border that we need. We don’t want to shut down the trade,” Donahue said.

Although Donahue admitted that the migrant crisis at the border is substantial and that “the house is full,” the Chamber is still lobbying President Trump to moderate his trade and immigration policies.

“I think we have conveyed to the President some of the issues he should be thinking about,” Donahue said.

Donahue hopes that Trump’s strong rhetoric on the border is mostly to garner attention and not a serious public policy proposal. He also wants Trump’s trade war with China to conclude as quickly as possible.

“I am not in all of the trade issues enamored with tariffs because, as you know, they’re all paid for by American companies,” Donahue said, in direct opposition to Trump’s trade policy.

“You buy a million dollars worth of steel somewhere that has a tariff on it, you send a check for a quarter of a million dollars to the US government,” Donahue said, deriding the effect of Trump’s policies.

Additionally, Donahue hopes that Congress will pass a “new NAFTA agreement” so Trump’s tariffs can be brought to an end.

The Chamber, along with Koch Industries and other globalist lobbying interests, have driven the pro-trade, open immigration status quo of the Republican Party for decades. Donahue’s comments make it clear that the Chamber’s agenda has not changed in the Trump era.

“Immigrants have long been a vital part of our economy, and they can help fill those gaps now…. Our nation must continue to attract and welcome the world’s most industrious and innovative people and finally fix our broken immigration system,” Donahue said last year.

“The United States is fundamentally out of people,” Donohue said.

The lobbying push by the Chamber toward Trump to persuade him to abandon his electoral mandate seems to be working as Trump’s rhetoric on immigration has shifted drastically in recent months.

Organizations like the Chamber are never going to make it easy to repel globalism from the Republican Party.

 

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Texans Living Over 70 Miles North of Border Terrorized by Illegals, Cartels

By Dan Lyman Tuesday, April 02, 2019

Terrified residents desperate for border wall, protection

Americans living roughly 75 miles north of the Mexican border are being terrorized by foreign gang members and illegal aliens, according to a resident of Encino, Texas, who says a border wall is needed to protect U.S. citizens.

A woman identified only as “Soila” told NBC affiliate KVEO that “hundreds” of illegal aliens pass through her neighborhood on any given day, while Mexican cartel members threaten her family and friends — and even attempt to invade her property.

“We no longer can go out without a gun; you can’t go for a walk,” Soila said. “My neighbor and his daughter were chased by men with masks. She was riding her 4-wheeler down 281 — they saw her and they jumped the fence and started chasing her.”

“Huge groups — and we’re not talking 10 or 15, we’re talking about 40, 70 — and the last few months it’s getting worse. They really need to go after the coyotes because we have seen so many abandoned families, women with children just left out there. These people are not educated — they don’t know east or west, they don’t know where the sun rises and sets. You ask them, ‘Have you ever seen a map of Texas?’ They don’t even know how big Texas is.”

Soila tells of multiple confrontations between her husband and gang members who use intimidation to silence and control opposition, adding that her neighbors are scared to call Border Patrol due to threats.

“12 young men dressed in black — my husband automatically stops, and they just put a finger to their lips and it’s like, ‘You better not say anything,’” Soila said. “They know what we drive, they know where we live.”

“There was a young man, [my husband] kept telling him to stop right at the gate, but he kept coming. My husband cocked the gun, and right on his left-hand side, 12-15 more pop out. They were trying to get in towards the house.”

Soila says a border wall is desperately needed, and that those who oppose it are foolish or protecting their short-term financial interests.

“Whoever tells you there is no danger out here and we don’t need the wall, they have no idea what they’re talking about,” she said. “They don’t care as long as the businesses keep thriving in McAllen or Brownsville.”

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Democrat Presidential Candidate Julián Castro: Open the Borders

By Neil Munro

The Associated Press

Democratic presidential hopeful Julián Castro is hoping to win primary voters by urging an open-borders policy, even though his plan would likely shrink wages and spike rents for the party’s base of lower-income voters.

Castro, a former housing secretary in President Barack Obama’s cabinet, announced his innovative promise to cut voters’ wages via a friendly interview in the Washington Post:

Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro offered a far-reaching plan to remake the nation’s immigration policy Tuesday with a new call to end criminal penalties for migrants entering the country without permission and a plan to remove detention as a tool for most immigration enforcement.

…

By repealing the criminal code that allows the Trump administration to prosecute people who enter the country, Castro would remove the mechanism that previously allowed the administration to separate asylum-seeking parents and children after detention. Trump has since stopped those prosecutions, though single adults continue to face criminal penalties. Castro said he would impose a civil legal process for sorting out refu­gee applications and deportations, with an emphasis on jailing and removing those with criminal records.

Castro also wants to amnesty the population of at least 11 million illegals in the United States, to accelerate the chain-migration of foreigners into the United States, to boost the inflow of refugees, and to end construction of a border barrier. He would also block the power of ICE to enforce the nation’s immigration laws, so further reducing the already small threat of repatriation for the growing population of at least 11 million illegals in the United States.

Overall, Castro’s policy would explode the population of non-Americans in the United States and so further expand opportunities for Latino politicians and power-brokers. In February 2019, Breitbart reported Castro’s political roots in Latino identity politics:

Castro’s mother, Maria del Rosario Castro, or Rosie Castro, was a major leftist organizer who co-founded La Raza Unida, an extremist third party separatist group in the 1970s. La Raza Unida literally translates to “The Race United,” and the group sought to create a new country in the American Southwest called Aztlan. Breitbart News has run a number of pieces over the years on this group and the Castro family’s connections to it, but perhaps the most interesting thing about Castro’s presidential campaign launch is that he did not shy away from this radical upbringing; he embraced it.

The Washington Post reporter, Michael Scherer, did not ask Castro how Americans voters would gain or lose amid of flood of blue-collar and white-collar labor. The reporter did not address how a massive rise of the immigrant population would help lower-income Americans keep their homes in neighborhoods that are already seeing rising real-estate prices, such as New York and Los Angeles.

Instead, Castro and Scherer treated the migration issue merely as a matter of the migrants’ welfare. This skew hides the greatest economic impact of migration — the transfer of blue-collar wages and white-collar salaries earned by ordinary Americans and legal immigrants up to wealthy, older recipients, including investors, CEOs, and real estate owners.

Also, Castro and Scherer treated the migration as only a humanitarian crisis, and portrayed the migrants as helpless victims, which are described as “asylum-seeking families.” Castro told Scherer that “We see this administration’s approach to immigration is a total failure. Instead of marching forward with cruelty, I believe we should choose compassion.”

That approach dismisses the strong evidence that the migrants are rationally exploiting the many legal loopholes which are being held open by Democrats, judges and business lobbyists, to win jobs and residency for their children in the peaceful, prosperous United States.

Scherer did not reply to questions from Breitbart News.

The focus by Castro and Scherer on the migrants’ welfare and on humanitarian concerns also echoes the bipartisan claim that the United States is a “nation of immigrants,” not a nation of and for Americans.

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The voting public is likely to strongly oppose Castro’s open-borders and cheap-labor policy.

Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high school or university. But the federal government then imports approximately 1.1 million legal immigrants, refreshes a resident population of roughly 1.5 million white-collar guest workers and roughly 500,000 blue-collar visa workers, and also tolerates about eight million illegal workers.

This federal policy of flooding the market with cheap white-collar graduates and blue-collar foreign labor is intended to boost economic growth for investors. This policy shiftsenormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts children’s schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.

But the Washington Post article also put a racial, class, and regional skew on the rational public opposition to elite support for cheap-labor migration:

Some Democratic strategists are wary of turning off white voters in swing states of the upper Midwest who Trump has been able to sway with anti-immigration rhetoric.

Those views of “white voters” have been validated by President Donald Trump’s “Hire American” policy which has raised wages in 2018 by limiting the inflow of new workers in 2017 and 2018:

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Amnesty advocates rely on business-funded “Nation of Immigrants” push polls to show apparent voter support for immigration and immigrants.

But “choice” polls reveal most voters’ often-ignored preference that CEOs should hire Americans at decent wages before hiring migrants. Those Americans include many blue-collar Blacks, Latinos, and people who hide their opinions from pollsters. Similarly, the 2018 polls show that GOP voters are far more concerned about migration — more properly, the economics of migration — than they are concerned about illegal migration and MS-13, taxes, or House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

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Democrat Gutierrez: There Should be Welcoming Centers in Every Major City for Illegal Caravan Migrants

by Jim Hoft April 1, 2019

CAP

He’s the conscience of the party.

Former lawmaker Democrat Luis Gutierrez wants welcome centers in every major US city for illegal caravan migrants.

CAP

This is a party that seeks a national suicide.

Gutierrez was on CNN this weekend when he made the comments.

Via Breitbart:

Former Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) over the weekend called on mayors of major U.S. cities to open “welcoming centers” for caravan migrants.

Appearing on CNN, Gutierrez, who is now a senior policy adviser for the National Partnership of New Americans (NPNA), urged Democrats leading major U.S. cities like Chicago and Los Angeles to “invite” caravan migrants to stay in their cities, saying he hoped his party “stands up for its principles.”

He said America is the “richest, most powerful nation in the world,” and it “should also be the nation with the biggest heart and a nation that has a great tradition of receiving refugees.”

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MEXICO WARNS: ‘Mother of all caravans’ pushes north…

CAP

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico is bracing for the possible arrival of the “mother of all caravans,” even as doubts arise over whether the group of Central American migrants will be all that big.

Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero has said a caravan of migrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala could be forming.

“We have information that a new caravan is forming in Honduras, that they’re calling ‘the mother of all caravans,’ and they are thinking it could have more than 20,000 people,” Sanchez Cordero said Wednesday.

But a WhatsApp group calling for people to gather Saturday in El Salvador to set off for Guatemala only has about 206 members.

CAP

Activist Irineo Mujica, who has accompanied several caravans in Mexico, said reports about “the mother of all caravans” were false, claiming “this is information that (U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen) Nielsen is using to create fear.”

His group, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, said in a statement there was no evidence the new caravan would be that large, noting “there has never been a caravan of the size that Sanchez Cordero mentioned.” Indeed, past caravans hit very serious logistical hurdles at 7,000-strong.

He and others suspect the administration of President Donald Trump may be trying to fan fears of a big caravan to turn the U.S. national agenda back to the immigration issue.

Honduran activist Bartolo Fuentes, who accompanied a large caravan last year, dismissed the new reports as “part of the U.S. government’s plans, something made up to justify their actions.”

Later Thursday, Honduras’ deputy foreign minister, Nelly Jerez, denied that a “mother of all caravans” was forming in her country.

“There is no indication of such a caravan,” Jerez said. “This type of information promotes that people leave the country.”

A caravan of about 2,500 Central Americans and Cubans is currently making its way through Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas. The largest of last year’s caravans in Mexico contained about 7,000 people at its peak, though some estimates ran as high as 10,000 at some points.

Mexico appears to be both tiring of the caravans and eager not to anger the United States. It has stopped granting migrants humanitarian visas at the border, and towns along the well-traveled route to Mexico City sometimes no longer allow caravans to spend the night.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday that Mexico is doing its part to fight immigrant smuggling.

CAP

“We are going to do everything we can to help. We don’t in any way want a confrontation with the U.S. government,” he said. “It is legitimate that they are displeased and they voice these concerns.”

Sanchez Cordero has pledged to form a police line of “containment” around Mexico’s narrow Tehuantepec Isthmus to stop migrants from continuing north to the U.S. border.

The containment belt would consist of federal police and immigration agents, but such highway blockades and checkpoints have not stopped large and determined groups of migrants in the past.

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TRUMP STOPS TAXPAYER-BACKED MORTGAGES FOR ILLEGALS

Trump Stops Taxpayer-Backed Mortgages for Illegals

Democrats taking economy hostage to protect illegal aliens

Frontpage Mag – MARCH 26, 2019

When Barack Obama implemented his unilateral amnesty for illegal aliens who claimed to have entered this country before the age of sixteen, the illegally amnestied illegals qualified for many benefits.

One of these were FHA loans.

FHA loans are government-backed mortgages meant for poorer Americans unable to qualify for normal mortgages. Democrat abuse of the FHA helped lead to the Great Recession and in the years afterward, FHA insured loans hit losses of $70 billion. By 2012, the FHA was $16 billion in the hole and had to be bailed out. The delinquency rate for FHA loans is still more than three times higher than normal loans, and depending on the period, have hovered between 8% and 14%. Time to bring in the illegal aliens.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism

When Barack Obama implemented his unilateral amnesty for illegal aliens who claimed to have entered this country before the age of sixteen, the illegally amnestied illegals qualified for many benefits.

One of these were FHA loans.

FHA loans are government-backed mortgages meant for poorer Americans unable to qualify for normal mortgages. Democrat abuse of the FHA helped lead to the Great Recession and in the years afterward, FHA insured loans hit losses of $70 billion. By 2012, the FHA was $16 billion in the hole and had to be bailed out. The delinquency rate for FHA loans is still more than three times higher than normal loans, and depending on the period, have hovered between 8% and 14%. Time to bring in the illegal aliens.

When Obama illegally implemented DACA, a program exempting certain illegal aliens from government action, they were also allowed to apply for FHA loans. How many illegal aliens obtained FHA loans?

In December, a letter from three Senate Democrats claimed that HUD barred “approximately 800,000 individuals approved for DACA from FHA-insured mortgage loans”. This refers to the total number of DACA illegal aliens and it’s unknown how many of them have obtained FHA loans in past years.

Ellie Mae’s millennial tracker estimated that the average size of an FHA loan to millennials is $186,454. Potential exposure to illegal alien mortgages could then climb as improbably high as $150 billion.

It’s unknown how many illegal aliens have taken out FHA loans, but some media stories have cited loan officers for whom illegal alien FHA loans represent a significant percentage of their business.

The Trump administration has applied the brakes to this avalanche of taxpayer-insured mortgages to illegal aliens. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had begun notifying lenders that the FHA was no longer in the illegal alien mortgage business. The reasons were common sense. DACA illegal aliens, or in media spin, DREAMERs, were not legal residents and weren’t being legalized.

Under Obama, FHA rules had been bent so far backward that people who were not only non-citizens, not only non-permanent residents, but weren’t even legally here, were having taxpayers guarantee their mortgages. Not only hadn’t the Democrats learned anything from the Great Recession, they were determined to make the irresponsible behavior of the FHA a decade ago seem sober and sensible.

And they aren’t giving up.

The December letter by Senator Menendez, who had recently been on trial for corruption charges, Senator Booker, on whose watch the $100 million poured into Newark public schools dissipated, and Senator Cortez-Mastro, who had been accused of taking dirty money, claimed to be, “appalled that the Trump Administration would exploit a federal government program to deny Dreamers an opportunity of owning their own home.” But it was the Democrats who had exploited a federal government program meant for poor Americans to benefit not only foreigners, but illegal aliens with no right to be here.

The letter by the three Senator Democrats falsely claimed that President Trump was targeting a “portion of the American public”, when in fact illegal aliens are not part of the American public. They demanded, “sound and unambiguous legal reasoning” for the move. The sound and unambiguous reasoning would be that illegal aliens are not legally resident in the United States and therefore do not qualify for loans.

Much of the furor over FHA loans for illegal aliens was stirred up by Dani Hernandez, an underwriter for NewCastle Home Loans. NewCastle in Chicago markets aggressively to DACA illegal aliens, declaring, “Don’t let the political climate worry you. DACA recipients are eligible to buy a home.” It also assures the illegal aliens that they can qualify for FHA loans and it “specializes in working with DACA recipients.”

Prospective FHA borrowers are also informed that they can get a loan with a credit score as low as 500 and a 50% debt-to-income ratio.

The illegal alien mortgage business, built on the backs of American taxpayers, is obviously profitable. But it’s also a silent nuclear weapon threatening mass destruction of the economy in case of deportations.

The more illegal aliens end up with FHA loans, and as those FHA loans are turned into Ginnie Mae Mortgage Backed Securities, deporting DACA illegal aliens would risk mass defaults on FHA loans which are backed by American taxpayers. Quite a few Ginnie Mae bonds are being held by Japan and China.

That’s why HUD’s move of stopping the flow of FHA loans to illegal aliens is so vital and important.

Not only do FHA loans endanger our economic security, they also endanger our national security. Their very existence serves as political leverage to prevent the government from enforcing the law. Every illegal alien mortgage not only robs American taxpayers, but puts them at risk of even worse losses.

And considering the role of mortgage backed securities in the Great Recession, the threat is real.

However, HUD has carefully avoided taking a clear position to prevent the inevitable lawsuits and overrides by Obama and Clinton judges embedded in the federal judiciary. Instead HUD officials have successfully warned off many lenders by creating ambiguity about the status of DACA FHA loans.

The riskier illegal alien FHA loans appear, the more irresponsible taking them on will seem. And lenders will be aware of the shadow of the “False Claims Act” hanging overhead if they bite on illegal loans.

This is far from an ideal solution. But it’s an understandable response by a crippled executive branch that has had its legal powers stripped from it by Democrat activists operating under the guise of judges.

But taxpayer-backed mortgages for illegal aliens are only the tip of the tottering FHA iceberg that President Trump needs to begin shutting down to avoid another recession caused by bad loans.

FHA loans to non-citizens are also extended to non-permanent residents and even to “refugees”. The Office of Refugee Resettlement had even been promoting Freddie Mac’s Islamic Sharia-compliant mortgages for Muslim “refugees”. Foreigners here under Temporary Protected Status, a category that the Trump administration has begun winding down, are also potentially eligible for FHA loans.

The FHA is deeply dangerous and troubled. It is in desperate need of reform.

American taxpayers have long been exploited by the FHA as a piggy bank to pay off Democrat voters. But DACA FHA loans have taken this a step further by taking the economy hostage for illegal aliens.

The FHA loan was created to serve Americans. If it is to continue to exist, it should only serve Americans.

There has never been any reason given why the United States government should be extending its credit on behalf of foreigners, whether they are residents, temporary workers or, let alone, illegal aliens.

The risk of such loans has been rolled into the overall risk for Americans. And the buck was passed.

The artificial stimulation of the housing market isn’t reason enough for the government to be putting the economy at risk and taxpayers on the hook for the illegal aliens whom Democrats hope to turn into voters. DACA was an illegal policy. FHA loans for DACA recipients piles illegality on illegality.

American taxpayers should be let off the hook for illegal alien mortgages before the cost grows too high.

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VIDEO: BETO TELLS SUPPORTERS ‘WE DO NOT NEED ANY WALLS, THERE IS NO BORDER CRISIS’

Video: Beto Tells Supporters 'We Do Not Need Any Walls, There Is No Border Crisis'

Floats conspiracy theory that it’s a plot to steal land

Steve Watson | Infowars.com – MARCH 22, 2019

Despite daily reports of hundreds of illegal immigrants being arrested every day attempting to cross the Southern border, Democrat presidential candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke told an audience during a campaign stop that there is no border problem and building a wall would be a waste of money.

The video, taken in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, shows Beto waving his hands in the air, declaring that the border crisis is actually a manufactured plot to steal land from ranchers.

“We do not need any walls – $30 billion, 2,000 miles long, 30 feet high.” O’Rourke urged.

“It will not be built on the international boundary line, which is the centerline of the Rio Grande River. That wall will be built well into the interior, on someone’s ranch, someone else’s farm, someone else’s home,” he added, without citing a shred of evidence to back the claim.

“You and I will be forced to take their property to solve a problem we do not have.” Beto exclaimed.

“You and I will be forced to take their property to solve a problem we do not have.” Beto exclaimed.

O’Rourke’s claim that there is ‘no problem’ will be hard, even for Democrats, to swallow.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics prove that there are tens of thousands of illegal immigrants trying to cross every month, and that the number is rapidly rising.

More than 110,000 people were stopped in January and February alone, according to the figures.

Earlier this month, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testified before Congress, warning that close to a million illegal immigrants are expected to attempt to cross the border into the US in 2019 alone, making the situation “truly an emergency.”

USBP reports indicate that there is rampant criminality among those trying to gain access to the country, including sex and drug trafficking.

Even Obama’s former border chief agrees that the situation is dire.

To claim that there is ‘no problem’ in the face of such facts is manifestly asinine.

It indicates that O’Rourke intends to run a campaign entirely focused on opposing any policy advocated by President Trump, rather than one based in reason, logic and fact.

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Illegal Alien Shoots and Kills Sheriff’s Deputy, Wounds Officer After Overstaying Visa

This visa overstay led to the death of a law enforcement officer.

By

An illegal alien living in Washington state killed a Sheriff’s Deputy and wounded another police officer during a road rage incident on March 20, according to federal law enforcement.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Juan Manuel Flores Del Toro, 29, was a Mexican citizen who entered Laredo, Texas, in 2014 on a temporary agricultural worker visa,” said a USA Today report.

According to ICE, there is no record that Flores Del Toro ever left the United States after his visa expired, and likewise there is no record that he ever re-applied to extend his visa.

Like half the illegals in the United States, he simply stayed despite the expiration, and was never deported. The end result was the death of a Sheriff’s Deputy and an injury to another police officer.

Flores Del Toro died of his injuries in a local hospital shortly after the incident.

According to the report:

Officers on Tuesday tried to stop Flores Del Toro’s vehicle after receiving a complaint about his driving that authorities described as “road-rage type event.” They chased him until he stopped in a house trailer park near Kittitas, about five miles from Ellensburg, the city where Flores Del Toro resided. Police say he got out of the car and shot at them with a handgun.

Sheriff’s deputy Ryan Thompson, 42, was killed and Kittitas police officer Benito Chavez, 22, was shot in the leg, shattering his femur.

Thompson was married with three children. Chavez joined the three-person Kittitas police department last July, officials said.

Visa overstays actually outnumber illegal border crossings again in 2018, as they have for seven consecutive years, according to the Center for Migration Studies.

As reported by Big League Politics, the abuse of the visa program by illegal aliens results in crimes such as the molestation of a 7-year-old by an illegal alien who had been arrested eight times.

Big League Politics will continue to track the flood of criminal illegal aliens staying in the U.S. after their visas expire.

Meanwhile, America is no closer to a sane immigration policy as leaders of both parties in Washington, D.C., work against President Donald J. Trump in his effort to secure the border.

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MS-13 MEMBERS WHO STABBED, BURNED VICTIM WERE RESETTLED AS REFUGEES

MS-13 Members Who Stabbed, Burned Victim Were Resettled as Refugees

Fake refugees from violence bringing violence to America

Conservative Review – MARCH 21, 2019

One of the biggest scams being perpetrated against the American people as part of this mass migration from Central America is the fact that we are treating those who engage in self-trafficking as victims of trafficking and those who commit heinous violence in our country as refugees from violence.

Nowhere is this more evident than with those who come here from Central America as teens by having their families pay to traffic them here, get resettled as refugees, and then join gangs and fuel violence in our cities greater than the violence in their home countries.

On Friday, police in Prince George’s County, Maryland, announced the arrest of five members of an MS-13 cell based in Fairfax County, Virginia, for the gruesome murder of a fellow gang member across the state line.

he suspects allegedly stabbed the victim 100 times and set the body on fire, a hallmark of the Latin American gangs and cartels. All five suspects – Jose Ordonez-Zometa, 29; Jonathan Castillo Rivera, 20; Kevin Rodriguez Flores, 18; Cristhian Martinez Ramirez, 16; and Jose Hernandez-Garcia, 25 – are being charged with first-degree murder.

I’ve noticed a pattern of so many heinous crimes committed by young males from Central America and how many of them came in to the country as “unaccompanied alien children” several years ago. Under that rubric, we automatically treat them as refugees to be resettled, not illegal aliens to be deported. I reached out to ICE and was told that at least three of them were indeed resettled under the UAC program. Here is the information they sent out on the record:

Cristhian Martinez Ramirez entered the United States on an unknown date at an unknown location, and was encountered by the U.S. Border Patrol on May 18, 2016. Border Patrol identified Martinez as an unaccompanied minor and he was transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Martinez was released to a family member in Virginia on June 16, 2016. On March 11, Martinez was arrested by local law enforcement officers in Stafford County for murder.

Jonathan Castillo Rivera entered the United States on an unknown date at an unknown location, and was encountered by the U.S. Border Patrol on Feb. 6, 2016. Border Patrol identified Castillo as an unaccompanied minor and he was transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Castillo was released to a family member in Virginia on Feb. 19, 2016. On March 12, Castillo was arrested by local law enforcement officers in Stafford County for murder.

Kevin Rodriguez Flores entered the United States on an unknown date at an unknown location, and was encountered by the U.S. Border Patrol on June 27, 2016. Border Patrol identified Rodriguez as an unaccompanied minor and he was transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Rodriguez was released to a family member in New Jersey on July 15, 2016. ICE officers arrested Rodriguez on March 12 and transferred custody to Stafford County based on an outstanding warrant for murder. At that time, ICE lodged a detainer with the Rappahannock Regional Jail.

The other two came in at unknown times as adults. All five of them were citizens of El Salvador.

Notice the common thread here? They were all released into the custody of other family here, most likely themselves illegal aliens who, based on what DHS officials have testified before Congress in recent years, most likely paid for them to be smuggled into the country.

Our laws aren’t broken. It’s our policies contorting the laws that are broken. The relevant statute (Sec. 235(a) of the Wilberforce Act) authorizes the resettlement program only for those children who are 1) indeed children under 18; 2) have no parent or guardian present in the country; and 3) have been victims of “a severe form” of human trafficking. In the overwhelming majority of cases, these teens have legal guardians in America who themselves are here illegally. Yes: 80 percent of the UACs were settled with other illegal aliens, most often family members, and in almost all cases, they are self-trafficked, not victims of kidnapping. Thus, they are not unaccompanied.

Sadly, the American people pay for the rope to hang ourselves with by resettling these people as refugees. Places like Long Island, N.Y., North Carolina, Maryland, and northern Virginia have been flooded with gang activity since the Central American teens began coming in large numbers in 2014. And 98.2 percent of all Central American teens who came in fiscal year 2017 still remain in our communities.

If it weren’t so tragic, the irony of this invasion would be funny. We are told that these people are fleeing violence. In reality, violence in Central America has plummeted, coinciding with the skyrocketing of migration. There are now places in Maryland, such as Baltimore, that have higher homicide rates than Central America! Baltimore’s homicide rate in 2018 was 56 per 100,000 people. That tops the 51 per 100,000 rate in El Salvador and dwarfs the rates of 40 and 22.4 in Honduras and Guatemala respectively. And the homicide rates are plummeting in those countries while migration skyrockets. The homicide rates have been cut in half in all three countries since the migration began!

Indeed, while not all Central American youth are gang members, a lot of them are, and we are bringing the violence to our communities. Roughly 30 percent of all gang members arrested by ICE in some recent stings have been UACs.

Last year, the Washington Post reported on an “overwhelmingly Hispanic school in Prince George’s County,” Maryland, where MS-13 would “sell drugs, draw gang graffiti and aggressively recruit students recently arrived from Central America, according to more than two dozen teachers, parents and students.” It was so bad that “most of those interviewed asked not to be identified for fear of losing their jobs or being targeted by MS-13.”

The Post also did a report on an illegal immigrant woman from Guatemala who has to pay ransom to MS-13 not to be killed and how she felt she was living with the very elements she fled. She was living in the U.S. for 10 years, but things changed around the DACA surge when “MS-13 was on the rebound, fueled by fresh recruits from an unprecedented wave of almost 200,000 unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.”

It would truly be a tragic irony if the violence has gone down in these countries for precisely the same reason why it has gone up in some of our communities. Perhaps that is a consequence of a government that now cares more about the desires of foreign nationals than about the protection of its citizenry. At some point, this administration needs to assert its will and declare a shutdown to all cross-border migration and put an end to this dangerous influx of dangerous gang criminals.

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Border Patrol says detention centers are full; Starts releasing migrants…

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske And Molly O’Toole

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MCALLEN, TEXAS

The Border Patrol released 50 recently apprehended migrants here Tuesday, the first of several hundred border-crossers who officials say will soon be freed because there is no room to hold them.

Normally, the Border Patrol would transfer the migrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be “processed” and in many cases placed in detention facilities. But officials said that both agencies have run out of space due to a recent influx of Central American families.

Immigrant advocates suggested the release was intended to create chaos at the border and further President Donald Trump’s argument that there is a national emergency there.

“Why do this now? It doesn’t make sense,” said Zenen Jaimes Perez, advocacy director for the Texas Civil Rights Project, which sent lawyers to the McAllen bus station to assist the migrants. “This is not something they’ve done before.”

He pointed out that the federal government has dealt with bigger influxes of migrants in the recent past.

A Border Patrol official — who spoke on the condition that he not be identified — denied that the release was a political stunt and said that crowding the facilities would threaten the safety of agents and migrants.

“It is a crisis,” he said. “It’s not a self-proclaimed crisis.”

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The agency plans to make similar releases along other parts of the border, he said.

In February, the Border Patrol caught 66,450 migrants, a 38 percent increase from January and one of the highest monthly totals of the last decade. More than half of those arrested were parents and children, and 40 percent of those were in the Rio Grande Valley.

The number of families arriving in the Rio Grande Valley sector since October has jumped nearly 210 percent over the same period in the last fiscal year, according to Customs and Border Protection reports.

Still, migrant apprehensions are far below levels seen for decades until the mid-2000s, when they reached more than a million per year before falling dramatically.

That hasn’t stopped Trump from declaring a national emergency at the southern border in order to tap into billions in federal funding for his long-promised border wall, with administration officials pointing to the spike in migrant families as evidence of a crisis. In recent weeks, officials have warned the U.S. immigration system is “at a breaking point.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is scheduled to visit McAllen Thursday.

Border Patrol spokesman Carlos Diaz said the 50 migrants were given notices to appear in court and released to Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, which operates a local respite center.

He said 200 more migrants would be released to the center Wednesday.

Volunteers in the area are already accustomed to helping large numbers of newly released migrants. Elizabeth Cavazos, a leader of the migrant advocacy group Angry Tias & Abuelas of RGV, said ICE typically releases 300 to 500 migrants a day in McAllen.

But additional releases in large numbers by the Border Patrol are likely to strain the system, she said.

“I feel like they’re trying to put some stress on the volunteer and advocacy groups, all of us touting ‘There’s no crisis down here,’” Cavazos said. “Maybe it’s for them to save face because they’ve been calling this a border crisis and everything’s peachy keen down here. That’s what it feels like.”

The respite center is already at capacity, with 900 migrants spread between the main facility and a temporary site opened this week.

The Border Patrol has been moving 700 to 800 migrants a day to ICE over the last week. But that was 300 a day less than the Border Patrol wanted to transfer.

As a result, the Border Patrol’s Central Processing Center in McAllen quickly filled, leading to the release this week.

Another possible factor in the release is that the agency has been under pressure to improve conditions for migrants since two Guatemalan children died in its custody in December.

It is not the first time the federal government has released large numbers of migrants. During the Christmas holiday, ICE officials dropped more than a thousand migrants in downtown El Paso, straining local churches and nonprofit shelters, which had to pay to house migrants in hotels.

Before the release of migrants Tuesday, the Border Patrol official said his agency notified McAllen Mayor Jim Darling and Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley.

Many more migrants remain in detention awaiting court hearings on asylum claims. Record numbers of asylum seekers have contributed to a backlog of 830,000 cases.

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