RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-taps-kamala-harris-to-lead-white-house-border-crisis-mitigation-effort/?utm_source=

President Joe Biden on Wednesday appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the White House’s efforts to combat the worsening crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border where governmental resources have been stretched thin by a surge of migrants entering the country.

Harris will work with Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras in an attempt to slow the influx of asylum seekers. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said its agents encountered 100,000 migrants making illegal crossings in February, a 28 percent increase from the month before.

“I can think of nobody who is better qualified to do this,” Biden said, noting Harris’s prior work as California attorney general.

“When she speaks, she speaks for me, doesn’t have to check with me,” the president added. “She knows what she’s doing and I hope we can move this along.”

Biden, however, shirked responsibility for the situation at the border, saying the surge “started in the past administration but it is our responsibility” to handle it.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hundreds-of-migrant-children-test-positive-for-coronavirus-upon-arrival-at-hhs-facilities/

Around 2,900 migrant children detained by U.S. Border Patrol over the past year tested positive for coronavirus, including 300 currently in custody of U.S. agencies.

There are currently over 11,500 unaccompanied minors in shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to government data obtained by Axios. The 300 positive cases make up less than 3 percent of all migrant children in HHS custody, and are reportedly in medical isolation in HHS facilities.

“The positivity rate in general is what was anticipated, and planning has resulted in robust response,” HHS spokesman Mark Weber told Axios on Wednesday.

The influx of migrant children crossing the southern border has caused a backlog in HHS, which is charged with finding shelter for the children while their asylum claims are processed. Border Patrol agents are charged with finding HHS shelters for unaccompanied minors following their detention, however because of the backlog many children have remained in border patrol facilities longer than the 72-hour legal limit.

The Biden administration  forbid media outlets from visiting or receiving photographs from inside Border Patrol facilities, however Representative Henry Cuellar (D., Texas) provided Axios with images from one such facility showing overcrowded conditions.

“We have to stop kids and families from making the dangerous trek across Mexico to come to the United States,” Cuellar said. “We have to work with Mexico and Central American countries to have them apply for asylum in their countries.”

The 11,500 migrant children currently HHS custody is higher than the number of children detained in May 2019, when a major uptick in illegal crossings overwhelmed border agencies.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/illegal-immigrants-to-receive-4-38-billion-in-stimulus-checks-report_3744122.html?&utm_source=news&utm_

As Americans start to receive the latest round of stimulus checks, a new analysis reveals that about $4.38 billion will also go to illegal immigrants.

The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that 2.65 million illegal immigrants have Social Security numbers that allow them to receive stimulus checks. This group of illegal immigrants can be described as “aliens temporarily present without status,” according to Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies.

“These individuals are in the country illegally and could be required to leave. Yet, under the current system, they are still given work authorization and Social Security numbers,” he said.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/border-patrol-arrests-over-11000-migrant-children-in-march-so-far-report/

U.S. Border Patrol detained over 11,000 unaccompanied minors attempting to cross the border illegally in the first three weeks of March, more than in the entire month of February, CNN reported on Monday.

Detentions of migrant children have increased from 5,600 in January, to 9,300 in February, and now 11,000 children between February 28 and March 20, according to preliminary data reviewed by CNN. The number of unaccompanied minors detained in March 2020 is on track to surpass the 11,400 detentions recorded in May 2019.

The influx of migrant children has caused crowding issues at detention facilities along the U.S.-Mexico border. Representative Henry Cuellar (D., Texas), whose district sits on the border in the Rio Grande valley, shared photographs taken inside one facility during the past past month.

Border Patrol agents are “doing the best they can under the circumstances” but are “not equipped to care for kids,” Cuellar told Axios on Monday.

The Biden administration has restricted the Border Patrol’s ability to communicate with media outlets during the migrant influx. The administration has not provided photographs from inside detention facilities directly to the media, and has refused reporter requests to visit migrant shelters.

Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas), who will be visiting the southern border with colleague John Cornyn later this week, called on the the administration to allow media organizations access to the facilities.

“It is not enough for members of the Senate to see what is happening — the American people must see,” Cruz said in a statement on Monday. “That is why I requested that members of the media be allowed to join us. But your administration clearly and emphatically refused to offer press access.”

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/22/yes-there-is-a-border-crisis-and-democrats-created-it/

Although the Biden administration is attempting to deny and shift blame for the border crisis, its actions speak louder than words. A week ago, it had to send the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the southern border to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection bring illegal immigrants into the United States.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wasted little time blaming former U.S. President Trump for passing a broken immigration system to the current administration. However, it is President Biden’s immigration policies as well as Democrats’ ill-conceived immigration proposals that are responsible for today’s border crisis.

Even when he was a presidential candidate, Biden promised the United States would accept all asylum seekers, although U.S. asylum has been studded with fraud and abuse for a long time. As soon as he was sworn into office, President Biden signed three executive orders to undo the previous administration’s strong immigration law enforcement.

De Facto Open Borders from Day One

One such policy was the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” protocol, which made asylum seekers wait in Mexico for U.S. immigration courts to hear their asylum petitions. One of Biden’s executive orders ended this Trump policy, and the United States has admitted asylum seekers into the country since then, regardless of their petitions’ credibility.

These asylum seekers can start working in the United States immediately while waiting for their court hearings. Due to backlogs in U.S. immigration courts, sometimes the wait is longer than a decade. Since many of the asylum seekers are actually economic migrants, the long wait doesn’t bother them because it helps them achieve their goal of working in the United States.

Many asylum seekers don’t ever bother to show up at their immigration hearings. This problem has been around for a long time and the Trump policy, imperfect as it was, was the first serious attempt to address it.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/03/22/baghdad_bob_at_the_southern_border_145448.html

“There is absolutely no immigration crisis on the southern border.” That’s the repeated message from the Biden administration. It simply isn’t true.

Our leaders are telling Americans to ignore the overcrowded immigrant centers and caravans on the way. Don’t look at unaccompanied minors, arriving in record numbers. Those are mere “challenges.” Want to see for yourself? Sorry, no can do. The administration has blocked journalists from inspecting immigration facilities or accompanying the Border Patrol on their rounds. This is not the way to discuss democratic choices. It’s the way to grow mushrooms.

The media blackout and litany of false statements are reminiscent of the most dazzling press spokesman of modern times, “Baghdad Bob.” The mouthpiece for Saddam Hussein during the Iraq War famously told the world press, “There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!” What made his statement so memorable was that, just behind him on camera, American bombs were exploding. American troops were swarming into the country. He bravely — inanely — denied it all. U.S. soldiers, he said, “hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion.” He was soon captured by those illusory troops.

Bagdad Bob set the gold standard for government flacks and the politicians who hide behind them. But he has plenty of imitators. Donald Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, repeated his boss’s ludicrous claims that the 2017 presidential inauguration was the best-attended in U.S. history. Aerial photographs proved otherwise. But Spicer stuck with his story, to mounting ridicule. He knew who had hired him. Today, his old boss won’t even admit he lost the 2020 election or had anything to do with losing Georgia’s two Senate seats, which cost Republicans control of the upper chamber.

In the annals of public deceit, the Trump administration leaves big shoes to fill. The Biden administration is making an impressive effort to fill them, shoveling steaming heaps of disinformation about its immigration policies. Joe Biden doesn’t do that himself. He avoids answering questions or speaking off the cuff, apparently for good reason. So it’s up to his press secretary, Jen Psaki, and the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, to explain how the administration is handling immigration. Their answers have only a glancing relationship with the truth.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/03/19/for_one_brief_moment_wh_calls_border_surge_a_crisis_145441.html

At the White House on Thursday, the president’s press secretary was confirming reports that the United States had agreed to supply Mexico with excess coronavirus vaccine when she stumbled into a potential problem.

The two nations have struggled to stem the surge of migrants at the southern U.S. border, and reporters wondered whether the agreement to send doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine was part of a larger agreement to increase cooperation on border security.

“There have been expectations set outside of, unrelated to, any vaccine doses or requests for them, that they would be partners in dealing with the crisis on the border,” Jen Psaki said, accidentally repeating the exact term the White House has taken pains to avoid.

Even as the number of crossing attempts reaches its highest level in two decades, Democrats have rejected Republican claims that the situation is “Biden’s border crisis.” In fact, the administration has refused to call it a crisis at all. That is, until Thursday afternoon.

“When you were talking about how to go about diplomatic negotiations between the United States and Mexico, you said ‘crisis on the border,'” RealClearPolitics started to ask.

“Challenges on the border,” Psaki quickly interjected.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pompeo-hits-biden-team-for-reversing-the-trump-admins-migration-diplomacy/

As the White House contends with a growing crisis on the southern border, it has heaped blame on the previous administration because, as Press Secretary Jen Psaki put it during the daily press briefing on March 10, “they intentionally made it worse.”

But in a wide-ranging conversation with National Review on Thursday, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo argued that it is in fact the Biden administration, by unraveling the Trump team’s policies, that caused the current crisis. “It is patently obvious,” he said, defending the “enormous diplomatic achievement” that he played a role in crafting.

Pompeo has previously criticized the Biden administration’s border policy, including in recent appearances on Fox News. In a conversation with NR today, he elaborated on the diplomatic outreach that figured into the Trump administration’s work on border issues.

During that press briefing earlier this month, Psaki announced an end to the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), a complex set of agreements with Mexico and Central American countries, where individuals seeking asylum in the United States would be kept in Mexico or other countries as their claims were processed. According to Pompeo, ending these arrangements was a mistake.

“This policy, or what has been come to be known as Remain in Mexico, was really good work by me and my team to make the case to the Mexican government that the right thing for them — these are often El Salvadorians, Guatemalans, Hondurans, who are transiting their country — that this is deeply inhumane, and that we’re not going to permit them to stay in the United States while the asylum claim was processed,” he told NR.

Implementing the MPP, he continued, “with the cooperation of the Mexican government was to turn off the magnet,” and therefore to convince individuals without valid asylum claims not to make the trip to the U.S. border.