Tag Archive for: border wall

Inside JD Vance’s Tone-Setting Trip To The Southern Border

EAGLE PASS, Texas – As the vice president’s motorcade zipped by a long stretch of border wall Tuesday, the barrier quickly turned from solid structure to a patchwork of old train cars and razor wire.

The motorcade turned into Shelby Park, an area Gov. Greg Abbott seized so officials could put up razor wire and barriers to help deter crossings coming from the Rio Grande. Standing in the middle of the park at a podium, the location quickly became symbolic of how the administration is addressing the border crisis.

“I think the president’s hope is that by the end of the term, we build the entire border wall. And, of course, that’s the physical structure, the border wall itself,” the vice president said in response to the Daily Caller’s question about how much of the border needs to be walled off before President Donald Trump leaves office.

Just about six weeks into the administration, Vance was at the border and he didn’t go alone. Vance spent the entire day trip with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. They did an aerial tour of the American side of the border in a Black Hawk, visited border facilities and met with lawmakers, border patrol agents and other leaders.

At Eagle Pass, Texas, which was once a hub of illegal immigrants crossing the border, he touted the administration’s progress at mitigating the migration crisis.

“I will say that the most heartening message that I take away from my visit here at the Texas border is the number of border patrol agents who have come up to me and said, ‘thank you,’” Vance told reporters.

“Or said, ‘Because of this, we’ve cut the number of border crossings from 1,500 a day to 30 a day.’ Or the people who have come up and said, ‘we’ve seen a reduction of 85% of the number of people who are dying at the American southern border,’ and every single day that we continue to keep this border safe, that means less migrant crime, that means less fentanyl coming into our communities,” Vance continued at his press conference.

About five months earlier, Vance’s predecessor stopped at the southern border while making a run for the White House. Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign planned a stop to visit a section of the border in Douglas, Arizona, where she gave remarks and called for a solution to the border crisis. It was her first trip to a section of the southern border in three years, after Biden gave her the job of addressing the “root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.” 

At the time, an analysis by The New York Times found that under the Biden administration, the level of net migration into the country was the largest in the country’s history. The 2024 U.S. fiscal year was the second worst in history for illegal immigration.

Since taking office, Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders, like a national emergency declaration allowing him to divert more military resources to the U.S.-Mexico border and another to resume border wall construction. Other executive orders included a designation of drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, a pause on refugee admissions and an end to birthright citizenship for individuals born on U.S. soil to illegal migrant parents.

There were 101,790 migrant encounters at the southern border in September, the final month of fiscal year 2024, according to data released Tuesday by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The Trump administration has touted figures trying to show how its actions in roughly the first month have dramatically impacted the border crisis. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed that the administration marked the lowest single-day apprehension number in over 15 years, with 200 migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border on Feb. 22. Trump also announced that during his first few weeks in office there were 8,326 migrant apprehensions at the border.

To build on this, Vance repeatedly referenced a line from Trump’s joint congressional address the night before.

“As you saw, the president said yesterday, I think it’s maybe the most important part of his speech, is that we didn’t need new laws to secure the border. We needed a new president, and thank God we have that,” Vance said to a group of Texas and border patrol leaders Wednesday.

“I’ve heard already from a number of the folks that I’ve talked to in border patrol, that all we needed to do was empower these guys to do their job,” he continued.

The trip was not just about celebrating. After taking an aerial tour of the border, the trio of administration officials visited Eagle Pass Border Patrol Station to participate in a roundtable with a variety of leaders, including Abbott, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the mayor of Eagle Pass, the chief of Border Patrol and National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd, to discuss further how they could get the border under control.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Vance acknowledged that the administration had more work to do.

“First of all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we have seen pretty significant decreases in deportations and apprehensions and arrests. But we have to remember that President Biden gutted the entire immigration enforcement regime of this country. We are trying to rebuild so that we actually empower people to enforce the immigration laws,” the vice president told reporters.

He also hinted that Trump has more announcements coming on how the administration will secure the southern border, a topic that is sometimes overlooked as the media focuses on Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. “I don’t want to get ahead of any public announcements, but one of the ways that we wanted to make sure that we’re enforcing our border is that we make it easier for people who are here illegally to go back home of their own accord,” Vance explained.

“We don’t want to have to go around and arrest every person, but we will enforce the American people’s immigration laws if you’re here illegally, the message from our administration is, you should go back home,” Vance added. “If you want to come to the United States, apply through the proper channels, that’s an important thing that we’re doing.”

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House reporter. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Admin Used Border Wall Funds On ‘Environmental Planning’ And Cleanup, Government Watchdog Says

The Biden administration spent taxpayer dollars meant to fund a border wall to pay for “environmental planning,” according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

At the request of Republican Reps. Jack Bergman of Michigan and Jodey Arrington of Texas, the GAO investigated whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) broke the law when it effectively blocked the use of taxpayer dollars to build a wall along the southern border. While GAO’s final report clears the DHS of breaking the law, it confirmed that DHS used congressionally-appropriated funds meant for the wall to pay for “environmental planning” and efforts “to remediate or mitigate environmental damage from past border wall construction.”

Republicans on the House Budget Committee, including Bergman and Arrington, characterized the GAO’s finding as confirmation that the Biden administration has spent taxpayer funds meant to enhance border security to further its environmental agenda.

Congress previously approved funds for DHS to build a border barrier between fiscal year 2018 and fiscal year 2021, but President Joe Biden and his appointees quickly instituted a new policy whereby “no more American taxpayer dollars (would) be diverted to construct a border wall” upon entering office in 2021. Cabinet secretaries, including DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, were ordered to work together to produce plans for how to shift funds away from border wall construction.

In 2021, DHS released a report detailing how it would look to redirect funds meant for the wall to instead pay for things like “environmental planning,” reviewing upcoming eminent domain actions and considering environmental remediation efforts in areas that had been the site of previous construction, according to GAO’s report. The agency then changed its plans in July 2022, applying an amendment that made environmental remediation a top priority for the agency’s expenditure of the funds appropriated for fiscal years 2018-2021.

The Biden administration has made great efforts to roll back or replace many of the immigration and border policies of former President Donald Trump, but the situation at the border has deteriorated massively since 2021. There have been nearly 8 million land encounters at the southwest border since October 2021, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Congressional Budget Office reported in January that more than 3.3 million people came to the U.S. illegally, were released into the country via parole or overstayed their permission to remain in the country in fiscal year 2023 alone.

The situation at the border set the stage for congressional Republicans to attempt to impeach Mayorkas earlier this spring. The House voted to impeach Mayorkas in February, but the Senate quickly dismissed an impeachment trial along partisan lines earlier in April.

Neither the White House nor the DHS responded immediately to requests for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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Biden Admin Mulling Plan To Give Legal Status To Illegal Alien Spouses

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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Trump Has Secured Funding For More Than Half Of Border Wall

One hundred eleven miles of new or replacement wall is either being built or is in progress on the southern border after Trump’s first two years in office, an administration official tells The Daily Caller.

All told, the administration has secured funding for approximately 445 miles of the total 722 miles desired by the Trump administration, a Caller analysis finds. The analysis holds only if all national emergency and executive action funding is upheld in court challenges.

The administration official stressed that this figure constitutes only 18-foot bollard wall fencing or 32-foot levee wall fencing, which is the barrier that Trump has emphasized as necessary.

The wall accounting begins in Fiscal Year 2017 in which $341 million was obligated for replacement wall in California, New Mexico, and Texas. This money funds construction for 40 miles of new or replacement wall of which 37 miles is completed or in progress.

$1.375 billion was then appropriated in 2018 to build upwards of 82 miles of new or replacement border wall. The administration official noted that approximately 74 miles of new or replacement wall has been completed or is in progress with these dollars. This particular wall was built or replaced in the Rio Grande Valley Sector on the border in South Texas and other locations.

Fiscal Year 2019 saw a major fight between Trump and Congress over border wall funding, with the administration demanding $5.7 billion and Democrats offering up no more than $1.375 billion, not to be used for a wall. Ultimately, after a nearly 35-day partial government shutdown and three weeks of negotiation, Trump accepted $1.375 billion in congressionally appropriated funding and declared a national emergency at the southern border.

Trump’s national emergency declaration and other executive action allowed him to tap $600 million from the Treasury asset forfeiture fund, $2.5 billion of drug enforcement money, and $3.6 billion under his authority as commander in chief.

The national emergency declaration was quickly challenged in court by 16 states, organized by the State of California and filed in the Federal District Court in San Francisco, which appeals to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Officials could not provide a complete estimate of the wall that will be built with the 2019 funds, though they noted that it costs approximately $25 million per mile, putting an estimate at 323 miles of additional border wall. The administration official cautioned that wall funding costs can vary because of terrain but noted that Trump’s actions lack the restrictions of previous appropriations to build wall in much needed areas, like the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

COLUMN BY

Saagar Enjeti

Saagar Enjeti

White House Correspondent. Amber Athey contributed to this report.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Will Sign Border Bill, Declare National Emergency

France builds “Trump-style” wall to keep illegal Muslim migrants from breaking into Britain from Calais

France has speedily “built a ten-foot wall at a Total station in Calais used by migrants who attempt to storm lorries and break into Britain.”

The wall is being compared by detractors to the “Trump wall,” and it is just as needed: “there are an estimated 600 mostly male migrants hailing from Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria squatting in makeshift camps around the port town waiting to break into Britain— down from an estimated 10,000 during the heyday of the infamous ‘Calais Jungle.’”

Reminder: the Calais jungle was a violent no-go war zone.

“France Builds Trump-Style Wall to Stop Illegals Getting to Britain,” by Victoria Friedman, Breitbart, January 21, 2019:

French authorities have built a ten-foot wall at a Total station in Calais used by migrants who attempt to storm lorries and break into Britain.

The barrier is being erected at a petrol station in the Marcel-Doret area where lorries stop to fill up with fuel before heading to the port and onwards to the United Kingdom. It is set to be finished by mid-February.

Local prefect Fabien Sudry told Nord Littoral that “smuggling networks meet there and take advantage of stations near the port to get migrants in trucks.”

“The situation was rather tense at this station. The police regularly had stones thrown at them,” Mr Sudry said.
A Total spokesman confirmed the barrier was built at the request of the Calais prefecture to “protect customers, staff, and migrants,” the Daily Mail reports, with locals comparing it to the wall that U.S. President Donald Trump wants to build along the southern border of the United States to stop mass illegal migration from Central and South America.

Pro-migration aid workers object to the wall, as the barrier between the two spaces is “divisive.”
One Calais-based charity worker who wished to withhold their identity complained: “The wall is ugly and of course divisive.”

“This is very political — it aims to show desperate people that they are not welcome here, and that more and more walls and police will be used to keep them out.

“If you oppose such policies, you can get into a lot of trouble.”

There are an estimated 600 mostly male migrants hailing from Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria squatting in makeshift camps around the port town waiting to break into Britain — down from an estimated 10,000 during the heyday of the infamous “Calais Jungle”.

It is believed to be the first time that a wall has been so quickly erected in a hotspot area for trafficking with the intention of stopping migrants attempting to make the journey to the United Kingdom…..

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column with images is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Benny Jackson on Unsplash.

GOOGLE VS. BORDER SECURITY: How Google employees colluded to undermine Trump’s executive orders.

On September 21, 2018 Newsweek published a disturbing article that contained infuriating revelations titled Google Brainstormed Ways To Combat Trump’s Travel Ban By Leveraging Search Results For Pro-Immigration Causes.

The Newsweek report stated that Google and their hi-tech colluders took legal action to block the Trump administration from enforcing standing immigration law.

Google, along with Apple, Facebook and other technology companies, filed a joint amicus brief challenging the travel ban, stating that it “inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation and growth.”

It is clear that to the employees and the executives of Google (and other hi-tech companies), America’s borders and immigration laws are impediments to their wealth and to the goals of their companies, rather than what they truly are, our first and last line of defense.

This set the stage for Google’s efforts days after the Trump administration first issued an executive order on immigration in January 2017, which would temporarily prevent the entry of citizens of seven countries from entering the United States, not because of their religion but because they could not be effectively vetted.

The media has repeatedly noted that the countries on the list were “Muslim Majority” countries yet many other “Muslim Majority” countries were not on that list including Indonesia, the most populist ‘Muslim Majority” country on the planet.

Google is determined to obstruct the Trump administration from enforcing long-standing immigration laws to protect America from international terrorists.

Here is how this Newsweek report began:

Google employees brainstormed ways to mitigate the effects of Donald Trump’s travel ban in 2017 by altering search functions to show pro-immigration organizations, new emails showed.

The company’s internal email chain, obtained and reported on by The Wall Street Journal, shows employees at the multibillion-dollar technology company discussing how to combat Trump’s travel ban against seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Google workers talked about how they could alter their search functions to show their users how to contribute to pro-immigration causes. They also discussed how to alter the search engine so that people could easily contact their lawmakers and government agencies to ask questions about the ban, the emails showed.

Employees also suggested ways to “leverage” Google searches so that they could counter “islamophobic” search results from people looking up terms like “Islam,” “Muslim” and “Iran.”

The article subsequently claimed that the e-mails sent around by Google employees were merely a part of a “brainstorm of ideas.”

There is no comfort to be taken Google’s statement that “[o]ur processes and policies would not have allowed for any manipulation of search results to promote political ideologies,” or

from the supposed assurances that Google had never manipulated or modified its search results to promote a particular political ideology or that no such manipulations or modifications were ever employed during the last presidential campaign or after the election when President Trump issued executive orders on immigration.

If members of Google’s management were not in agreement with their subordinates attempts to manipulate or modify search results, why didn’t they stop them?

The Newsweek article noted that a Google employee opined how difficult it would be to implement such changes in the search results, but was quoted as saying, “But I think this is the sort of super timely and imperative information that we need, as we know that this country and Google would not exist without immigration.”

No one in the Trump administration has suggested stopping immigration, yet the quoted Google employee implies as much.

President Trump was only attempting to make certain that our screening process is equal to the task of preventing the entry of international terrorists.  Hardly a radical or unreasonable goal!

I am certain that Google maintains strict control over the people who enter their campuses and other facilities, yet Google management and their employees oppose efforts by the Trump administration to similarly control the entry of aliens into the United States.

We must not lose sight of the fact that, no matter how the media and the immigration anarchists may attempt to spin the purpose to the Trump administration’s executive orders, in reality they were issued to protect national security and public safety by enforcing a long-standing provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The administration’s actions were, in fact, consistent with the findings, recommendations and warnings of the 9/11 Commission.

The first paragraph of the preface of the official report, 9/11 and  Terrorist Travel stated:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

We must start by unraveling the lies and falsehoods about the supposed “Travel Ban” which was never a travel ban at all, but actually an entry restriction that was intended to protect the United States from the entry of aliens who could not be screened, thereby preventing our CBP (Customs and Border Protection) inspectors from halting entry of terrorists into the United States.

What was almost never noted in the media was that the official title of those executive orders was, “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States.”

That title unambiguously established the purpose of the supposedly “controversial” executive order.

My July 23, 2017 article, Courting Disaster: Supreme Court Decides Against Homeland Security included two versions of the executive order that the Trump administration issued to act as the proclamation required in the section of law, provided below.  The administration made it abundantly clear that the actions were being taken to protect America and to prevent the entry of aliens who may have connections with terrorism.

Furthermore, Trump’s blocking the entry of aliens from countries associated with terrorism (and where vetting was problematic) did not emerge by executive fiat the way that Mr. Obama created DACA out of thin air.

In point of irrefutable fact, the authority for the President of the United States to block the entry of aliens is a part of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), specifically 8 U.S. Code § 1182(f) which states:

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

An overview of the INA is provided on the official USCIS website, making clear that the current immigration laws have their foundation in the The McCarran-Walter bill of 1952.

That section of law gives the President of the United States sole authority with wide-ranging  discretion to exclude any and all aliens whose presence “…would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”  That standard sets as low a bar as could be imagined.

This was certainly not a “Travel Ban” but was a form of entry restriction that was solidly grounded in law.  Incidentally, prior administrations, such as the administration of Jimmy Carter, invoked that very same section of law when the U.S. Embassy at Tehran was seized by Iranian radicals and American officials were taken hostage.  In that instance, the aliens were citizens of Iran.

On the other hand, Google, as was reported by CNN on August 2, 2018, has no problem helping China maintain a strangle-hold on it citizens:

The Intercept reported Wednesday that Google plans to launch a search app in China that would block sensitive websites and search terms to comply with Chinese government censorship.

Perhaps Google’s management was planning to employ censorship strategies in the United States that are not unlike strategies Google is willing to employ to censor the internet in China.

In any event, the “Tech Giants” have found in the radical leftists of the United States kindred spirits who are determined to undermine national security and to extinguish freedom of speech, and with it, all other freedoms we cherish so dearly.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine. The featured image that appeared in the original column is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

COUNTDOWN: The Top 5 Lies of the Left

American political liberaldom relies heavily on empty canards, name-calling and scare tactics to stay alive and shut down opposition.

There are few if any deep and penetrating debates on major topics that drive the politics of the left. They simply will not allow it. So they create fictitious arguments (the nice way of saying lies.)

With that in mind, here are a few major shibboleths of at least the activist left which verge on the incredulous, but which are used regularly and magnified by the sympathetic media megaphone.

No. 5 Lie: Border security is racist

If you believe that America should act like most every other country in the world and protect its borders, you’re a racist.

If you believe that America should have the authority to let in who it wants to and keep out who it wants to like most every other country, you’re a racist.

If you believe America should know who is here and who is coming and going like most every other country, you’re a racist.

This stems from candidate Donald Trump running on a campaign to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to stop the millions of illegal aliens (that is the actual, legal term) from crossing back and forth like it was a state border.

This quasi-open border is the result of an unholy alliance between businesses that want cheap labor and Democrat political interests that see future Democratic voters and a play to current Hispanic voters. And it is the issue that Trump claimed in order to peel away blue-collar Democratic voters.

The left rarely tries to argue the merits of open borders, because most Americans oppose that. So they devolve to the thought-free name-calling of racism because, you know, Mexicans are brown and therefore opposing them, or anyone else, breaking into our country illegally is racist.

No. 4 Lie: Asking questions is science denying

Speaking of science and politics, the inquisitive, independent thinkers among us are now considered anti-science — if they are asking questions about the degree and causes of climate change today.

Yes, while it is obviously the antithesis of actual science, which involves continually asking questions, forming hypotheses, testing, re-testing based on results and so on, this tactic now is employed to shut up any opposition to the climate change political agenda.

The data seems to suggest modest warming since the mid 1800s and there seems to be a connection between carbon in the atmosphere, trapped greenhouse gases, and global warming.

But if you question the data because of a series of scandals revealing how leading climatologists have conspired to alter older data creating cooler temperatures to suggest more rapid warming now, you are a denier.

If you question the degree to which human activity is impacting climate change by pointing out a nearly two-decade pause while carbon emissions continued to increase, you are a denier.

But these and many others are reasonable questions. That we are not allowed to ask them without being labeled flat-earthers suggests this is a lot more about politics than about science.

No. 3 Lie: Men can be women can be men, or whatever

One of the most mind-boggling absurdities foisted on us by the modern liberal is that a person’s sex is dependent on what they think it is. Any “assignment at birth” is an arbitrary constraint to who that person really is.

So, if a person has one Y chromosome and one X chromosome and they have the full package of penis and scrotum, it is not arbitrary to call them male. That person is a man. That is actual science.

But the left — in true full science denial — says those physical realities can be trumped by a person’s feeling. If that person feels like a woman, then they are a woman trapped in a man’s body and they should be allowed and encouraged to dress like a woman or have full-blown surgery to become a woman. And they should be allowed to use women’s bathrooms, locker rooms and showers — even though they are a man.

Until just the past few years this was considered a psychological condition that should be treated. But now, the left celebrates children as young as four years old being encouraged to be the sex they are not.

One could reasonably call that child abuse.

No. 2 Lie: Hate speech is not free speech

No less a luminary than former Vermont governor, DNC chairman and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean tweeted out this past week that “Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment.”

dean tweet hate speech

The internet blew up over such a ridiculous statement. Even PolitiFact and media organs called him to task. But the thing is, his tweet got 700 retweets and 1,400 likes. Dean actually doesn’t have that big a Twitter following, meaning the tweet got strong traction among those following him.

Too many on the left, most particularly those on college campuses, view hate speech practically as any speech with which they disagree. Of course, many of these same campuses actually have speech codes and “free speech zones” with the overt meaning that outside the zone is not for free speech.

The unfortunate truth is that many college liberals, trained by professorial liberals, think that they should be able to shut down speech they do not appreciate or agree with. They have safe spaces and mainstream American views can be shouted down and pushed out with threats and actions.

These people leave the campuses today and in a generation will be leaders in the nation. It matters. The radicals running campuses know this.

No. 1 Lie: It’s not about innocent life, but reproductive freedom

And coming in at number one in our countdown is the oldie but definitely not goodie, the abortion non-debate.

Increasingly, science (which worldview seems to be anti-science here?) is showing that by every objective definition the baby in the womb is indeed a human, with the inherent rights of a human, within a few weeks of conception. From brainwaves to heartbeats to pain reaction, a person. Science continually pushes this obvious definition earlier and earlier.

But the left forces the debate to revolve around women’s rights. Not the 50 percent of female babies aborted — not those would-be women — but adult women who should have the right to kill their unborn baby at any point in a pregnancy for any reason they deem. Period. This is the classic Planned Parenthood position on choice.

Because abortion is conflated with birth control, it is called a reproductive “right” on the order of getting a contraceptive device or even pap smears and mammograms — anything except actually talking about whether we should condone the often wanton taking of an innocent human life. Any restrictions on abortion therefore are restrictions on a woman’s access to healthcare. See how much you can get away with when you refuse to call something what it is.

Oh and coat hangers. Don’t forget coat hangers.

But there is an encouraging side to this falderal. All of this avoidance on major issues means that conservatives actually have the stronger cases. Otherwise, liberals would not avoid the debate. We just need to be courageous enough to make those cases over and over and over.

RELATED ARTICLE: Conservatives Fight for Free Speech at a Far-Left College

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The Revolutionary Act. Click here to subscribe to the Revolutionary Act’s YouTube channel!

Congressman Lou Barletta’s Bill to Defund Sanctuary Cities — Getting the new year off to a great start

Time and again our elected political “representatives” on all levels of government have acted in ways that failed to truly represent the best interests of America and Americans.

Time and again my articles have focused on my frustration and anger over how all too many politicians have obstructed the effective enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws.

I have written extensively about how members of Congress who supported so-called, “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” blithely ignored the findings and, indeed, warnings about the 9/11 Commission by concocting legislation that would provide unknown millions of illegal aliens with official identity documents and lawful status even though there would be no way to conduct interviews or field investigations to screen to combat immigration fraud.  Visa fraud and immigration benefit fraud were identified as key entry and embedding tactics of international terrorists.

“Sanctuary Cities” created by rogue mayors operate in direct opposition of Title 8 U.S. Code § 1324 – (Bringing in and harboring certain aliens), an immigration criminal statute that address harboring, shielding, aiding and abetting, encouraging and inducing aliens to enter the United States illegally and/or remain in the United States illegally after entry.

Today, however, we have cause to be optimistic.  Congressman Lou Barletta who truly represents the citizens of his home town of Hazleton, Pennsylvania and, in so doing, all Americans from coast to coast and border to border has, for the third time, introduced legislation that would strip all federal funding from cities that fail to cooperate fully with immigration law enforcement activities.

I am proud that Lou has become a personal friend.

Prior to his election to Congress he was the mayor of Hazleton.  He was shocked when his peaceful town was, for lack of a better term, invaded by a violent Dominican narcotics-trafficking gang that engaged in drug dealing and violent crimes including murder.

Although he approached the administration of President George W. Bush and asked for federal assistance in confronting these illegal criminal aliens, the administration refused to help.  As a consequence he promulgated the first ordinances that penalized employers who knowingly hired illegal aliens and landlords who would knowingly provide housing to illegal aliens.

He was promptly sued in federal court by advocates for illegal aliens.  I was his final witness at the trial that ensued.

Lou was first elected to Congress in 2011.  He is currently a member of several committees including:

Lou is certainly an asset to those committees and to America.

On September 3, 2013 I joined Congressman Lou Barletta on the campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University tat a town hall meeting, covered by C-SPAN, on the topic of “Immigration Policy and Homeland Security.”

The video of the town hall event is well worth watching.  During our discussion, Lou clearly articulated his concerns about how failures of immigration law enforcement have cost all too many innocent victims their lives and leave America and Americans vulnerable to terrorism and crime.

On January 5, 2017 Lou posted a press release with the clear title,  “Barletta’s 1st Bill Of 115th Congress: Defund Sanctuary Cities.”

Here is how Lou’s press release begins:

WASHINGTON Congressman Lou Barletta (PA-11) today introduced the Mobilizing Against Sanctuary Cities Act, H.R. 83, which will stop all federal funds from flowing to states or localities which resist or ban enforcement of federal immigration laws, or flatly refuse to cooperate with immigration officials.  The bill is the first piece of legislation introduced by Barletta in the 115th Congress and represents the third time the congressman has introduced the measure.  In 2011, the bill was the first piece of legislation he ever introduced as a member of Congress.  He introduced it a second time in the 114th Congress in 2015.

“One of the principal duties of the government is to protect its citizens, and the idea of sanctuary cities runs completely counter to that responsibility,” Barletta said.  “Too many mayors and local governments think that they are above federal law and place their own ideology ahead of the safety of their residents.  This bill will stop that practice by saying to these sanctuary cities, ‘If you refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, you will lose your federal funding.’”

Barletta introduced the bill as a freshman congressman in 2011 because of his personal experience with the danger of sanctuary cities while he was mayor of Hazleton, Pennsylvania.  In 2006, a 29-year-old local father of three, Derek Kichline, was murdered by an illegal immigrant who had been released by law enforcement a number of times, including by the sanctuary city of New York.  Additionally, Barletta was spurred to reintroduce the bill in 2015 following the San Francisco murder of 32-year-old Kate Steinle, whose accused killer was a seven-time felon who had been deported five times previously.

Although the Obama administration has paid lip service to speak against sanctuary cities, the Obama administration has virtually turned the United States into a “Sanctuary Country” litigating against Arizona and taking other adverse actions against those who would enforce our immigration laws while releasing tens of thousands of criminal aliens who subsequently committed more crimes including homicides and violent assaults.

President-elect Trump made effective immigration law enforcement the cornerstone of his election campaign.  Donald Trump promised he would end Sanctuary Cities, putting the lives of innocent people ahead of the lives of illegal aliens and, in particular, criminal aliens who have been responsible for massive levels of carnage and violence on the streets of American cities.

While Obama would never sign the legislation that Lou proposed in the past, it is a near certainty that Trump would be eager to sign that bill into law thereby helping the soon-to-be president achieve one of his first goals.

All that would remain would be for Congress to pass Lou’s important bill to get it to President Trump’s desk after January 20th.

It is important that you reach out to your member of Congress and insist that he/she supports this vital legislation.