RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/07/28/kamala-youre-doing-a-heckuva-job-on-the-border/

In the months since President Joe Biden tapped his vice president to run point on the border crisis, Kamala Harris’ poll numbers have plunged as the number of illegals crossing the border swells. Then again, her boss is the one who’s willing to spend $2 billion to stop building a border wall.

At his first press conference in March, a reporter asked Biden about the surge in illegal border crossings that just happened to coincide with his getting the keys to the White House.

“The truth of the matter is: Nothing has changed,” Biden said after he overturned numerous Trump administration border-control policies. “It happens every single, solitary year: There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March.”

Biden even offered a weather-related causes why crossings jumped early in the year: “The reason they’re coming is that it’s the time they can travel with the least likelihood of dying on the way because of the heat in the desert, number one.”

Biden then put Harris in charge of the situation, saying that “I can think of nobody who is better qualified to do this.”

Since then, apprehensions of illegals at the border have climbed every month, even as the temperatures climbed. (See the nearby chart.)

I&I Chart

As the Albuquerque Journal notes:  “The number of migrant families they encountered at the border in June increased by 25% from the previous month even as summer temperatures rise in the deserts and mountain terrain of the southwestern borderlands.”

As of June, apprehensions had topped 1 million, with three months to go in the fiscal year. That’s more than double the number from all of FY 2020.

“It’s as bad as it’s been in memory,” the Center for Immigration Studies’ Todd Bensman told the Washington Times. “By every yardstick that exists, the border — and not just the border areas, but the interior areas now — are in crisis.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/biden-administration-says-cubans-not-welcome-wheres-the-outrage/

It’s impossible to ignore that Cubans often are treated differently.

I n November of 2020, Joe Biden’s Havana-born nominee for Department of Homeland Security secretary, Ali Mayorkas, promised to “oversee the protection of all Americans and those who flee persecution in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones.”

Less than a year later, amid a popular uprising in Cuba, Mayorkas made a volte-face, telling those seeking refuge from Haiti and the communist nation, “You will not come to the United States. . . . Again, I repeat, do not risk your life attempting to enter the United States illegally. You will not come to the United States.”

As far as I can tell, there was no performative outrage from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or any of her progressive cohorts over the United States shutting its doors to the downtrodden. There are no overwrought analogies made between U.S. immigration policy and the MS St. Louis by Democrats. There is no grandstanding reading of “The New Colossus” from CNN hosts.

Even as Biden gave his perfunctory statement about the United States standing with the “Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom,” a senior State Department official was framing protests — in which some unfurled American flags and many chanted “We want liberty” — as unhappiness over “rising COVID cases/deaths,” using puerile activist rhetoric about “mobilizing donations to help neighbors in need.” Collectivist-induced shortages are not an outlier. Every neighborhood is in need.

It’s impossible to ignore the fact that Cubans are often treated differently. Perhaps it’s because a sizeable number of them — having first- or secondhand experience with socialism — vote Republican, and progressives are interested only in future Democrat voters.

After all, President Barack Obama not only ended the embargo on Cuba; he overturned the “wet foot, dry foot” policy instituted under President Clinton in 1995, which allowed Cubans refugees who reached U.S. soil to stay and become permanent residents. There is a genuine debate over the morality of policy that incentivizes refugees to put their lives in danger (Cubans deserve to make that choice), and it is also true that the Cuban regime has taken advantage with mass expulsions of people in a bid to retain power, as it did with the Mariel Boatlift. Obama, though, legitimized the regime by visiting Cuba, allowing himself to be filmed underneath a mural of the mass murderer Che Guevara. He took in a baseball game with the dictator Raúl Castro as FARC terrorists cheered in the stands. Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, known as Antúnez, who spent 17 years in Castro’s gulag, called the U.S. policy “a betrayal of the aspiration to freedom of the Cuban people.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/iranian-goal-death-america-aided-and-abetted-michael-cutler/

Iran is one of the most dangerous nations on earth and has been identified as being the greatest state sponsor of international terrorism.

For decades the leaders of Iran have chanted, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

Virulent anti-American chanting by Iran’s leaders is only the tip of the huge Anti-American Iranian iceberg.

President Abraham Lincoln sagely observed that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

The United States is currently in the midst of a battle for the minds and souls of Americans.

Rather than teaching critical thinking in American schools and universities, students are now being indoctrinated in anti-American Critical Race Theory that pits Americans against Americans along racial lines that were erased by America’s Civil Rights laws.

There are many reasons that this toxic ideology has taken hold in America but let us not forget that as America falters, the enemies of our nation are rejoicing.  Indeed, while we have heard much about supposed Russian interference in the Presidential elections of 2016 and 2020, as it turns out, Iran has been heavily involved.

On June 7, 2021 Time Magazine published an important report, Exclusive: Iran Steps up Efforts to Sow Discord Inside the U.S.

That report began with the following two paragraphs:

Iranian state actors are intensifying their disinformation campaign on social media to spread discord and anti-Semitic tropes inside the U.S., two U.S. intelligence officials say.

Social media accounts tracked to troll farms run by the Iranian government have ramped up disinformation after several major events this year, including Biden’s effort to return the U.S. to the Iran nuclear deal, the April 14 announcement of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin on April 20, and the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas that started on May 10. “It’s a significant level of activity,” one official tells TIME. “It’s active enough that we’re tracking it.” The officials did not offer details on the specific disinformation activity after the events.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/06/29/an_unflinching_guide_to_biden

The crisis of illegal immigration—to give this calamity its true name—is growing increasingly grave. The reason is no mystery. The Biden administration replaced policies that staunched the illegal flow of migrants with policies that actually encourage it.

Instead of securing the U.S. border, the administration says it wants to deal with the “root cause,” desperation in Central America. That won’t work for two reasons. First, the administration doesn’t have the tools to markedly change conditions in Central America. Second, even if the policies could stimulate economic growth, improve safety, and reduce corruption—spoiler alert, they can’t—they won’t have any significant impact for years. Under even the most optimistic scenarios, they couldn’t reduce immigration anytime soon. It’s a policy based on a mirage.

The Biden team is certainly right that bad conditions in Mexico and Central America drive immigration. But it’s easy to show that’s the wrong explanation for our current crisis. The reason, as all social scientists know, is that “you cannot explain change with a constant.” What is constant here? Poverty, corruption, and danger in Mexico and Central America. Since those “root causes” have not changed over the past year, they cannot explain the dramatic rise in illegal immigration since Biden took office. What does explain it? The administration’s decision not to secure the southern border and to give up any serious effort at preventing illegal immigration. Migrants have gotten the message, and they are coming north in unprecedented numbers.

The media, always eager to protect their favorite political party, never asked Vice President Kamala Harris three crucial questions after her “root causes” trip to Guatemala and Mexico.

Can the U.S. really do much to improve conditions there?
Would relatively modest improvements have much impact on migration? And, crucially,
How long before these policies can have a major impact, if they work at all?

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-was-kamala-harris-thinking/

Vice President Kamala Harris “clearly thinks she’s ‘winning’ something by refusing to [visit the border],” I noted at the end of today’s Morning Jolt. “What she thinks she’s winning is anybody’s guess.”

This afternoon brings word that Harris will indeed travel to the border, 91 days after President Biden appointed Harris to “lead efforts to stem migration across the U.S.–Mexico border.” Many Democrats have disputed the characterization of Harris as the “border czar.” But Biden himself said this, referring to her role on this issue: “I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.”

Would Harris have gotten some bad press by visiting the border three months ago? Sure, but it would have been one bad news cycle. White Houses get those all the time, and they survive them all the time. By waiting, Harris ensured that Republicans could bring it up over and over again, while also ensuring she would get asked about it and have awkward moments like her giggling, “I haven’t been to Europe, either. I don’t know what you’re getting at,” in response to NBC News’s Lester Holt. Now, when Harris visits, Republicans will point out, accurately, that U.S. Customs and Border Protection have had three straight months of border captures that are the worst in 20 years. With four months to go, it’s already the worst year since 2006.

To avoid one bad news cycle, Harris accepted three months of bad press.

And we’re left wondering: Just why the heck was Harris so reluctant to visit the border? It certainly isn’t a blanket administration opposition to photo opportunities, or else the president wouldn’t visit an Alexandria rock-climbing facility and joke about scaling a 60-foot wall. It’s become almost cliché in conservative media to say that Harris has bad political instincts, but I think that understates just how much she chooses to make avoidable mistakes.

It’s possible that for three straight months, Harris assumed that the following week or month would bring better news and signs that the waves of migrants are abating. If that’s the case, it’s not encouraging, because it suggests the administration’s policies and messaging will work any day now, despite all the counter-evidence.

https://usinc.org/biden-transforming-america-into-an-unconstitutional-sanctuary-country/

The radical Democrats have declared war on law enforcement, and, hence, Americans by demanding the defunding of police in towns and cities across the United States, as I explained in Attacks on Law Enforcement Are Attacks on America.

However, the notion of undermining law enforcement actually began decades ago with the former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) an agency I am well acquainted with, since I spent 30 years at that agency that was dismantled and reassembled under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security. DHS is an agency that was ostensibly created, in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 to supposedly address the failures of the former INS to prevent the entry and embedding of international terrorists as laid out in detail in the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, to which I provided testimony.

The harsh reality of how the DHS was created by the administration of George W. Bush was shocking, to say the least. I addressed my observations and concerns in Sanctuary Country – Immigration failures by design, and I urge you to take the time to review it to understand how the Department of Homeland Security should have been properly renamed the Department of Homeland Surrender.

Immigration anarchists and those who profit from open borders and failures to enforce our immigration laws frequently complain about how enforcement of our immigration laws are somehow “unconstitutional.” Consider that Article Four, Section 4 of the United States Constitution states: “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 of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-administration-denies-gop-lawmakers-access-to-border-facility/?utm_source=

The Biden administration denied a group of 12 Republican lawmakers access to a DEA migrant facility in El Paso, Texas Tuesday.

The GOP members were restricted from entering the El Paso Intelligence Center, Fox News reported, despite making multiple attempts. The Republican delegation said that by blocking access the Biden administration was preventing them from fulfilling their “constitutional duty to have oversight over these facilities that are paid for by taxpayer dollars.”

“All I can say is, I don’t know what they have to hide,” Representative Brian Babin remarked. “For some reason, we were not allowed in. I can only imagine what is it that they want to hide and not show the very representatives of the American people that have oversight over this facility that fund it and that authorize it. What don’t they want us to see?”

One legislator claimed the administration was trying to obstruct data regarding the severity of the border crisis created by the massive influx of migrants entering the country over the last few months.

“This is not something we surprised them with,” Representative Mike Garcia commented. “We’ve been trying to get in there for a couple of weeks and it’s coming from the top. It’s coming from the White House. They don’t want us to see what it is. You can make a conjecture about why they won’t let us in there. In my opinion, they have data they are gathering at this intelligence center which clearly indicates that our open borders are actually a more serious than the average American understands right now.”

Another congresswoman said that Biden is barring the group entry to obscure  information about the government’s initiatives to combat drug cartels.

“I would have liked to have the opportunity to visit with the FBI and the agents there to learn more about what the drug cartels are doing and what strategy we’re employing to stop them,” Representative Vicky Hartzler said, “but we were denied the opportunity.”

A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent stationed at the El Paso location told Fox News that U.S.-Mexico border experienced a surge in drug smuggler crossings in March and suggested that border officials are worried the situation could worsen.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/05/25/secret-recordings-reveal-filthy-conditions-for-migrant-kids-at-fort-bliss-n1449432https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/05/25/secret-recordin

More than 4,500 migrant children — mostly teenage boys — in Fort Bliss, Texas, are being held in enormous tents in unsanitary “filthy” conditions according to an investigation conducted by Reason.

“If you took a poll, probably about 98 percent of the federal workers here would say it’s appalling,” a federal employee detailed to the facility told Reason. “Everybody tries in their own way to quietly disobey and get things done, but it can be difficult.”

Those federal employees have neither the skills nor the training to care for so many kids. The Fort Bliss shelter is part of the Biden administration’s “shell game” of moving kids from Customs and Border protection facilities at the border to more than 200 shelters at arenas, auditoriums, and military bases, mostly in the Southwest.

Recordings obtained by Reason reveal the stress the influx of unaccompanied minors has put on the federal government. They also reveal that leaders at the shelter are well aware that they are failing to provide basic necessities, including medical care and physical safety, to the children under its supervision.

Federal employees detailed to the Fort Bliss shelter, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reason they are working 12-hour shifts six days a week. Basic forms and equipment, including lice kits, are in short supply, and frustration is mounting.

“I’m not going to lie, we’ve got people dropping like flies because it’s just not something that they’re used to,” the trainer says in the recording, which Reason is not releasing to protect the source’s identity. “This facility is growing so fast, and we are getting kids on a daily basis. We don’t have enough staff to maintain.”

But there’s no crisis, right Joe?

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/temporary-protected-status-a-tool-for-executive-mischief/

DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced over the weekend that his agency would grant a work-permit amnesty (under so-called Temporary Protected Status) to all Haitian illegal aliens in the U.S.

Haitians who were here at the time of that country’s devastating 2010 earthquake already had this “temporary” (but routinely renewed) status, but Saturday’s announcement reopened the TPS amnesty to all the new Haitian illegals who’ve come in the decade-plus since then. The Federal Register notice, which hasn’t been published yet, will offer DHS’s estimate of how many illegal aliens would benefit, but media reports put the number at 100,000 or more post–2010 illegals, on top of the 50,000 or so Haitians who already have TPS.

As my colleague (and former senior USCIS official) Rob Law noted, “The stated reasons by the Biden administration for a TPS designation do not conform with the statute.” In the press release announcing the amnesty, Mayorkas said “Haiti is currently experiencing serious security concerns, social unrest, an increase in human rights abuses, crippling poverty, and lack of basic resources, which are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic” – this is simply a less scatological version of Trump’s “shithole countries” crack, but even if true, none of this prevents the return of Haitian illegal aliens.

Despite the rhetoric of activists, TPS is not mainly about preventing the deportation of illegal aliens to a country; Biden halted deportations to Haiti shortly after taking office and ICE can exercise discretion like that whenever it chooses. The sole reason for a grant of TPS is to give illegal aliens work permits (and the Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses that follow it), formally embedding them in society and making the revocation of the amnesty extremely unlikely.

And, in fact. President Trump announced in 2018 the decision to allow Haitian TPS to expire the following year, but was barred by the courts from doing so, despite the law’s specific prohibition against judicial review of TPS decisions.

This is why legislative proposals to upgrade long-term TPS holders from their current amnesty-lite to amnesty-premium (i.e., a green card, potentially leading to citizenship) are fatally flawed. The version passed by the House in March includes just such a TPS amnesty upgrade as part of a broader bill — but does nothing to change the TPS process, guaranteeing the need for more amnesties in the future. But any arrangement that gives illegal aliens “temporary” work permits that keep getting renewed for 10 or 20 years is broken and needs to be fundamentally changed.