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December 2018

HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Death and Mystery of Jan Masaryk By Geoffrey Luck

By on December 27th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/12/the-death-and-mystery-of-jan-masaryk/

A mere two weeks after Stalin’s puppets took control of Czechoslovakia, foreign minister and national hero Jan Masaryk was found dead in the courtyard below his apartment. There was no suicide note nor hint of explanation beyond an enigmatic Bible verse. Today, seven decades on, the who, why and how remain a riddle that grows ever more intriguing.

Hands up those of you who remember Jan Masaryk (left) and the mystery of his death, seventy years ago? In the swirl of historical developments in the aftermath of World War II, his was a headline fodder, at the centre of events as diverse as the fight to establish the state of Israel and the encroachment of the Soviet bloc. Now, a new theory purports to explain how he fell victim to the double-dealing of the Cold War.

The basic facts of the case are simple: two weeks after the Communist takeover of the government in Czechoslovakia, Masaryk, the Foreign Minister, was found dead in his pyjamas, on the courtyard cobblestones below his apartment in the Foreign Ministry’s Cerninsky Palace. The Soviet Union had occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II, and it had seemed likely would try to install a Communist government, as it had in Poland, East Germany and elsewhere. Masaryk had dealt skilfully with Stalin, assuring him that a democratic nation posed no security threat to Russia. Then he blundered, proposing to accept aid under America’s Marshall Plan, something Russia could not allow.

When news of his death flashed around Prague on the morning of March 10, 1948, the immediate official explanation was that he had jumped from the bathroom window of the apartment, on the third floor. (In Europe, the ground floor is counted as Level 1, not G). But immediately there were suspicions of murder. Masaryk’s death was a double shock to the little nation, still adapting to life under Communist rule. He was a national hero, the son of Czechoslovakia’s first president, Tomas Garrique Masaryk, regarded as the founder of the nation. Like de Gaulle, he had gone into exile in Britain with his president, Edvard Benes, at the Nazi invasion, and had broadcast regularly on the BBC to inspire citizens and partisans in his homeland.

In February, when Communist Prime Minister Klement Gottwald demanded a Communist-dominated cabinet, twelve democratic politicians resigned en masse in protest, but Masaryk did not. His reasons were never articulated, but friends believed he decided to stay on, in the hope of moderating the Soviet policies. It was claimed that he did this with a heavy heart, feeling pressures from both east and west. The official line was that he was suffering from depression and insomnia, badly hurt by British and American criticisms of his decision to remain in office. A press report from Prague the day after his death claimed that he had been held a virtual prisoner in his apartment, surrounded by new secretaries, and not permitted to meet visitors alone.

Bit by bit, suggestive evidence dribbled out. The police doctor who certified the death as a suicide did not attend the autopsy. He himself was found dead a few weeks later, another suicide. Plaster was allegedly found under the fingernails of the corpse; there were marks on the walls of the room as if he had pressed his hands against them while resisting. He left no suicide note. Then the former Justice Minister was savagely beaten, his body dumped beneath the window of his flat.

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Modern Manifestations of the Oldest Hatred: Peter Arnold

By on December 27th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/12/the-modern-manifestations-of-the-oldest-hatred/

As Paul Johnson put it, “What strikes the historian surveying anti-Semitism worldwide over more than two millennia is its fundamental irrationality. It seems to make no sense, any more than malaria makes sense.” Nevertheless it continues. Some random thoughts on the latest upsurge.

Aghast at what scenes were revealed for all the world to see when Allied troops liberated Hitlers’s death camps, ‘the world’s longest hatred’ went into a quick decline. Apart from a few remaining extreme ‘crazies’ who had believed Hitler’s rantings about Jews, to be thought of as being an antisemite was socially and politically unacceptable. In this atmosphere, and following a remarkable volte face at the United Nations by Stalin’s historically antisemitic, pogrom-ridden Russia, legal effect was given to the Balfour Declaration and the State of Israel was born. Stalin even allowed vassal Czechoslovakia to supply the new state with arms.

The nations’ consciences about their own millennia of Christian antisemitism did not, however, extend to sending troops to defend Israel when it was immediately attacked, at birth, by the armies (some British-trained and even initially British led—for example by Glubb Pasha) of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The nations simply watched and waited for all the Jews to be exterminated. To their surprise, the Jews won that war and set about establishing their nation, which they have since defended in succeeding wars against enemies determined to “drive them into the sea”.

But so long-standing a hatred as antisemitism was not going to give up easily.

It was not long before ‘Holocaust denial’ emerged. The Nazis and their allies had not murdered Jews— they had died of diseases in the camps; it was not possible for six million people to be murdered and for no one to know about it—the numbers must merely have been hundreds of thousands. And so on. Holocaust denial is not dead, not even after the devastating legal setback by arch-denier David Irving when he sued Deborah Lipstadt in a British Court. Although, and perhaps because, the Iranian President continues to deny that the Holocaust occurred, Holocaust denial still has a bad name.

But a new version of antisemitism has emerged in, of all places, academia. As in Australia, academia in many western countries has been taken over by the ideologically-driven Left. Part of the underlying ideology holds that no person is any better than another, that no person has any claim greater than that of another, that no nation or culture is better than any other and that, whatever the cost, all must be made equal, like it or not. And what better example to pick on that Jewish Israel?

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Illegal Alien Gang Member Kills 12-Year-Old Boy December 27, 2018 Daniel Greenfield

By on December 27th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/272375/illegal-alien-gang-member-kills-12-year-old-boy-daniel-greenfield

The same media whose tears never dry when it comes to illegal aliens will maintain dry eyes and tight lips when it comes to stories like these.

Police in Connecticut have arrested an 18-year-old undocumented immigrant from Jamaica on murder charges related to the shooting death of an innocent 12-year-old boy a week before Christmas.

He might have murdered a little boy, but not even the Daily Mail will dare call him an illegal alien. He’s an undocumented killer.

Three juveniles who police said were with Chambers that night, ages 12, 14 and 16, are facing charges of conspiracy to commit murder; carrying a pistol or revolver without a permit and larceny.

According to police, at 9pm on December 18, Howell was returning home from getting snacks at a convenience store around the corner when Chambers opened fire, reported Fox61.

Investigators said Howell was an innocent bystander, not Chambers’ intended target, who was the victim’s older cousin.

CTpost.com reported, citing police sources, that earlier that evening, Chambers and his alleged co-conspirators were driving in a stolen car when they got into an argument with some people walking along Willow Street, among them Howell’s relative.

It looks a lot like gang violence. And migration continues to be a major driving force behind gang violence and gang violence drives the high gun violence rate. Plenty of the gang violence is obviously domestic, but plenty of it is coming from foreign gangs.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Cartel Jihad Rap Sinaloa Cartel recruiting gangster jihadists. Dawn Perlmutter and Doyle Quiggle

By on December 27th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272321/cartel-jihad-rap-dawn-perlmutter

Chérif Chekatt, the 29-year-old perpetrator of the December 11, 2018, mass shooting in Strasbourg, France was designated a gangster jihadist by French Police. The term refers to people previously convicted of various crimes and radicalized in prison. Chekatt, a French born citizen was a hardened criminal with 27 convictions in France, Germany, and Switzerland.

Gangster-jihadists are not just recruited in prison by Islamic extremists. The Sinaloa Cartel appears to have seized upon the opportunity to recruit and exploit hundreds of locals in France and Germany, including children and refugees already primed by jihadist propaganda, many possessing criminal records and combat experience. International law enforcement agencies have long known that Hezbollah launder money for the Sinaloa cartel. Recently, German law enforcement have been aggressively disrupting the criminal operations of traditional Arab Clans in Berlin and even the operations of La Cosa Nostra. Neither are known to have been affiliated with Sinaloa or Hezbollah. Sinaloa have quickly filled the narco-vacuum, similar to how the Cali Cartel took over Pablo Escobar’s market after the DEA killed him. The sudden and alarming proliferation of top-shelf weaponry among Hamas and Hezbollah on the Israeli border is very likely the consequence of a renewed and strengthened alliance between them and Sinaloa, in which German-based “refugees” deal Sinaloan coke and heroin and kick part of the profits back to their Iran-based handlers, Hezbollah who, in turn, shuffle weapons over to Lebanon. This arrangement provides Iran deniability, while also providing Sinaloa broader access to and deeper penetration of the German narco market, as well as plenty of easy money to SUV-driving, Gucci-toting “refugees.”

Music and accompanying videos of German Rappers further indicate a new alliance of transnational criminal organizations drug trafficking and Islamic State terrorism. Jihadist sympathizers and Islamic State fighters have long embraced hip-hop culture, specifically gangsta rap, to promote and disseminate their message via the Internet and social media. ‘Jihad Rap’ was a successful recruitment tool targeting young men who felt dispossessed and marginalized, one of the most notorious being the German rapper and ISIS terrorist, Denis Cuspert, aka “Deso Dog”. After the fall of the Islamic State Caliphate a new form of gangsta rap emerged in Germany. Best described as ‘Cartel Jihad Rap’ it is a combination of Islamic State nasheed, jihad rap and narco-cultura.

Fawzi Yamouni aka Fousy is a German rapper and producer of Algerian origin from Siegen, Germany. Chérif Chekatt’s most recent prison sentence was served in Singen, Germany. He was radicalized in the infamous area of Konstanz, a town that borders France and has been a hub of Islamic radicalism since the mid-1990s. Many of Germany’s prisons are now effective recruiting stations and training camps for cartel jihadis. Chekatt was expelled to France after his release in 2017.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Should Veto MLB’s Foul Deal with Cuba By Elliott Abrams

By on December 27th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/mlb-cuba-deal-payoff-to-communist-regime/

Don’t steal from players’ salaries to fund a Communist regime.

Major League Baseball has made a foul new deal with the Cuban regime, and the Trump administration can and should block it. The deal rewards and perpetuates Cuba’s Communist-style system in which players are the property of the state, not free individuals who can sell their talents on the open market.

For decades, Cuba has refused to let baseball players emigrate freely and join the major leagues. The result has been dangerous escapes, sometimes on flimsy rafts, by players making their way to the United States. Yasiel Puig’s escape from Cuba, where the star was paid $17 a month, was detailed in LA Magazine in 2014 and involved risky deals with smugglers. As the magazine explained, “Under Major League Baseball’s byzantine rules and the U.S. Treasury Department’s outdated restrictions, the only way for a Cuban ballplayer to become a free agent — and score a fat contract — is to first establish residency in a third country. That detour is a fiction, winked at from all sides, and one that gives traffickers command over the middle crossing.”

This story of human trafficking, of exploitation by a Communist state, and of dangerous escapes from Cuba was overlooked by Major League Baseball. The basic attitude was willful blindness: We will deal with you if you show up, and there is no interest in how you got here.

The cure for that situation was simple: Change the rules so that any Cuban player who escapes to freedom can sign a contract. The fake “residency in a third country” rule could easily have been eliminated — and the leagues also could have lobbied the U.S. government to force Cuba to free up its players. But that’s not what the Major Leagues have done.

Instead, baseball owners have negotiated a deal with the FCB, the Cuban Baseball Federation, in which they bribe the Cuban regime with part of a player’s salary. And they’re asking the Trump administration to sign off on this plan by granting an exception to the Cuban embargo.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

4 Foreign Policy Establishment Myths About Leaving Syria, Debunked Trump’s decision nips further mission creep in the bud and refocuses the national security bureaucracy on the right priorities.By Daniel DePetris

By on December 27th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/27/4-foreign-policy-establishment-myths-leaving-syria-debunked/

Since President Donald Trump’s directive to withdraw U.S. ground forces from Syria, the foreign policy elite keep levying complaints. While the people opposing Trump’s Syria decision may be loud, that doesn’t make them right.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio called the decision “a mistake,” while Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham used increasingly creative language to get the president’s attention by relentlessly tweeting about how “ecstatic” the Iranians must be. Indeed, with every passing hour, establishment politicians and conventional foreign policy thinkers are deploying increasingly desperate arguments to make their case about why American boots still need to be on the ground in Syria.

Curiously, they never seem to have a realistic end-game in mind. Let’s dispel some of the myths they are propagating.
1. U.S. Credibility Will Be Eroded

The American people are often told that the United States is only as effective around the world as it is credible. Yet credibility is a subjective term, a politically appealing instrument interventionists invoke when they have no better argument to make. As my colleague Benjamin Friedman wrote back in 2014, “A good rule of thumb for foreign policy is that if someone tells you our credibility depends [on] doing something, it’s probably a bad idea.”

This rule applies in the case of Syria. Washington’s fixation on maintaining supposed credibility can easily lead to terrible foreign policy decisions of dubious import. History is full of examples when presidents, lawmakers, and national security hawks continued or escalated U.S. military involvement in an overseas conflict — Vietnam and Iraq being the two prominent case studies over the last 50 years. The result has almost always been bad for U.S. security, blinding us to the far more important discussion of whether intervention is actually worth the risk.
2. Iran and Russia Will Win

Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez stated in a press conference: “To withdraw without success is failure. … If we leave, Russia and Iran dictate our strategic interests.” In other words: If the United States leaves, the mullahs and Vladimir Putin will swallow Syria whole.

What Menendez and many of his colleagues conveniently don’t mention is the context. For one, Syria’s political future has always been vastly more vital for Iran and Russia’s foreign policy interests than it has for the United States. Under no circumstances would Tehran and Moscow be open to Bashar al-Assad’s resignation; Assad may be a bloodthirsty, sinister, and incompetent dictator, but he was a useful proxy to both countries.

To the Iranians, Assad provided a strategic relationship in an otherwise indelibly hostile Arab world — a man who was willing to take cues from Tehran because his security often depended on doing so. For the Russians, Assad resembled a secular authoritarian who allowed the Russian navy to dock at Tartus, the only warm-water port Moscow had. Both Iran and Russia invested heavily in Syria’s civil war over the past seven years precisely because a post-Assad Syria would be a fundamental blow to both.

To the United States, however, Syria’s strategic position never really mattered. Washington does not require a cooperative Syria in order to fulfill its national security goals in the Middle East, including the establishment of a functional balance of power and defense of Americans from terrorist attacks. The bottom line is that the United States is well positioned regardless of whether Assad is in the presidential palace.
3. The Kurds Will Be Abandoned

While it’s understandable that Syrian Kurdish fighters are angry about the coming U.S. troop withdrawal — viewing any decrease as a betrayal after years of coordination in the field — the fact is that U.S.-Kurdish ties were never more than a tactical arrangement. The Syrian Kurds saw Washington’s airpower as a highly valuable asset to save their communities from further ISIS encroachment, and Washington views the Syrian Kurds as useful local forces to squeeze the organization’s territorial “caliphate.”

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Bombshell: New Info Says Khashoggi Was A Foreign Influence Agent Jamal Khashoggi’s op-eds published in the very influential Washington Post certainly qualify as attempts to change U.S. policy against Saudi Arabia and in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood.By Jim Hanson

By on December 27th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/27/bombshell-khashoggi-foreign-governments-influence-agent/

The Washington Post has caused itself a major scandal since it has come to light they and their martyred “reformer” Jamal Khashoggi were publishing anti-Saudi propaganda for Qatar. They tried to bury this in a pre-Christmas Saturday news dump, but that can’t stop the damage this will do to their reputation.

“Text messages between Khashoggi and an executive at Qatar Foundation International show that the executive, Maggie Mitchell Salem, at times shaped the columns he submitted to The Washington Post, proposing topics, drafting material and prodding him to take a harder line against the Saudi government,” the Post wrote December 21.

The Post says they were unaware of this, although Khashoggi’s Qatar connections were well known. They will have to answer for what is either incompetence in connecting these dots or simply not caring as Khashoggi’s attacks on President Trump and the Saudis fit right in with their narrative. The Qatar Foundation denies they were paying him to produce the anti-Saudi material.

But during Security Studies Group research for our report on the information operation after his death, we heard from reliable sources familiar with the investigation that documents showing wire transfers from Qatar were found in his apartment in Turkey. They were immediately put out of reach by Turkish security services, so they did not show the collusion between Khashoggi, Qatar, and Turkey prior to his death. We have published a new, unredacted set of findings about the case. It is damning to Qatar, Turkey, and the Washington Post.

Khashoggi may have been operating in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act by doing this on behalf of Qatar. This is the same law that caused both Gen. Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort legal jeopardy by not filing their attempts to influence the U.S. government on behalf of a foreign entity. The op-eds published in the very influential Washington Post certainly qualify as attempts to change U.S. policy against Saudi Arabia and in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Qatar supports in spite of its status as a terrorist organization with most other Gulf countries.

Turkey had control of the narrative after the killing as the only primary source for the media, with Qatar backing up their tales. Both had eager partners in western media outlets. Security Studies Group tracked this phenomenon in our paper, “Khashoggi case- Analysis of an Information Operation”: “Although Turkish-language media supported and helped to drive the narratives, as did Arabic-language media controlled by Turkish ally Qatar, the main outlets that Turkish intelligence used to execute their operation were major Western English- language journalist outlets.”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Hijab in the House By Bruce Bawer

By on December 27th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/hijab-in-the-house/

One of the notable results of the November 6 midterm elections was that the U.S. House of Representatives went from two Muslim members — Indiana’s André Carson and Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, who on the same day was elected his state’s attorney general — to three Muslims, Carson plus two new female members from Michigan and Minnesota. With few if any exceptions, the mainstream media rooted for these ladies throughout the campaign season and lustily cheered their victories, not because of their skills or experience or political views but because they represented “diversity.”

The same media also did their best to cover up unpleasant details about them. For example, Rashida Tlaib, the soon-to-be-installed member from Michigan, has a record of outspoken anti-Semitic comments (at her victory party, she wrapped herself in a Palestinian flag). As David Steinberg demonstrated in a bravura series of investigative articles for PJ Media, Ilhan Omar, the hijab-wearing future Gentlewoman from Minnesota (on her account, Democrats plan to lift a 181-year-old ban on head coverings in Congress), not only hates Jews but committed perjury and married her brother, likely as part of an immigration and student-loan scam. Nonetheless she is already being hailed as a “star” and has been elected to a leadership role in the House progressive caucus.

Granted, these are just two House members out of 435. And Ellison, who won election in Minnesota despite his chummy relations with Louis Farrakhan and highly plausible accusations of domestic abuse, is, so far, the country’s only Muslim state AG. But it’s a start — a foot in the door. At what point are we permitted to begin worrying out loud?

How about when we catch up with Canada, where the minister of Immigration is a Somali-born Muslim named Ahmed Hussen, who was last seen pushing the sinister UN migration pact and refusing to answer queries about it from Rebel Media, Canada’s online alternative news organization? (Canada’s mainstream media were too polite to ask Hussen uncomfortable questions about the UN deal.)

Or how about when we evolve as far as Germany, whose Minister of Immigration Aydan Özoğuz is the sister of two Hezbollah enthusiasts named Yavuz and Gürhan Özoğuz, who reportedly have “close ties to the Iranian government” and to various Holocaust deniers and who run a “virulently anti-Israeli, anti-American and anti-democratic” website called “Muslim-Markt.” In a 2013 interview, Aydan, the Immigration minister, said: “They are my brothers. I don’t deny my family. I think apart from my brothers on political issues.” Two years later she expressed the same sentiments in an NPR interview, saying that she and her brothers “have completely different views” but that she considers it “important to keep the channel of communication open in her family.” How sweet! One is reminded of Hillary’s sidekick, Huma Abedin, who got a pass from the media even though her father ran a top Muslim Brotherhood organization and her mother edited a Sharia law journal (for which Huma herself worked from 1995 to 2008) and sat on an Islamic council chaired by the vile hate preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

In 2015, voters in the traditionally Polish-American city of Hamtramck, Michigan, elected the nation’s first Muslim-majority city council — leading a local Muslim leader to shout at an Election Night victory party: “Today we show the Polish, and everybody else!” As Robert Spencer wrote at the time: “Multicultural euphoria, meet Islamic supremacist reality.” No major U.S. city has a Muslim mayor yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Rotterdam has one: Morocco-born Ahmed Aboutaleb, who’s been in office since 2009 and who identifies as a devout yet Westernized Muslim. A dual citizen of the Netherlands and Morocco, Aboutaleb has said many of the right things about terrorism and integration, and has even been praised by Geert Wilders; but last December he got into trouble when he told an interviewer that “every Muslim is a bit of a salafist” and described his own mayoral work as “jihad in its most perfect form” — remarks which led Wilders to demand his resignation. A couple of months ago, Aboutaleb agreed to a plan that would cut off the flow of asylum seekers from North Africa into Rotterdam, which is already one of the most heavily Muslim — and crime-ridden — cities in Europe. But who knows what he’s really thinking? What can it possibly mean to be a devout yet Westernized Muslim? Whom is this guy hoodwinking? His fellow Muslims or us?

Sadiq Khan, who has been mayor of London for two years, also calls himself a “moderate, socially liberal Muslim.” Yet one of his first acts as mayor was to ban ads on public transport depicting scantily clad females. He claimed to be doing so on feminist grounds, although many observers saw it as a step toward Sharia. Under Khan, who has notoriously stated that living with terrorism is “part of living in a big city,” London authorities have focused less on Muslim crime and preventing terrorism and more on harassing “Islamophobes.”

Then there’s the Somalia-born Lord Mayor of Sheffield Magid Magid, who, since being named to that post earlier this year, has been celebrated by hip types all over the UK because he’s young, black, Muslim, and informal to the point of irreverence. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Magid referred to the current monarch as Queen Victoria, then, when corrected, said: “Yeah. Liz.” Making no secret of his disdain for the monarchy, his contempt for Donald Trump, and his indifference to the legacy of Winston Churchill, Magid appears to know absolutely nothing about the history of his city and has not bothered to read the guidelines to official protocol that he was given when he took office; but he’s big on immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, all of whom, he says, “enrich our society,” and one of his chief goals is to establish an official Sheffield poet laureateship so he can give the job to a certain rapper. Anyone who criticizes him for any of this is, in his view, a racist. Magid comes off as such a buffoon that it’s hard to take him very seriously as a part of the Muslim menace, but perhaps it’s unwise, at this stage, to underestimate his ability to make a meaningful contribution to the Islamic assault on British freedom. CONTINUE AT SITE

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

FBI: Record number of illegal immigrants tried to buy guns this year by Paul Bedard

By on December 27th, 2018

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/fbi-record-number-of-illegal-immigrants-tried-to-buy-guns

The FBI this year has turned away a record number of illegal immigrants trying to buy guns, according to a new report of background checks.

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System said that it rejected 7,836,600 planned purchases from “illegal/unlawful alien” in 2018. And that was at the end of November. Christmas purchases of guns are typically high and were not included.

That number has been increasing in recent years. In 2017, it was 7.3 million. The year before, it was 7 million rejections. In 2015, it hit 6.6 million.

Illegal immigrants rank at the top of those on the FBI’s “prohibited category.”

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Byron York: When Democrats embraced the ‘Southern Border Fencing Strategy’ by Byron York

By on December 27th, 2018

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-when-democrats-embraced-the-southern-border-fencing-strategy

In 2006 Congress passed the Secure Fence Act, which mandated the construction of multilayer pedestrian fencing along about 600 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. It passed with big, bipartisan majorities: 283 votes in the House and 80 in the Senate. Some top Democrats who are still in the Senate today supported the fence: Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Ron Wyden, Debbie Stabenow, and Sherrod Brown.

Just the next year, Congress made clear it didn’t really mean what it said. The new law was amended to make fence building optional.

In 2013, Congress got back into the fence game. The Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill included something called the “Southern Border Fencing Strategy.” It called for 700 miles of at least single-layer pedestrian fencing along the border. It wasn’t a standalone measure; the fence was to be part of a broader package of border security measures alongside provisions that would create a process by which the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants would ultimately gain a path to citizenship.

With citizenship in the deal — even citizenship that would take a decade to achieve in some cases — Democrats were fully on board for a border barrier. The Gang of Eight bill passed in the Senate with 68 votes, including unanimous Democratic support. Name any Democrat who is in the Senate today who was there for that 2013 vote — Schumer, Durbin, Murray, Baldwin, Bennet, Blumenthal, Brown, Cantwell, Cardin, Casey, Coons, Feinstein, Gillibrand, Hirono, Kaine, Klobuchar, Leahy, Manchin, Menendez, Merkley, Murphy, Reed, Sanders, Shaheen, Stabenow, Tester, Warner, Warren, Whitehouse, Wyden — name any, and they voted for the bill that included the Southern Border Fencing Strategy.

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