Tag Archive for: illegal immigration

Border Bonanza: Trump Slated to Enact 100 Executive Orders to Tackle Immigration Crisis

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Following his sweeping electoral victory in November, President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly preparing 100 executive orders for his first day in office, mostly centered on securing the nation’s neglected southern border.

In an interview Thursday, Trump ally and Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin (Okla.) discussed the president-elect’s plans. “He says he has almost 100 executive orders that will go a long ways towards securing the border again and also put the energy sector back in play again and actually build a … ‘drill, baby, drill’ process where we can become energy-independent again.” Mullin added, “All that can be done through executive order, but, as he said, it’s not permanent” without congressional support.

Newly-minted GOP Senate Majority Leader John Thune (S.D.) also emphasized that congressional Republicans must deliver on Trump’s agenda. “This past November, the American people gave President Trump and Republicans a mandate. Now the time has come to begin executing on it,” Thune said in a floor speech Wednesday. Noting the incoming Trump administration’s focus on border security, he continued, “One of the most important issues in this last election was the illegal immigration crisis. … For the last four years, the Biden administration’s open-border policies have wreaked havoc in both border communities and those far from the border.”

Republicans in the House are also looking to grant congressional permanence to Trump’s immigration policies. On Thursday, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) introduced a bill to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy previously employed under Trump’s first administration. The legislation would reverse the Biden administration’s “parole” program and require those seeking or claiming asylum in the U.S. to await their appointed court dates in Mexico, instead of releasing migrants into the U.S.

According to an Axios report, Trump and several of his closest policy advisors met with GOP senators late Wednesday and unveiled roughly 100 planned executive orders, mostly focused on border security and immigration. Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner and Trump’s homeland security advisor and deputy chief of staff for policy, shared that likely executive actions included reinstating Title 42, which allows for the rapid expulsion of illegal immigrants under public health concerns; continuing construction of the border wall, a policy Miller is credited with devising; and utilizing part of the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow state and local law enforcement to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, a key promise of Trump’s successful 2024 campaign.

Trump’s mass deportation plans have consistently garnered widespread support across the nation. Surveys from both April and September of last year found that over half of Americans endorse the mass deportation of illegal immigrants. While some Democratic officials, including mayors and governors, have vowed not to cooperate with ICE to deport illegal immigrants — or, in some cases, have suggested even outright opposing federal deportation efforts — a recent poll found that a supermajority of voters in even deep-blue Democratic stronghold such as Maryland support requiring state and local law enforcement to work with ICE in carrying out deportations. Overall, 76% of Marylanders — including 96% of Republicans, 77% of Independent voters, and even 65% of Democrats — want state and local authorities to cooperate with ICE in deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes.

A number of prominent Democrats have recently shifted their positions on deportations, from full-throated support for “sanctuary cities” to promising to aid ICE. Governors J.B. Pritzker (Ill.) and Jared Polis (Colo.) and mayors like Eric Adams of New York City have abandoned opposition to ICE’s deportation program — Adams has even pledged his support — after initially indicating opposition. Even Governor Kathy Hochul (N.Y.) said that she would be the “first one to call up ICE” to manage deportations in her state.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington are all currently considered “sanctuary” states. There are also 157 counties and 45 cities across other states listed as “sanctuary cities” as of this week.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

House Lawmakers Overwhelmingly Pass Legislation To Crack Down On Illegal Migrant Criminals

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The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation Tuesday to require federal immigration authorities to detain illegal migrants who commit theft-related crimes in the United States.

The legislation passed decisively 264-159 with every Republican lawmaker that voted supporting the bill, which would give Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and state governments more authority to curtail illegal immigration. Nearly 160 Democratic lawmakers opposed the bill’s passage.

The bill, known as the Laken Riley Act, is sponsored by Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins and seeks to honor the memory of Laken Riley, a University of Georgia nursing student who was murdered by an illegal immigrant while out on a run near her college campus in February 2024.

“An illegal criminal came into my district and killed Laken Riley because our law enforcement did not have the tools to stop him,” Collins told the Daily Caller News Foundation Monday. “Laken fought until her last breath, and so will I until this bill crosses the finish line and lands on the President’s desk.”

Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to make the Laken Riley Act the first bill the House voted on during the 119th Congress signals addressing border security and cracking down on illegal immigration will be a top priority for House Republicans this year.

The Laken Riley Act seeks to address a policy failure regarding ICE and local law enforcement’s failure to detain illegal migrant criminals that commit low-level crimes that became glaringly obvious to lawmakers in the wake of Riley’s murder, Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters during a House GOP press conference Tuesday.

“There are real consequences to policy decisions, and this one was deadly,” Johnson told reporters.”

Riley’s killer, Venezuelan national Jose Antonio Ibarra, had a criminal record in the United States prior to murdering Riley. Ibarra was arrested in October 2022 for allegedly shoplifting at a Walmart in Athens, Georgia, but was ultimately released because the shoplifting charge was a misdemeanor.

If the Laken Riley Act passes the Senate and is signed into law by President-elect Donald Trump, ICE would be required to detain illegal migrants like Ibarra who commit theft-related crimes in the United States, according to the bill text.

“Right now, ICE is unable to detain and deport these illegal criminals who commit these minor level crimes, but the Laken Riley Act will fix this and give ICE and our local law enforcement the tools to get these criminals out of our country and make our communities safer,” Collins said during floor debate on the bill.

“With Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and the party of lawlessness out of the way, the radical left’s mission to enable criminal illegal aliens…at the expense of law-abiding Americans is no longer going to be tolerated,” Republican Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, House Majority whip, said during a House GOP leadership press conference on the Laken Riley Act Tuesday. “The tragic and preventable murder of Laken Riley serves as a stark reminder of the consequences of failed leadership.”

Many House Democratic lawmakers, led by Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, slammed the bill for expanding the number of illegal migrants in the United States that could be required to be detained by ICE, and voiced concern that the bill’s passage would lead to illegal migrants who are wrongly accused of theft-related crimes being detained by federal immigration authorities.

“Their bill [Laken Riley Act] today is an empty and opportunistic measure,”  said during floor debate on the bill. “This is a radical departure from current law, which since 1996 has generally required mandatory detention only for persons who are criminally convicted or who admit to having committed certain serious crimes.”

The Laken Riley Act was notably backed by Riley’s family who believe the bill’s passage will prevent the deaths of additional Americans at the hands of illegal migrants.

“The Laken Riley Act has our full support because it would help save innocent lives and prevent more families from going through the kind of heartbreak we’ve experienced,” Allyson and John Phillips, Laken Riley’s mother and stepfather, told the DCNF. “Laken would have been 23 on January 10th.  There is no greater gift that could be given to her and our country than to continue her legacy by saving lives through this bill.”

“Every single member of Congress should be able to get behind this purely commonsense bill that will make our country and communities safer,” Riley’s mother and stepfather added. “We thank Congressman Mike Collins, Senator Katie Britt, and Senator Ted Budd for continuing to work to honor Laken’s legacy and get this legislation enacted into law.”

Republican Alabama Sen. Katie Britt introduced companion legislation in the Senate Tuesday with every Senate Republican supporting the bill’s passage and Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman signing on as a cosponsor. The Senate is slated to vote on the legislation as early as Friday, a senior GOP aide told the DCNF.

“Congress has an obligation to Laken, her family, and to families in every corner of our country to do everything in our power to help prevent this type of tragedy from occurring again,” Britt told the DCNF. “That’s why it’s imperative we pass the commonsense Laken Riley Act with all due haste.”

Collins originally introduced the Laken Riley Act in the House last Congress following Riley’s murder. The House passed Collins’ legislation in March 2024 with most House Democrats — 170 Democratic lawmakers in total — opposing the legislation.

Former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did not formally move to take up the legislation, forcing Collins to reintroduce his bill in the 119th Congress, which began Friday.

AUTHOR

Adam Pack

Contributor.

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Biden Program May Have Helped Sex Traffickers ‘Exploit Women and Girls’: Congressional Report

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Human sex traffickers may have used a Biden administration program that imported tens of thousands of illegal immigrants a month into the United States “to exploit women and girls,” a congressional report has revealed.

In addition to breaking consecutive records for the largest number of border crossings in U.S. history, the Biden-Harris administration’s Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) program flew 30,000 illegal immigrants a month into the United States from those four nations alone.

“To mask the border crisis and artificially decrease historically high border encounters, President Biden and Vice President Harris implemented programs and policies that allowed aliens to bypass the southwest border so they would not be included as encounters in Border Patrol data,” notes the report, released by the House Judiciary Committee, titled “The Biden-Harris Administration’s CHNV Parole Program Two Years Later: A Fraud-Ridden, Unmitigated Disaster.”

“Sex traffickers have potentially used CHNV to exploit women and girls,” investigators found. “A fraud analysis of CHNV applications revealed that some applications that were sent from the same IP addresses were submitted on behalf of a high proportion of female CHNV aliens … raising concerns about potential sex trafficking. In one such case, 21 supporter applications were submitted from the same IP address on behalf of 18 females and only three males. At least six of the females were under the age of 18. Another concern surrounded the use of the same physical address by many supporters. According to the DHS analysis, 100 physical addresses were used at least 124 times each on behalf of 19,062 CHNV aliens.”

The report fuels concerns that the Biden-Harris administration has facilitated the heinous, illicit activities of human smugglers, drug cartels, and transnational criminal organizations. The administration is presently unable to account for 320,000 children whom it placed with U.S. sponsors after the minors crossed the border illegally.

U.S. taxpayers may also be paying welfare benefits to illegal immigrants brought into this country under CHNV. The report found Biden administration officials “approved CHNV supporters who admitted to receiving means-tested public benefits as part of their income listed as evidence that they can support a CHNV alien. Thus, American taxpayers may actually end up supporting CHNV aliens despite Biden-Harris Administration claims that those aliens will have supporters in the U.S.”

The Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Homeland Security temporarily halted the CHNV program in mid-July “out of an abundance of caution.” The pause coincided with the time Democratic leaders prevailed upon President Joe Biden to step aside and allow Kamala Harris to become the presidential nominee, out of fear his poor record on the economy and immigration would harm the party. The administration announced it would resume CHNV program flights in late August.

Before the mid-summer interruption, an internal investigation by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), obtained by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), uncovered evidence of significant fraud in CHNV, including the significant use of false Social Security numbers, including “666666666.” In addition:

  • 2,839 forms included non-existent zip codes.
  • 1,908 applications used fictitious phone numbers.
  • More than 1,800 applications featured the same, 184-word answer in response to a question.

“The most frequently used sponsor e-mail address was listed on 363 different forms. Further, the most frequently used parolee e-mail address was listed on 1,723 different forms collectively submitted by 477 different sponsors,” found FAIR.

The CHNV program approved applications by those who do not live in the four nations covered by that mass amnesty program, FAIR reported.

Critics say they are unsurprised by fraud, because the CHNV program itself is lawless. In 1996, Congress enacted a federal law — 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A) — which allows the attorney general to parole illegal immigrants into the United States “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”

The Biden-Harris administration approved 650,200 applications from the CHNV program as of August 6.

Year-end numbers showed 2024 was the second-worst year for illegal immigration in U.S. history, with 2,901,142 illegal border crossings during the fiscal year, which began in October 2023.

The committee’s investigation “uncovered how the Biden-Harris Administration’s willingness to cast aside the best interests of Americans has enabled fraud, undermined national security, and endangered public safety, all in favor of ensuring that hundreds of thousands of otherwise illegal aliens can come to the U.S. through CHNV,” said the report.

Americans concerned with women’s and girls’ safety should support sealing the border and reversing illegal immigration, human rights advocates say. Polls show a majority of American (54%) support President-elect Donald Trump’s promises to begin mass deportations early in his second administration.

“This tragic reality underscores why the new administration’s promises to secure our borders, end the incentives for foreign nationals to put their lives at the mercy of ruthless criminals, and begin the process of removing Tren de Aragua and other brutal gangs from our soil are fully justified,” wrote Pawel Styrna, senior researcher at FAIR. “Those genuinely concerned about the welfare and safety of women and children should support secure borders and the rule of law, rather than misguided open-borders policies that empower and enrich cartels and gangs that force women, and even children, into prostitution.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

DOGE Zeroes in on $150 Billion Spent on Illegal Immigration in Single Year

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As the U.S. continues to accumulate debt at a record pace, entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are calling attention to tens of billions of taxpayer dollars being spent on illegal immigrants.

Citing a Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) study, DOGE posted on X Monday, “In 2023 alone, illegal immigration cost taxpayers $150.7 billion. To put this in context with other costs (adjusted for inflation): World War I: $334 billion[;] Apollo Space Program: $257 billion[;] Manhattan Project: $30 billion[;] Panama Canal: $15.2 billion[;] Hoover Dam: $1 billion.”

The FAIR study, which was released in March of last year, combined estimated expenditures by the federal government ($66 billion) with state and local costs ($115 billion), minus $31 billion in estimated tax contributions from migrants. The money was spent to cover schooling, health care costs including uncompensated hospital expenses and Medicaid, law enforcement costs including incarceration, removal, and border protection, and welfare costs including food and housing assistance, among other expenses. The $150 billion total equaled a $35 billion increase from a previous estimate of $116 billion in 2017.

The sharp acceleration in spending has coincided with the largest surge in illegal immigration ever seen in the U.S., which has occurred as a result of a series of open-border policies implemented by the Biden administration beginning in 2021. The total number of encounters with illegal border crossers as of June was 8.2 million more than in the entire first Trump administration.

The spending on migrants is part of a four-year federal spending spree never before seen in American history. Biden has overseen annual budget deficits of $2 trillion, and by the time he leaves office next January, it is estimated that he will have overseen a net increase of over $9 trillion in the national debt, a record-setting amount for a single term.

FAIR Executive Director Julie Kirchner told Fox News on Tuesday that the total amount of taxpayer dollars spent on illegal immigrants is likely much higher than their original estimate. “The population we cited in the study was 15.5 million. We now estimate that it’s over 16.8 million, and we’re in the process right now of doing another estimate on the illegal alien population, and I’m sure it will be higher. So, we know the costs are going to go up.” She also noted that their report did not include state and local costs associated with sheltering migrants.

In New York City, where there are currently over 58,000 illegal immigrants facing criminal charges, almost 100,000 migrants seeking asylum have moved there over the last two years, and the city estimates it will spend over $12 billion through fiscal year 2025. Meanwhile, Chicago has spent over $400 million on migrants over the past two years.

“The scale of spending on illegal immigration boggles the mind!” Musk observed Monday in response to DOGE’s highlighting of the FAIR report.

Kirchner expressed confidence that DOGE’s efforts could save “billions and billions of dollars each year” in taxpayer money by ending government-subsidized health care plans as well as income and child tax credits for illegal immigrants.

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Haitian Immigrants ‘Self-Deporting’ ahead of Trump Inauguration

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Following President-elect Donald Trump’s sweeping victory in the election earlier this month, illegal immigrants in small town USA are fleeing to “sanctuary cities” and, in some cases, even “self-deporting.”

According to both CBS News and The Guardian, thousands of Haitian immigrants in the city of Springfield, Ohio are rushing to Chicago, New York City, and other “sanctuary” locations before Trump is sworn into office and initiates his pledged mass deportation program. Springfield, a city of less than 60,000, has been crippled ever since the outgoing Biden-Harris administration imported roughly 20,000 Haitian immigrants into the municipality starting in 2021. The city has seen a drastic rise in housing costs and traffic accidents and has been forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to accommodate the immigrants, who were granted temporary protected status (TPS) by the Biden-Harris administration.

Many Haitians in Springfield have taken Trump’s promise of mass deportations — to be enacted by his new “border czar,” former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director and immigration hardliner Tom Homan — seriously. Trump has vowed to terminate the TPS granted to the Haitians, causing many to leave the Ohio city that Trump mentioned during a presidential debate. Popular destinations for the immigrants include Chicago, New York City, Boston, Canada, and even Brazil, where many Haitian migrants had previously been granted temporary asylum before illegally entering the U.S.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Andrew Arthur, senior fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, said, “Just the threat of ‘mass deportation’ has changed the dynamics for the millions of illegal aliens currently present in the United States, many of whom were drawn here by the Biden-Harris administration’s promises of de facto amnesty and indefinite presence in the United States.” He continued, “Now that they are facing the real threat of enforcement and deportation, a significant number will simply decide to leave on their own, which will make Border Czar Tom Homan’s job of restoring credibility to the U.S. immigration system much easier.” Arthur added, “It’s the very definition of a ‘virtuous circle’ of enforcement and compliance.”

While many immigrants have indicated that they would flee to “sanctuary” cities, where officials refuse to deport illegal immigrants, Homan has warned that even these cities will be subject to mass deportations. A coalition of Democratic governors and mayors have already announced that they plan to resist Trump’s deportation program. Among them is Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, who posited that he would use city law enforcement officers and 50,000 residents to block deportation efforts in what he called a “Tiananmen Square moment.” Johnston later retracted his comments about using police to oppose federal officials, but he did encourage citizens to “protest” deportation efforts and said that he was “not afraid” of going to prison.

In response, Homan said that Johnston would be “absolutely breaking the law.” He added, “Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing: he’s willing to go to jail, I’m willing to put him in jail.” Homan continued, “If he doesn’t want to help, that’s fine. He can get the hell out of the way. But we’re gonna go do the job. President Trump has a mandate from the American people, we’ve gotta secure this country, we’ve gotta save American lives.”

Heading into the election, immigration was consistently rated one of the top two concerns for voters, often closely following inflation. A majority of Americans also signaled at least some support for Trump’s proposed mass deportation program. But a new poll shows that nearly three-quarters of Americans want Trump to make mass deportations a “priority.” According to a CBS News/YouGov survey, 73% of American adults say that deporting illegal immigrants should be a “priority” for Trump’s administration, including 45% of Americans who say it should be a “high priority.” Additionally, nearly 60% of respondents said that they want Trump to initiate “a national program to find and deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.” A majority (64%) also favor Trump mobilizing federal law enforcement agencies that don’t typically interact with immigration in order to assist with deportations.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump and GOP Eye Tax Cuts, Border Wall, and Energy Expansion in First 100 Days

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With at least one outlet calling the U.S. House for Republicans on Monday — which all but ensures a governing trifecta — President-elect Donald Trump and the GOP are set to enact a slate of policy priorities in the first 100 days of the new administration, including extending tax cuts, funding the completion of the southern border wall, and cutting regulations to expand the production of domestic oil and gas.

According to one Republican congressional aide, “The primary focus is simply on extending the Trump tax cuts and ensuring that we are on track to deliver on these campaign promises.” This could involve a further lowering of the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%, removing taxes on Social Security income and tips earnings, and adding a deduction on state and local income taxes that was left out of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

In order to pay for the tax cuts, Trump has proposed a 20% universal tariff on foreign-produced goods, with an added tariff of up to 60% for goods produced in China. Economists have mixed views on how beneficial tariffs will be for the economy. Some say they will create higher costs for consumers and businesses in the long-term and run the risk of other countries retaliating with their own tariffs, which could be detrimental for U.S. exporters. But experts such as Alex Muresianu, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, say that universal tariffs between 10% and 20% could raise as much as $3 trillion over a 10-year span.

Still, a recent report from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projected that Trump’s extended tax cut plan could create $7.5 trillion in additional debt over the next decade. This figure was disputed by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) over the weekend, who said that the report “doesn’t take into effect the impact of lower tax rates and economic growth as a result.”

As for the incomplete wall along the southern border, the GOP is pledging to finish the job that President Trump started and President Joe Biden refused to complete. Last week, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) stated that planned legislation could include funding to continue the wall’s construction, with construction in Arizona being the priority, sources told Reuters Tuesday.

Another high priority for the administration will be cutting red tape in the U.S. energy sector to increase production.

“The U.S. oil and gas industry [can] shake off oppressive regulation and start getting back to the business of producing oil based off supply and demand expectations, not making decisions trying to get guess what the next regulation is going to be,” Phil Flynn, an energy strategist at The PRICE Futures Group, told The Epoch Times.

Flynn further estimated that under the incoming Trump administration, the U.S. is likely to produce an extra one to two million barrels of oil per day. In addition, Rob Thummel, the senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital Advisors, projects that natural gas production will increase by 30 billion cubic feet per day by 2030.

The Biden-Harris administration has enacted a series of policies that have hamstrung the energy sector. In April, the administration increased the lease bond drillers must pay to operate on federal land from $10,000 to $150,000. This followed Biden’s restriction of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, which a federal judge overturned in July. Thummel stated that the incoming Trump administration “would immediately reinstate approvals of LNG projects.”

In addition, leases for energy companies to operate on federal land will likely increase dramatically. During the Biden-Harris administration’s first three years, they issued 1,400 leases. In comparison, the first three years of Trump’s first term saw over 4,000 leases issued.

As to the green energy policies of the incoming administration, experts say Trump will likely slow lucrative subsidies that were a primary focus of the Biden-Harris administration but is unlikely to attempt a complete halt. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has suggested that not all subsidies will go away. “You’ve got to use a scalpel and not a sledgehammer, because there’s a few provisions in there that have helped overall,” he stated in September.

Energy experts believe that an “all of the above” approach will be most likely to both bring energy prices down and fortify U.S. dominance in the global energy sector. “A Trump administration has to be promoting all the above energy forms, because the only thing that really digs out of the economic issues that we’re facing with the debt burden that we have is something of an energy miracle,” Neil Winward, CEO of Dakota Ridge Capital, told The Epoch Times.

In a comment to The Washington Times, a Republican source summed up the mindset that the GOP will have on day one of Trump’s term, “We are hitting the ground running.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Supermajority of Americans Support Photo ID, Only U.S. Citizens Voting in Elections: Poll

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An overwhelming supermajority of Americans from all political parties and ethnic backgrounds believe that only Americans should vote in U.S. elections, and that voters should have to provide a photo ID before casting their ballot, a new survey has found.

In all, more than eight out of 10 Americans — including a majority of Democrats — support the provisions designed to enhance election integrity, which most Democratic elected officials oppose.

In all, 84% of Americans favor requiring voters to show a photo identification before being given a ballot, and 83% are in favor of “requiring people who are registering to vote for the first time to provide proof of citizenship.” Only 15% of Americans oppose each measure.

Support for the election integrity measures cuts deep across members of all political parties and ethnic identities, according to the Gallup poll, released last week. Republicans favored the measures by a near-unanimous margin: 98% of Republicans favor photo identification, and 96% support proof of citizenship for voters. But so did more than eight in 10 registered Independents (84% support both measures). Surprisingly, the vast majority of rank-and-file Democrats also say they would support laws “requiring all voters to provide photo identification at their voting place in order to vote” (67%) and limiting elections to those who can provide reliable proof of their U.S. citizenship (66%).

Although Democratic politicians have likened voter ID laws to Jim Crow — or, as President Joe Biden has said, “Jim Eagle” — the measure has intense support among minority voters. Laws stating that voters must show photo identification are favored by 86% of white voters and 80% of minority voters. (Minority voters are those who identify as Alaska Native, American Indian, Asian, black, Hispanic, or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander.) Limiting the franchise to those who can prove their U.S. citizenship is backed by more than three-quarters (76%) of non-white voters, as well as 87% of white, non-Hispanic voters.

The question about restricting the vote to U.S. citizens is new; however, the numbers largely track with previous Gallup polls asking about photo identification. In October 2022, the polling organization found 79% of Americans favored such laws, and 21% opposed. Similarly, a Gallup poll conducted in August 2016 found that 80% of U.S. voters favored photo identification laws, and 19% opposed them.

Significantly, Democratic support for photo ID laws plummeted 10 points during the Trump and Biden years. While similar supermajorities of Republicans and Independents favored photo ID laws in 2016, so did nearly two-thirds (63%) of Democrats, compared to a bare majority (53%) of Democrats in 2022.

These widely-supported policies make up the core of the SAVE Act, sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and supported by former President Donald Trump and current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.).

The issue takes on added salience, as the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) found that, if a fraction of illegal immigrants turned out to vote, they could, change the course of the election in swing states and well beyond. “Mathematically, there are 12 states, plus the Nebraska 2nd congressional district, where the voting-age non-citizen population is larger in 2024 than the state winner’s margin of victory in the last presidential election,” found a new CIS report.

A relatively small turnout of illegal immigrants could change election results from Donald Trump to Kamala Harris in Georgia (4.5%) and Arizona (5.1%), the group found. They could even impact a seeming impenetrable bastion of Republican electoral votes such as Texas. If 54% of illegal immigrant residents in Texas turned out to vote, and two-thirds voted for Harris-Walz, it could tip the nation’s largest Republican state in favor of the Democratic ticket for the first presidential election since 1976. Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) has led state efforts to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls.

Although audits have found thousands of non-citizens were registered to vote — and had, in fact, cast a vote — in swing states, the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice Department has sued to prevent states from removing non-citizens from the voting rolls. The DOJ alleges election integrity measures in Virginia and Alabama violate the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day Quiet Period Provision, curtailing all such actions during the 90 days before an election.

Surging numbers of illegal border crossings have catapulted the issue of illegal immigration into the top three issues on voters’ minds ahead of the 2024 election. Before Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office, the largest number of illegal border crossings in American history took place in 1986, the last year Congress gave amnesty to illegal immigrants: 1,692,544 illegal crossings took place that year. All four years of the Biden-Harris administration have broken that record.

There were 1,965,519 illegal crossings during FY 2021 — 1,577,840 since February 2021, when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris officially took office. However, many illegal immigrants began arriving before that date in anticipation of a Biden-Harris victory, some wearing campaign paraphernalia.

Some pro-life advocates intend to help secure the vote on election day and beyond. Students for Life Action is recruiting election integrity volunteers for the states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Election year irregularities may be confounded by another factor: Illegal immigrants also favor Donald Trump at slightly higher rates after four years of the Biden-Harris administration than in 2016. “[T]here is some evidence naturalized citizens may prefer Harris over Trump by roughly a 60 percent to 40 percent margin,” reports CIS. “If non-citizens had this voting preference it would require 7.48 percent of non-citizens in Georgia and 8.55 percent of non-citizens in Arizona to vote in 2024 for the net gain in support for Harris to exceed the margin of victory in the last presidential election.” That margin would require more than 90% of illegal immigrants to vote in order to paint Texas blue.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Large Migrant Caravan Heads to U.S. ahead of Presidential Election

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After four years under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, a number of U.S. Border Patrol agents have threatened to quit if Harris is elected as president this November. This comes after tens of millions of illegal immigrants have crossed the border, causing an influx in crime, terror threats, sex trafficking, drug smuggling, and more. While the agents are fearing an election in Harris’s favor, illegal immigrants are publicly announcing their fear of Republican nominee Donald Trump winning.

The migrants are concerned, should Trump be elected, that he will strengthen border policies, making it harder for illegal crossings. To get ahead of that, roughly 2,000 hopped on a caravan headed straight to America on Sunday. The convoy of men, women, and children, which left from Tapachula, Mexico earlier this month, has made its way across Latin America — including people from Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, and Africa.

“In the last two years,” the New York Post wrote, approximately “1.3 million migrants have made it into the U.S. using the likes of Biden’s CBP One app and other legal avenues under the Biden-Harris administration” that have made it easier for immigrants to apply for asylum and enter the country. However, this hasn’t stopped millions from still sneaking into the U.S. illegally. The outlet added that “Sunday’s caravan is just the latest to start its way across Mexico in recent weeks, but also the largest in recent days.”

Earlier this month, two other caravans left Mexico, one carrying roughly 600 to 800 migrants, another carrying about 1,000. As such, among the three caravans is a total of almost 4,000 immigrants. Border Report noted an estimate of an additional 40,000 migrants that are still in southern Mexico.

Former President Donald Trump has made it clear that closing the border is his “first priority” if he wins the election. As part of that promise, he has said he will deport millions of illegal immigrants who have entered the U.S. “We have no choice,” Trump stated in a July interview. “[W]e have to get the criminals out. These are murderers. These are drug dealers. These are people that will take women and put them in the trunk of a car and sell them to the highest bidder.”

On the other hand, Harris, who has been in office for the nearly four years since the border crisis escalated to its current standing, has only offered vague policies to address the issue if she were elected as president. In September, she gave a speech in Arizona where she said, “Those who cross our borders unlawfully will be apprehended and removed and barred from re-entering for five years.” As the official Democratic presidential nominee, Harris took a trip to the border where she claimed she would “do more to secure our border, to reduce illegal border crossings” and “will take further action to keep the border closed between ports of entry.”

Illegal immigration has consistently polled as one of the top issues for voters this election season, and yet, many do not know how to respond to the current events. However, in a comment to The Washington Stand, David Closson, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, offered some ways to analyze the ongoing border crisis.

“The old adage that elections have consequences is proven correct every four years,” he said. Regarding the caravans that are bringing thousands of immigrants to America, Closson emphasized how “it is noteworthy that thousands of immigrants perceive that a Trump victory on November 5th will represent a return to policies that were more restrictive when it comes to immigration.” He continued, “The optics of large caravans headed north to our southern border is the precise image that the Harris-Walz campaign does not want to see, [even though] it is true that the Biden-Harris administration has been more lax on immigration than the Trump administration.”

“It’s not surprising that people fleeing from desperate situations would perceive Trump’s win as a narrowing window through which they could enter the country without being turned away,” Closson observed. He went on to highlight the importance of Christians to understand what the Bible has to say on matters such as immigration. He referred to Romans 13 and Titus 3 to explain how Scripture teaches that “a Christian framework for government understands that the state exists to punish wrongdoing and promote good. A fundamental task of government is to provide for the common welfare, which includes protecting its citizens.”

According to Closson, this biblical framework should help Christians see that citizens are not being protected, because “the broken border represents an increasing threat to the health and safety of Americans that has led to all sorts of human suffering. Christians should rightly be concerned about a porous southern border that is exploited by the enemies of the United States.” However, Closson insisted, “In the same breath, Christians understand that all people are made in God’s image.”

He continued, “This is one of the reasons why Christians don’t use dehumanizing rhetoric to refer to people who are legitimately trying to pursue a better life. We also need to recognize that the United States can’t grant asylum to everyone in the world who wants to come to this country.”

Closson concluded that “Christians are the people that can say two things: One, all people have dignity and value and should be respected. But two, we need to be the people that are really careful about what immigration policies we support, because we recognize that national sovereignty, as well as the health and safety of our citizens, is at stake.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Crimes against American Schoolchildren Rise as Illegal Immigration Increases

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Those who knew and loved Joshua Wilkerson described the 18-year-old as friendly, “solid in his faith,” and eager to help other students in his Houston-area high school. “Joshua had never been in a fight in his life,” said his mother.

That all changed on November 16, 2010.

A fellow student and acquaintance named Hermilo Moralez asked him for a ride home. Police say after they arrived, the 19-year-old illegal immigrant from Belize launched an unprovoked attack on Wilkerson, who had driven Moralez home numerous times in the past. Moralez, a skilled martial artist, punched Wilkerson in the face and “kicked so hard in the stomach that it sent his spleen into his spine, and sliced it in two,” his mother testified to Congress. Moralez beat him with a wooden rod and injured his classmate so extensively that police categorized the injuries as torture. Even Moralez called his assault “very violent,” court records show.

Moralez then tied Wilkerson’s body, drove Wilkerson’s truck to a remote location, and set him on fire. “At one point, Hermilo stated that Joshua kind of ‘melted’ into the ground,” say court documents.

While propounding numerous alibis, the killer tried to blame the victim. “The suspect claims Josh began to come on to him in a sexual manner and that’s how the fight started, but we don’t believe that information is very credible,” said Lt. Onesimo Lopez, a local police officer.

“This was our family’s 9/11 terrorist attack by a foreign invader,” his mother, Laura Wilkerson, testified to the U.S. Senate in 2015.

While her son’s killer has been convicted, sentenced, and will spend decades in U.S. prison, he is far from alone. A growing number of illegal immigrants has committed crimes against U.S. citizens or tried to turn America’s taxpayer-funded public schools into recruiting grounds for transnational criminal organizations such as Tren de Aragua.

A recent example took place in a familiar location: the Loudoun County public schools in Virginia. The school board became infamous after a male student wearing a skirt raped and attempted to sodomize a 15-year-old girl inside a restroom at Stone Bridge High School on May 28, 2021. When her father complained, school board officials had him arrested. They had transferred the teenage perpetrator to another school, where they say he victimized another female student.

The Loudoun County School Board built on his reputation for silencing parents’ concerns at its October 8 meeting, when parents complained about the district allowed a young man with a troubling history to return to school. Last year, police arrested the teenager — reportedly an illegal immigrant with ties to the violent criminal gang MS-13 — for bringing a gun to Blue Ridge Middle School and threatening to kill another student. Once again, when concerned parents spoke out, the board cut their microphones and ruled them out of order, citing the safety and privacy of the illegal immigrant.

“Where’s the protection and the safety for our children who are in school with other children who have [made] known threats, who have been arrested and who are back in the school?” asked a parent, Abbie Platt, at the school board meeting.

Even The Washington Post admits such parental fears are not misplaced. Members of MS-13 have murdered and assaulted numerous students in the nation’s high schools. During his first State of the Union address, President Donald Trump said the names of two MS-13 victims: Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, killed by MS-13 in September 2016.

“She used to tell me, ‘Ma, they are taking over the school. It’s like they’re everywhere,’” said Cuevas’ mother, Evelyn Rodriguez.

“From New York to Virginia to Texas, schools in areas racked by MS-13 violence are now struggling with a sobering question. What to do when the gang isn’t just in your community, but in your classrooms?” asked the newspaper.

In addition to crimes, gangs use schools as recruiting grounds for minors, who cannot be tried as adults. “Definitely gang involvement is a real thing in some communities,” testified Sheena Rodriguez of the president of the Alliance for a Safe Texas at a June 4 hearing of the House Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee. “Many,” she said, “have criminal histories, affiliation with gangs, or are actually adults who are potentially infiltrating our communities and schools.”

The problem is only growing, as illegal immigrants have brought between 500,000 and one million students into the U.S. public school system. The surge of unexpected enrollments has depleted local tax bases, overwhelmed school officials, and too often deprived American students of a quality education. Yet America’s uncontrolled border is also claiming innocent American lives.

Sometimes the crimes involve adults who target teenagers. Last December, 23-year-old Rafael Govea Romero, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, stabbed 16-year-old high school cheerleader Lizbeth Medina to death in Edna, Texas. Authorities believe Romero, who was on probation for burglary at the time of his arrest for capital murder, broke into Medina’s apartment for robbery and, when he found the teenager at home, stabbed her in the abdomen. Medina’s mother was unaware of the crime until her daughter did not participate in the Christmas parade with the rest of her squad that afternoon and returned home to find her child’s lacerated body in her bathtub.

“This government continues to fail or even recognize that we have an issue. Americans are dying daily at the hands of criminals that we don’t even know are here,” Wilkerson boldly told U.S. senators. “You’re elected by Americans, not any other country. You should be for Americans.”

No one is certain how often illegal immigrants assault or kill American students. But “one is too many, and it was entirely preventable if the government had been doing its job and enforcing our laws,” Ira Mehlman, media director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), told The Washington Stand.

“There is also culpability at the local level, because” liberal states and cities advertise themselves as “proud sanctuary jurisdictions and bend over backwards to accommodate illegal aliens rather than cooperate with federal law enforcement on those rare instances when they actually want to remove somebody,” Mehlman told TWS. “Especially under this administration, Mayorkas has essentially said once you are here, unless you’re a truly violent criminal, they are not coming for you. So when ICE issues a detainer request, that ought to be a serious indication to a sanctuary jurisdiction that this poses a serious danger. And yet very often they ignore it.”

Not only do federal officials ignore the problem, critics say, they facilitate it. Wilkerson testified that under policies favored by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, her son’s classmate fit a preferred demographic in American society. “Hermilo Moralez was brought here illegally by his illegal parents when he was 10 years old, so he fit the ‘DREAM’ kid description,” she said. The 2024 Democratic Party platform and Kamala Harris have promised amnesty for DREAMers, as well as “a pathway to citizenship” for the rest of the nation’s illegal immigrant population.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives subsequently impeached the Biden-Harris administration’s Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, for his failure to control the southern border. But the Democrat-controlled Senate dismissed the charges without a vote.

Liberal schools sometimes respond by punishing American students for speaking out, even in a joking way. School officials gave Christian McGhee — a 16-year-old student at Central Davidson High School in Lexington, North Carolina — a three-day suspension for using the term “illegal alien.” His English teacher had given an assignment to write about an alien, to which he asked, “Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?” When some of his Hispanic fellow students took offense, his teacher allegedly accused him of “racism,” although McGhee did not mention any ethnicity.

On behalf of those targeted by illegal immigrant crime, Wilkerson wants not merely America’s grief but its protection. “I know you will sympathize with our story, but I want more than that. I want you to be angry that America’s borders are wide open. America does not know who is in this country. It is time to put Americans first. Close the borders, figure out who is really here. Keep statistics. Realize that we are at war right here in this country,” Wilkerson testified.

Mehlman said the federal government has robust resources at its disposal, if it wished to use them.

An incoming president should “repeal those policy memos that Mayorkas put out in 2021 essentially making all illegal aliens untouchable by ICE. He basically said unless you meet certain very narrow criteria, you are going to be allowed to stay here,” Mehlman told TWS. “The other thing is, they can go after sanctuary jurisdictions. Under a law passed in 1996 sanctuary jurisdictions are actually outlawed, but nobody ever enforces that law against those jurisdictions that shields illegal aliens and violent criminals.”

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 encoded into federal law (8 U.S. Code §1373) that “a [f]ederal, [s]tate, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”

“These sanctuary jurisdictions are always looking for federal grant money,” noted Mehlman. “That’s how you enforce it.”

The victims agree that action is overdue. “Sanctuary city policies scream to the criminal element of illegals in this country: ‘Come to our town USA, we’ll protect you from our terrible policemen. We’ll protect you from these tough American laws,’” said Wilkerson.

Former President Donald Trump has vowed to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” if elected.

“I will outlaw sanctuary cities. They will be over,” the 45th president told a responsive crowd in Greenville, North Carolina, early Monday evening. He pledged to end all migrant flights, which have imported illegal immigrants into 45 U.S. cities, approximately two-thirds of them in Republican-leaning or swing states — including an estimated 326,000 to Florida. “And I will ban all welfare and federal benefits for illegals. I will restore every Trump border policy and immediately expel all illegals who violate our border.”

Experts like Mehlman say these policies will add new layers of protections to help safeguard U.S. citizens, especially young people, from illegal immigrant crime. But those already affected will never be the same.

“Our family is shattered,” Wilkerson testified. “My surviving kids have changed. Everything about us has changed. It’s by the grace of God that in our broken hearts we have a stream of memories of the loving relationship that we had with Joshua.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Government Has Become the ‘FedEx of Children from the Border to Traffickers’: Expert

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Government Has Become the ‘FedEx of Children from the Border to Traffickers’: Expert

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Experts are sounding the alarm on the fact that the sex trafficking of minors has more than tripled under the Biden-Harris administration. “Biden’s border policies have led to an explosion in the forced prostitution of migrants in the U.S.,” wrote The Free Press’s investigative reporter Madeleine Rowley. In fact, added an informant from the nonprofit Shepherd’s Watch, “Nearly all … sex-trafficking rings now are migrant girls,” with a notable explosion of online sex-trafficking ads of women “within the first three months of the border being open.”

During “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” last week, Rowley explained how there’s no doubt the rise in sex trafficking “is directly tied to Biden opening the border.” Criminals are smuggling women and girls “across the border promising them a better life, promising them jobs, only to trick them and force them into prostitution after they have crossed the border.” As Family Research Council President Tony Perkins highlighted, unaccompanied “minors … are entrapped in this” by being handed off by the federal government directly “into the custody of people who are going to abuse them and exploit them.”

According to Rowley’s research, there were roughly 137,000 unaccompanied minors that crossed the border in 2023 alone. “[T]he government is tasked with vetting the sponsors that these children are released to,” she said. While “a lot of the times they’re released to … people that they know,” they’re often “released to what they call ‘category ‘three sponsors’ or ‘unrelated sponsors,’” many of whom are unvetted or the ones doing the trafficking.

It’s “just absolutely shocking and heartbreaking that our government is facilitating the exploitation of women and children,” Perkins sighed. But as guest host Jody Hice explained on Friday’s episode of “Washington Watch,” “This story certainly has been going on for years,” which only makes it that much more shocking as “new details continue to emerge that paint an absolutely heartbreaking picture of the abuse that is taking place.”

“Within the last week,” Breitbart reported, “158 unaccompanied migrant children have been sent across the Rio Grande into the small town of Eagle Pass.” These children range between the ages of five and 17 years old. According to Tara Rodas, a whistleblower who formerly worked for the Department of Health and Human Services, this crisis is not merely being allowed by the government but is being fueled by the government. “[W]hat we now know,” said Rodas, is that this “is government sponsored, taxpayer-funded child trafficking.”

“I can assure you,” she stated, “I never thought I’d be saying that.” Hice agreed, “It’s just absolutely unthinkable.” He went on to note how if it were not for whistleblowers, such as Rodas, exposing these realities, “[W]e would not even be aware of what’s been going on.” Providing further details, Rodas explained how “at the beginning of 2021, the Biden-Harris administration made a call to all federal employees,” asking them to help with the crisis of unaccompanied minors crossing the border. Rodas volunteered to offer a hand.

“I thought I was going to be coloring and doing puzzles with children,” she said. “I’m a Spanish speaker, and I thought I could be that person who would be there to greet the children and, … find out what are their plans about coming to America and living the American dream.” However, “it didn’t take very long for those illusions to evaporate,” Rodas explained, because the “children began to tell us the truth.” What those kids revealed is that many of them did not know who they were being sent to. It became clear, as Rodas described, that they were “lured here under the promise that they’re going to” get rich, only to get thrown into “modern day slavery.”

Through her first-hand experience with these children, Rodas detailed how they had “reported being sexually abused [and] being pimped out by their sponsors” — some of which “are actually gang members” from “violent criminal organizations.” It’s nothing short of “horrific,” she sighed, especially considering that taxpayer dollars are going into “vulnerable children … being shipped to known bad actors.” It’s as if we’ve become “the FedEx of children from the border to traffickers,” she lamented.

“[I]t’s a shocking story,” Rodas contended, and “people need to know about” it. “This is not humanitarian. This isn’t helping the children. They’re in slavery.” And this is why it’s appropriate to call it “government sponsored, taxpayer funded child trafficking,” Hice added, arguing how it explains how “such a horrifying thing has now become a partisan issue.” Rodas agreed, noting that “everybody should want to protect and defend children.”

Ultimately, Rodas argued, “[I]f you’re not in the box of protect and defend children … that puts you outside of all political realms.” This crisis is not a matter of red and blue, she insisted, but “we’re talking about good versus evil.” The problem is that “failed policies and policy makers” are at the heart of this “crisis because they rolled back the ability for people to come across the border,” she described. “They made it simple so that vetting is not being done. And then they opened the floodgates for these children to come across” and be taken to criminals.

It’s “unbelievable,” Hice groaned. In order to stop this crisis from getting worse, Rodas urged, “We need people who are going to put sane policies in place. We need to rescue children, and we need to seriously prosecute criminals.” And we also need people, Hice concluded, who are willing to continue putting a “spotlight on this and … deal with it courageously.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Federal, Local Governments Tacitly Aiding Illegal Criminal Gangs

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The violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has found a new tactic for exploiting the U.S. legal system: recruiting and training minors to commit crimes for them. In New York, for instance, a 2018 “Raise the Age” law eliminates bail for juvenile crimes, leading to an explosion in foreign-gang-related crime committed by minors in New York City. “Never mistake this: that the cartels and gangs — they all understand how American law works. They are experts at this,” warned Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) on “Washington Watch” Tuesday.

In recent days, New York City police have arrested 20 minors as young as 11 years old in connection with 50 crimes, but all the offenders are back on the streets — or, perhaps more accurately, in city-run homeless shelters. They “started off … doing some snatches in the parks and stuff, but then it escalated,” Biggs described. “They started doing some strong-arm robberies, and now they’re brandishing weapons. And they’re being so bold about it as to show videos on social media of what they are doing.”

Why so bold? “They understand that in New York … you have lenient prosecutor[s],” said Biggs. “The police officers are making the arrests, but the prosecutors are letting them out. They’re not making the charges.” On top of over-lenient laws, Soros-funded prosecutors simply refuse to prosecute some small crimes in the name of racial justice. In Manhattan, where most of these crimes have taken place, the local prosecutor’s office is overseen by District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D).

The lack of prosecution “provides an additional incentive to go ahead and commit these crimes,” argued Biggs. “Let’s just face it: if the border was secure, they wouldn’t be here in the first place. But they are here, and those people … that should be charging them are failing.”

The law is a teacher. And the lesson these school-age foreigners are learning is that there are no consequences for breaking laws in the United States. So, their consciences grow more callous, and their misconduct grows more flagrant. And the only way to stop this vicious cycle is for local governments to effectively enforce laws that uphold civic order and justice — the whole purpose of government (Romans 13:3-4).

These delinquent youth are part of a subset of the Tren de Aragua gang calling itself “Los Diablos de la 42” (The Devils of 42nd Street). Forty-Second Street cuts straight across midtown Manhattan, running right by Times Square, Grand Central Station, the United Nations, the Chrysler Building, Madame Tussauds, the Port Authority offices, and the flagship branch of the New York City Library. This contrasts with the typical image of an urban gang operating in an inner-city slum, which maintains control because the police dare not visit that part of town. New York City has a gang of teen criminals committing increasingly violent crimes in important, highly visible tourist destinations, and it can’t or won’t do anything about it.

“These are migrant young people that have come to this country, that are here in city-funded shelters,” observed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “They’re exploiting our lax judicial system, our criminal justice system.”

New York City is not the only American city where Tren de Aragua is terrorizing U.S. citizens. The “very dangerous gang” is doing “the same thing in Aurora, Colorado, El Paso, and Chicago,” said Biggs. “They understand very clearly that the prosecutors are not going to prosecute” in certain progressive jurisdictions, and this has allowed them to “emerge as a real criminal organization.”

When government officials refuse to prosecute crime, “local communities continue to pay the price,” Perkins lamented. In Aurora, Colo., Tren de Aragua has reportedly taken over whole apartment complexes, prompting some residents to leave. Recently released footage shows gang members beating one apartment complex employee. Biggs said immigration remains a top concern for Arizona voters, right next to the economy, “because we are providing all of these benefits to illegal aliens, but we’re leaving the American people to struggle.”

That remark broaches another layer of governmental failure, which is the federal government’s role in abetting these gangs of criminals, who aren’t even legally in the U.S. to begin with. Tren de Aragua and other foreign criminal organizations are “actually communicating with one another … on their government-funded cell phones that have been given to them as they come into the country,” Perkins explains. “Americans have to wake up and realize this is insanity. We’re funding people who come into this country illegally to terrorize American citizens.”

The Biden-Harris administration has effectively entered into “a tacit partnership” with the cartels, Biggs agreed. “They’re giving phones. They’re giving housing. They’re giving medical care.”

On top of that, “We transport them. We are the logistics arm of the cartels,” he continued. “Pre-Biden [administration], if a cartel had been contracted to bring somebody and smuggle them into the country, they actually had to get them to the location. That doesn’t happen anymore. They just have to get them to the border. Because if you get them to the border, this administration will grant them parole status … and we will transport them wherever they want to go.”

This border transportation pipeline is entirely separate from the CBP One app, which the Department of Homeland Security created without congressional authorization, Biggs observed. The app offers free air flights into the U.S. to residents of four troubled nations — without even the hassle of securing transport to the southern border. The four nations so favored by the Biden administration are Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. By the way, does anyone want to guess how a Venezuelan gang managed to slip into the United States?

All this misbehavior on the part of the Biden administration raises a question Biggs has been asking for years: “Where are they getting the money?” The answer Biggs encountered repeatedly was that the money was “coming from FEMA,” he said. “And so we’ve known about this for quite some time.”

Under the Biden-Harris administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent more than $1 billion “to resettle migrants into this country,” said Perkins, “yet now they’re crying, ‘Congress has to come back because we’re out of money [for hurricane relief].’ … It’s not a lack of resources. It is [a lack of] competency.”

None of this federal malfeasance is what the American people want or what their elected representatives approved. In fact, the Biden-Harris administration is “violating the law every time they grant a parole status, because they’re doing it on a collective basis, and that law was meant to provide on a singular, case-by-case, unique basis,” Biggs argued.

For ideological, political, or strategic reasons, the Biden-Harris administration has pursued a policy of importing illegal immigrants as fast as possible, without legislative authority and without performing what should be commonsense vetting. “They’ve released these people into the country — literally millions of people,” said Biggs. “And, of those millions, hundreds of thousands of them are criminals.”

Is it really too much to ask the federal government to not help violent criminals enter the country, who will exploit America’s justice system and terrorize America’s citizens?

In a recent exchange with vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance (R), ABC News anchor Martha Raddatz tried to minimize the issue of violent crime committed by gangs of illegal immigrants, saying, “I know exactly what happened. I’m going to stop you. The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes.” Vance responded, “Only, Martha? Do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes were taken over by Venezuelan gangs …? Americans are so fed up with what’s going on, and they have every right to be.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘What Are You Talking About?’: Harris Confuses, Shouts Down Host during Fox News Interview

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Vice President Kamala Harris tried to cram a stream of anti-Trump allegations into her Fox News interview with Bret Baier, frequently talking over him before concluding the interview in a litany of shouted claims about how former President Donald Trump presented an existential threat to democracy. Meanwhile, she dodged questions about taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prison inmates and illegal immigrants, amnesty for potentially tens of millions of illegal immigrants, how she would differ from Joe Biden, and whether her open borders policies contributed to the deaths of numerous young American women.

Harris attempted to brush off Baier’s efforts to receive an answer to his questions by implying that he secretly knew she was right, at one point leading the top-rated news anchor to reply, “What are you talking about?”

News consumers hoping to get a concrete idea of what a President Harris would do in office were sorely disappointed on issue after issue. “Are you still in support of using taxpayer dollars to help prison inmates or detained illegal aliens to transition to another gender?” asked Baier at one point.

“I will follow the law,” she replied — an answer she gave to numerous policy questions, ignoring the fact that presidents pass, interpret, and enforce the law.

She later claimed the controversial policy of inflicting transgender procedures on federal prisoners is “a law that Donald Trump actually followed.” The Trump administration actually watered down the Obama-Biden administration’s interpretation of federal law which called transgender “transitions” for prisoners “necessary.” The first transgender surgery carried out in federal prisons took place in 2022, during the Biden-Harris administration.

“Kamala Harris has forcefully advocated for transgender inmates to be able to get transition surgeries, President Trump never has,” clarified Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.

In fact, candidate Harris bragged to a transgender pressure group that, as California attorney general, “I pushed for that policy” to assure inmates had “access to the medical care that they desired,” adding she may have been the “first in the country” to do so.

On Wednesday, the vice president brushed aside the Trump campaign’s attempts to distance itself from the prison procedures.

“Well, you know what? You got to take responsible [sic] for what happened in your administration,” declared Harris.

Observers predicted the line would come back to haunt the incumbent vice president, who has presided over 40-year-high inflation rates, long periods of wage deterioration, historically unprecedented numbers of illegal border crossings, the invasion of U.S. apartment buildings by transnational criminal gangs, and record-breaking numbers of American deaths from drug overdoses.

Harris’s eyes darted back-and-forth when asked, “When did you first notice Joe Biden’s mental faculties were diminished?”

“He has the judgment and the experience to do exactly what he has done,” Harris replied.

“Joe Biden is not on the ballot,” she added. At one point, Harris responded, “Let me be very clear: My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.” But she failed to specify a single policy she would change or to list any mistake of the hyphenated Biden-Harris administration.

The two also clashed over the open border policies enacted during Harris’s tenure in office, which kicked off with more than 90 executive actions undoing Trump administration border security policies. An unprecedented wave of more than 10 million illegal border crossings followed, in addition to new amnesty and “parole” programs, such as the one that placed tens of thousands of Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.

“Looking back, do you regret the decision to terminate Remain in Mexico at the beginning of your administration?” asked Baier.

Harris referenced two pieces of legislation that bookend the Biden-Harris administration, without any mention of the years in between. In an answer that nearly mirrored a response she gave to Charlemagne Tha God earlier in the week, Harris noted that among her administration’s first actions was the introduction of a mass amnesty bill. The administration supported the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which would have granted amnesty to at least 11 million illegal immigrants over eight years. Despite Democratic control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, the bill never came up for a vote.

She also alleged that Donald Trump bears responsibility for the border situation for opposing a bill negotiated by Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.), which would have allowed 1.8 million illegal immigrants into the country each year, among other proposals that border hawks disliked.

Baier repeatedly attempted to turn the interview back to Harris, her record, and her policies. He noted that among the six million or more illegal immigrants released into the U.S. homeland by the Biden-Harris administration were those who assaulted and killed U.S. citizens Jocelyn Gary, Rachel Moran, and Laken Riley. When Baier asked if Harris owed their families an apology, she replied she felt “sorry for their loss.”

During a Fox News town hall with Harris Faulkner, Trump laid down a radically different immigration plan. “We’re going to end all sanctuary cities in the United States, and we’re going to go back to normalcy, and we’re going to have law and order,” he said, to massive cheers. The former president has also promised a mass deportation of illegal immigrants, a policy supported by the majority of Americans.

Baier kept up the pressure, citing a recent poll which found that 79% of Americans believe the nation is on the wrong track, and “that track follows three and a half years of you being vice president,” said Baier. “If you’re turning the page, you’ve been in office for three and a half years.”

“And Trump has been running for office,” replied Harris, echoing her response that she had “never been to Europe” during her disastrous interview with NBC News host Lester Holt.

When Baier pushed Harris over her responsibility for her actions, she replied, “You and I both know what I’m talking about. You and I both know what I’m talking about.”

“I actually don’t. What are you talking about?” replied an inquisitive Baier.

He later asked Harris about the eight out of 10 Americans who believe Biden-Harris administration policies have sapped American strength. “Are they misguided? Are they stupid?” asked Baier.

“No, God, I would never say that,” replied Harris, apparently taking the Lord’s Name in vain.

Harris then accused Donald Trump of “suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.” Harris Faulkner asked Trump about that allegation earlier in the day. “I’m not threatening anybody,” he replied, noting that he has “been investigated more than Alphonse Capone. It’s called weaponization of government.”

As the interview came to a conclusion, Harris began yelling, waving her hands, and screaming at Baier while insisting it is Donald Trump who is “misguided,” “unstable,” and “mentally not stable.” Harris filibustered Baier, refusing to yield as he tried to redirect her to the original topic. “I have a lot more to say” about Donald Trump, Harris complained.

Baier expressed his regret that the interview lacked substance, to which Harris replied “I invite everyone to go” to her campaign website.

“I tried to redirect numerous times without interrupting too much,” said Baier after the interview. He also noted the Harris campaign tried to shorten the interview significantly.

“We were supposed to start at 5 p.m. This was the time they gave us. Originally, we were going to do 25 or 30 minutes. They came in and said, ‘Well, maybe 20,’ so it was already getting whittled down. And then the vice president showed up about 5:15. We were pushing the envelope to be able to turn it around for the top of the 6 o’clock” hour. “I had a lot of other questions,” Baier added.

Baier also revealed that Harris’s campaign aides pushed him hard to “wrap,” or end the interview early. “I’m talking, like four people, waving their hands like, ‘It’s gotta stop!’” he said.

The interview went so poorly that shortly after its conclusion Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance advised his “Democratic friends: maybe you should consider swapping Kamala Harris for Joe Biden.” The Trump War Room retweeted the entire interview with the message, “Our newest ad just dropped.”

“Kamala’s not used to real interviews. It shows,” said Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah). “She is melting under the spotlight,” said Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump and founder of America First Legal.

Democrats and members of the liberal media tried to defend Harris’s performance. Harris campaign senior adviser and former adviser to Barack Obama David Plouffe called the exchange “an ambush.” MSNBC hostess Mika Brzezinski posted on X that “@KamalaHarris did a great job” during “a rude and misleading interview.” Brzezinski also accused Baier of “performing for an audience of one,” implying Baier tailored his questions to please Trump — although MSNBC hosts have reported receiving texts from Democratic White House officials live on the air.

CNN’s Brian Stelter predicted, “A lot of viewers are going to come away saying, ‘Wow, she’s willing to do that. That’s a sign of toughness and strength.’” The host of “The Situation Room,” Wolf Blitzer, agreed with Stelter that Harris’s performance was “impressive indeed.”

Media headlines repeatedly referred to the interview as “testy.”

“It was a little tense,” Baier told Sean Hannity, adding the video — which showed Harris pausing, stuttering, and looking around frantically at times — was unedited. “I think she had a mission,” said Baier. She wanted to have a viral moment … and I think she might have gotten that.”

Harris, who has attempted to pitch her candidacy to the relatively narrow slither of Never Trump Republicans who lined up behind former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in the primaries, has also discussed interviewing on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

“Maybe she’ll come back,” said Baier. “I don’t know whether she will or not, but I hope she does.”

“I think I understand why they don’t want tough interviews, and this will probably be the last one,” replied Hannity.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Dems Support FEMA Funds Being Diverted to Migrants

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While Americans are still struggling to recover from a devastating hurricane season, Democrats are signaling that they approve of federal agencies giving relief money — not to their fellow Americans — but to migrants.

According to a Rasmussen Reports survey published Monday, the majority of likely voters (59%) want the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to focus its resources on American citizens, but 29% approve of FEMA spending money on migrants. A majority (59%) of Democrat voters approve of FEMA diverting resources from Americans to migrants, while only 8% of Republican voters and less than 20% of Independent voters do the same.

While a majority (61%) of voters have a favorable view of FEMA and its Hurricane Helene disaster response, Democrats are the most likely (at 82%) to rate government agencies favorably, as opposed to only 45% of Republicans and 42% of Independent voters. Rasmussen Reports noted, “Among all voters who have a very favorable opinion of FEMA, 68% think spending FEMA money to help immigrants is a good idea.”

The survey follows reports of widespread mismanagement, misallocation of funds, and inaction on FEMA’s part in response to Hurricane Helene, which destroyed a 500-mile swath of homes, towns, and cities in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and parts of Tennessee and Virginia.

Following Hurricane Helene’s landfall, FEMA and other government officials reportedly blocked private American citizens from providing help to impacted areas, especially in the western region of North Carolina. Private citizens conducting search and rescue missions, carrying supplies, or attempting to provide transportation were halted by FEMA and, in some cases, threatened with arrest. Reports have also suggested that FEMA employees are working regular nine-to-five hours, staying in hotels that are then denied to victims of the hurricane, and confiscating supplies and donations, diverting them to immigrant communities instead of to American citizens.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been criticized for announcing that FEMA is almost out of funding and does not have the money to last through the remainder of the hurricane season. However, the agency has spent $1.4 billion since 2022 on illegal immigrants. On Monday night’s episode of “Washington Watch,” former Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, who helped oversee FEMA during the Trump administration, said, “As the Secretary of Homeland Security, part of your job … is to show those impacted that for the most part, the federal government hears you and we’re there to help you as best we can using the authorities that we have.”

He continued, “One of the first things [Mayorkas] says on the way down to North Carolina is ‘We’re out of money, FEMA doesn’t have enough money,’ which I would say is the exact wrong message to send to the people that are hurting in North Carolina.” Wolf added, “They want to know that the government is on their side and is doing everything possible to make sure that they get the assistance they need in such devastating, devastating times.”

Wolf also explained that Mayorkas’s claims of FEMA being out of money may not be “accurate,” noting that the agency has “access to over $20 billion to draw from. And so, the amount of money that they have obligated versus what they have actually spent — they’ve obligated a good amount. What they’ve actually spent is very low.”

He continued, “Now is not the time to talk about ‘We need to replenish what we call the Disaster Relief Fund.’ Now is the time to help individuals on the ground.” He explained that after resources have actually been depleted in hurricane relief efforts, FEMA can ask Congress to supplement the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF). “And Congress is there to do that. They’ve done that historically. There’s little debate. The only debate is how much? They’re always making sure that we take care of those impacted most,” he said. Wolf added, “Frankly, I think there’s more than enough funding to get them through that period of time, and then they can certainly come back after that.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden-Harris Admin Sues to Stop States from Removing Noncitizens from Voting Rolls

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The Biden-Harris administration has hauled two Republican states into court to prevent them from removing noncitizens from the voter rolls.

As part of last Friday’s news dump, the administration’s Department of Justice announced on October 11 that it had sued the Commonwealth of Virginia over an order from to purge “noncitizens” from the ballot.

On August 7, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) issued Executive Order 35, which called for the state to assure every registered voter is a legal U.S. citizen. “This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue, it’s an American and Virginian issue. Every legal vote deserves to be counted without being watered down by illegal votes or inaccurate machines. In Virginia, we don’t play games and our model for election security is working,” said Youngkin at the time.

The Biden-Harris administration sued, claiming the action violates the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day Quiet Period Provision, which says states must curtail all such actions 90 days before an election. The DOJ filed a similar lawsuit on September 27 against the state of Alabama, after Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen (R) announced he had instituted a “process to remove noncitizens registered to vote in Alabama,” on August 13.

“Only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in U.S. federal elections. That fact is not in dispute, and there is no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting in the United States. But that is not what this case is about,” claims the government’s legal complaint against Virginia.

Yet in announcing the Alabama lawsuit, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said, “The right to vote is one of the most sacred rights in our democracy.”

As this reporter has noted at The Washington Stand:

  • In Pennsylvania, Department of State official Jonathan Marks testified that noncitizens voluntarily told the state they had illegally voted 544 times in elections held between 2000 and 2017 — representing one of every 172,000 votes cast in the swing state.
  • An official review of Georgia’s voting rolls found 1,634 noncitizens had attempted to register to vote in the swing state between 1997 and 2002.
  • Virginia removed 5,556 noncitizens from its voting rolls between 2011 and 2017. Noncitizens had voted 7,474 times between 1988 and 2017, officials found.
  • North Carolina voter rolls showed 1,454 registered voters who “did not appear to be naturalized before Election Day 2014,” according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and “89 attempted to vote.”

The action is virtually unprecedented. The Obama administration sued to stop then-Florida Governor Rick Scott from removing noncitizens (at Judicial Watch’s behest) in 2012. Conversely, the Trump and George W. Bush administrations sued states or localities (Kentucky, New York City, Maine, Missouri) for failing to maintain accurate voting lists, including removing noncitizens and the deceased.

A majority of Americans worry that voter fraud will impact the 2024 election, according to a NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released earlier this month. Overall, 58% of Americans shared their concerns about election integrity in next month’s election, although that is driven by an overwhelming concern from Republicans. In all, 86% of Republicans, and 55% of registered Independents, say illegal voting could impact the election, as compared to 33% of Democrats (and just 29% of confirmed Kamala Harris voters).

Once cast, there is no way to differentiate which ballot belongs to a specific person; voter fraud is permanent. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said the House must pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to address this “clear and very real threat” to election integrity.

“The reason our movement is called election integrity is not just based on policy and procedures, but also on the character of the individuals who comprise it,” said Election Integrity Network Executive Director Kerri Toloczko in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand.

“Thousands of patriotic Americans have given selflessly of their time to become experts on their states’ election codes,” said Toloczko in a separate instance. “They have tirelessly worked in the trenches on all the aspects of the election process, researching state and county voter rolls; finding thousands of ineligible registrations, mistakes, errors, duplicates, and the like; are volunteering to serve as poll workers and observers; and who love this country so much that they are willing to take the abuse leveled at them by the corporate media, the Democratic Party, state governments, and even the federal government.”

Nationwide, 47 close elections, including 29 ties, have already taken place in 2024, according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden-Harris Admin Sues to Stop States from Removing Noncitizens from Voting Rolls

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Afghan National in U.S. Plotted ISIS Terror Attack on Election Day

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The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday indicted an Afghan national living in Oklahoma City “for conspiring to conduct an Election Day terrorist attack in the United States on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO).” Along with his wife’s juvenile brother, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi plotted to attack “large gatherings of people” and “die as martyrs.”

The FBI foiled the plot with a months-long sting operation, according to Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.). They arrested Tawhedi and his co-conspirator after they purchased two AK-47 rifles, magazines, and ammunition from a “confidential human source” and “other FBI assets.”

The good news is that U.S. law enforcement foiled a potentially deadly and disruptive terrorist plot. The bad news is that the episode shows “just how vulnerable we are for attack,” said Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch.”

Election Vulnerability

A terrorist attack on Election Day would harm America far beyond any lives taken in the attack. It would infect our civic institutions with fear, further eroding social trust and public confidence in our elections.

As necessary as ballot security is for free and fair elections, voter security is even more fundamental. Voters who feel unsafe or intimidated at polling places may refrain from voting or change their votes, undermining the ability of elections to accurately record the will of the people. This is the reason behind laws requiring secret ballots or laws prohibiting certain campaign activities too close to a polling location.

If Islamist terrorists start attacking polling locations on Election Day, how many American voters will become more nervous about waiting in line to vote — as sitting targets? “‘Vulnerable’ is a key word,” agreed Family Research Council Action President Jody Hice. “Underline that, highlight it, and circle it.”

The ugly truth is that the U.S. government possibly could have prevented Tawhedi from forming this would-be terrorist plot in the first place. Tawhedi reportedly “entered the United States in 2021 under a special visa,” observed Hice, “which again underscores the Biden-Harris administration’s repeated failures to manage the entire immigration vetting process.”

Botched Withdrawal

In 2021, the Biden-Harris administration determined that, come hell or high water, they would remove all American troops from Afghanistan by an arbitrary and unfeasible date. This decision, made against the advice of senior military officials, effectively abandoned the country’s fledgling democratic government — not to mention the nation’s women — to the cruel mercy of the Taliban, a band of Islamist extremists who had previously sheltered al-Qaeda training camps.

America’s chaotic withdrawal left pro-American Afghans hanging in the wind. The Taliban would surely hunt down and kill men who served as guides for U.S. troops, for instance, or Christians. So some Afghans legitimately qualified for political asylum in America.

But, to meet the previously determined, arbitrary deadline for the evacuation of U.S. troops, the U.S. State Department had neither time nor manpower to either vet or evacuate Afghans in need of U.S. asylum. Several anecdotes suggest that the State Department provided “little to no help of any consequence” to congressmen and private citizens striving to evacuate Afghans, as Hice, then a congressman, recalled his own experience.

The U.S. State Department did grant special visas to a number of people flown out of Afghanistan. But these flights were loaded hastily and without adequate vetting. In fact, “because of the debacle of the way that this country withdrew and then the lack of vetting that took place,” the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General said the “process [was] ripe for people to fall through the cracks,” explained Brecheen. “So you’ve had heightened numbers of people with this special visa,” but some of them may have come to the U.S. with bad intentions.

Some people who should have been evacuated were left behind or stranded in refugee camps in other countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Meanwhile, some people received visas and boarded flights who had no basis to claim asylum in the U.S. By the end of the evacuation process, the Taliban controlled the airport where refugee flights boarded, which means they controlled who could or couldn’t board the flights. Tawhedi’s is an obvious case in which the system failed; Brecheen’s office is chasing down how he got a visa and what kind, but they have not yet received an answer.

Border Vulnerability

Boarding special evacuation flights from Afghanistan is not the only way that would-be terrorists with harmful intentions can make their way into America. “What happened with Afghanistan has shown the American people — in addition to what’s coming across the southern border — just how vulnerable we are for attack,” said Brecheen.

According to data released late last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has on its docket more than 660,000 illegal immigrants with a criminal history. This includes more than 400,000 convicted criminals and more than 200,000 with pending criminal charges who are no longer in ICE custody. These numbers include not only Central Americans fleeing crime and poverty in their home countries, but people from all over the world. Just last week, law enforcement agents apprehended 40 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and India at the southern border. Earlier this year, DHS discovered that over 400 illegal immigrants had been smuggled into the country through an ISIS-affiliated network, and the whereabouts of 50 remain unknown.

Proponents of illegal immigration — words that shouldn’t even belong together — like to claim that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. Setting aside the fact that illegally entering the country is itself a crime, this claim misses two key points. First, every crime committed by an illegal immigrant in the U.S. is one the government could have prevented by barring that individual from entering the country — something that should at the very least be done for individuals with a violent criminal history.

Second, it only takes one bad actor, with the right plan, resources, and execution, to inflict devastation. It took years for the FBI to detect Tawhedi’s plot and then more months to catch him. How many other would-be terrorists are on the loose in America? And how many of them are law enforcement agencies able to track and capture?

In some nations around the world, violence and intimidation in elections are common, even expected — especially those with minimal history of fair and free elections. When America extends an unconditional invitation to residents of those countries to enter our country, we run the risk of elections in our country resembling the elections in theirs (it doesn’t take a voter registration card to intimidate poll-goers). This is obviously not in the best interest of America.

This is not to say that all immigrants are bad for America and our tradition of popular election, nor that everyone in foreign nations opposes free and fair elections. Rather, it suggests that America should discriminate between immigrants — not based upon any unreasonable categories, but based upon their goodwill toward our country and their willingness to abide by our laws. If an immigrant is glad to join American society, then America should be glad to have him. But if an immigrant hates America and contemplates violence against our people or our institutions, we shouldn’t let him into our country.

This should be common sense. And it is roughly what our current immigration law tries to achieve. Alas, the Biden-Harris administration has ignored that law and unwisely pursued a policy of allowing the maximum number of immigrants into our country, regardless of their intentions. This policy will not end well, and an ISIS terror plot in Oklahoma City on Election Day — though foiled, fortunately — is only the beginning.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden-Harris Admin Makes Sudden Shift in Support of Israel

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.