Tag Archive for: illegal immigration

ROOKE: Four Horsemen Of Harris’s Campaign Apocalypse Have Arrived

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Vice President Kamala Harris is experiencing what could be the end of her campaign as four major issues converge simultaneously.

It’s not hyperbole that Harris needs an easy October politically if she wants to win the White House. The race between her and former President Donald Trump is so close that any disruption could result in a last-minute vote surge. Unfortunately for Harris, she is staring down four issues that will be a disaster for her campaign as Nov. 5 approaches.

The least discussed but most important problem facing Harris (and the rest of the country) is the longshoreman port strike that started Oct. 1. It’s likely Americans are just realizing that negotiations that have been going on for months between United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) and the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) are at an impasse. The promised strike started Tuesday, and workers have vowed to hold out until their wage and automation protection demands are met.

Already, parking lots at major retailers are filled with cars as Americans prepare for massive disruptions to supply chains and a rapid increase in inflationary prices. While Harris can count on the media to demonize these workers as selfish, greedy people looking for a payout, what they aren’t willing to tell the American people is that none of this would be an issue if the Biden-Harris administration had protected American manufacturing so that we didn’t have to rely on foreign countries (who control our docks) to make the products we use every day and longshoremen to unload these products from the docks.

Harris is now stuck between a rock and a hard place. If the Biden-Harris administration does not weigh in on the strike, she might win political points with union workers, but she will have lost the vote of the American family. Should the Biden-Harris administration force port workers back to work as they did with the rail strike, it may negate some economic damage. The harm will still be done, however: Americans should still brace for a pretty hefty economic impact, and Harris should expect blue-collar workers not to show up to vote for her in November.

Either way, the American taxpayer will bear the cost of this fight after four years of Democrat policies causing almost unrelenting inflation that erased the purchasing power of our dollar.

Harris also faces a humanitarian tragedy in the Carolinas, Florida, Tennessee and parts of Georgia as the effects of Hurricane Helene continue to unfold. The optics here are terrible. President Joe Biden told Americans that the federal government and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had no more support to give the affected areas because they pre-planned a package. Biden and Harris, however, were slow to acknowledge the damage being done by Helene, and neither of them have visited the areas to appear at least a little bit concerned.

Staged photo ops of Harris sitting at command centers in DC aren’t going to be enough. The people on the ground are complaining about the lack of state and federal support. Thousands of people are stuck in their homes with no running water, food, medicine or way out of the disaster — that’s if the flooding and mudslides didn’t annihilate their homes. The death toll will continue to rise, and it seems like this disaster didn’t become an issue for Harris until Trump mentioned it in his campaign speech. Whether this is true or not doesn’t really matter. What matters is that people on the ground feel this way, and Trump is the only candidate to fly to Georgia with supplies and meet with emergency crews for an update on the devastation.

For these voters, the question will be: Where was Harris when we needed her? The answer is that Harris was at a California fundraiser securing cash for her campaign. Harris can only hope the media will help Americans memory-hole her lack of action. Without this safety net, the appearance of callous indifference will turn voters off.

Additionally, immigration continues to be a thorn in Harris’s side. It’s a product of her own making, so she shouldn’t be shocked that it’s looming over her campaign. Still, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) letter sent to Republican Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales in late September states that as of July 21, 662,566 illegal immigrants with criminal histories were on ICE’s national docket, with 425,431 convicted criminals not detained. This list includes 13,099 criminally convicted murderers, 2,521 kidnappers, 9,461 sex offenders (not involving assault or commercialized sex), 15,811 sexual assault offenders and 2,200 sex traffickers.

The ICE letter is merely a glimpse of the people who come across the southern border and makes Trump’s campaign statements about foreign countries opening their prisons and mental institutions and sending these people to America ring true. Harris can’t escape from the fact that Biden put her in charge of the “root causes of migration” or that she was dubbed the “Border Czar.” She is now synonymous with open border policies that are wreaking havoc in our country.

And all of this is coming at the worst time for her. Not only does she have just over a month until the Nov. 5 election, but her vice presidential pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is set to debate Trump’s pick, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Tuesday night. Walz will have to answer for all of these issues. I expect Vance to bring up the longshoremen strike, the Biden-Harris disastrous response to Hurricane Helene and Harris’s open border policies.

While the VP debate has done little to move the needle for presidential campaigns in the past, this year could be different. The two assassination attempts on Trump’s life give new meaning to the duties of the vice president should something happen to the president. Vance and Walz are not just interviewing with the American people for the supporting role. They are trying to prove that should anything happen to Trump or Harris, they are more than capable of taking charge of the country.

Harris can’t afford for this debate to go badly for Walz; in the same way, it would be a disaster should the longshoremen strike implode, the victims of Hurricane Helene speak out against her and the effects of illegal immigration continue to be a problem. Her campaign needs an easy October, but it’s looking like she’s riding into Revelation.

AUTHOR

Mary Rooke

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

‘A Self-Feeding Circle’: How A Web Of NGOs Enabled By Biden-Harris Is Fueling The Migrant Crisis

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A web of NGOs is collaborating with government agencies to facilitate the resettlement of refugees – and Biden-Harris policies have only exacerbated the migrant crisis, sources told the Caller.

Immigration was thrust into the public spotlight as towns in America were overwhelmed with migrants, from Springfield, Ohio to Aurora, Colorado. Bureaucracies and non-profits often work in tandem to resettle refugees, and NGOs have only grown in influence under the Biden-Harris administration, experts said.

“It’s undeniable that the Biden Administration’s border policy has benefited the network of immigration NGOs that receive massive government contracts and grants to deal with the logistical and humanitarian problems that mass illegal immigration has caused,” the Capital Research Center’s Parker Thayer told the Caller in a statement.

While it’s difficult to quantify precisely how much NGOs have benefited, Thayer pointed to a USA Spending database. It shows that since 2020, federal spending on loans, grants, and contracts with the keyword “immigrant” has skyrocketed by almost tenfold.

Screenshot from USA Spending.gov

Kevin Lynn, Executive Director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy, told the Caller there is a process in place for resettling refugees, and NGOs work with government agencies to further that goal.

He pointed to the Biden-Harris administration’s Welcome Corps.

The Welcome Corps is a refugee sponsorship program where “groups of at least five people” can sponsor a refugee, according to the initiative’s site. The State Department’s Office of the Spokesperson claimed last year the program “is the boldest innovation in refugee resettlement in four decades.”

“Welcome Corps was launched the Biden administration under the refugee resettlement program, and it basically allows private individuals to select their own refugees and future American citizens,” Lynn told the Caller.

Kevin Lynn, Executive Director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy, told the Caller there is a process in place for resettling refugees, and NGOs work with government agencies to further that goal.

He pointed to the Biden-Harris administration’s Welcome Corps.

The Welcome Corps is a refugee sponsorship program where “groups of at least five people” can sponsor a refugee, according to the initiative’s site. The State Department’s Office of the Spokesperson claimed last year the program “is the boldest innovation in refugee resettlement in four decades.”

“Welcome Corps was launched the Biden administration under the refugee resettlement program, and it basically allows private individuals to select their own refugees and future American citizens,” Lynn told the Caller.

The program’s partners include the Department of State and its Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM). It also partnered with the Church World Service (CWS) in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which transformed the city into the “refugee capital of the world,” according to Lynn.

The city’s website denotes itself as “America’s refugee capital” and explains that it assists in resettling refugees.

A fact sheet from the U.S. Department of Housing and Development for landlords and property managers states the federal government collaborates with 10 resettlement agencies that have over 340 affiliates nationwide. The documents list various financial assistance and support that refugees receive, including employment services.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has an agency called the Administration for Children & Families, and under its purview is the Office of Refugee Resettlement which partners with nonprofits in states that participate in the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program. The only state not listed is Wyoming.

In fact, the site even has a tool for people to locate various refugee resettlement NGOs in their area.

Rather than trying to figure out how to stop the administration from resettling more aliens in OH, perhaps OH should consider reducing the incentives for them to come. Here’s a starting point:

1) Mandatory E-Verify;
2) Restrictions on welfare benefits;
3) Enforcement of…

— Immigration Accountability Project (@I_A_Project) September 10, 2024

Thayer noted many of these NGOs would not exist without government support. “It’s hard to call them grassroots,” he told the Caller.

He pointed to The Vera Institute for Justice as an example of governments funneling taxpayer dollars into nonprofits.

The Institute gets millions in federal dollars to represent illegal immigrants in immigration court while it pushes for soft-on-crime and open borders polices that lead to larger government contracts, Thayer said.

“It’s a self-feeding circle,” he concluded.

Over the last 40 years, the corporatocracy has created massive networks supported by business, NGOs and governments at the federal, state and local levels to prioritize the hiring of both legal and illegal immigrants over Americans.

The education system and corporate media… https://t.co/5J8i13bcdr

— Project for Immigration Reform (@PFIRorg) September 19, 2024

One group listed on HHS’s site is Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio, a non-profit that partners with the State Department for Refugee Resettlement. According to a 2023 audit of the group’s finances, one of its main sources of revenue is grants and fees from the government, to the tune of several million dollars.

A facility in Springfield opened up earlier this year to assist with immigration services, and it’s directed by Catholic Charities Southwest Ohio, the Springfield News-Sun reported. CEO Tony Stieritz said the organization has been giving aid in the city for over a year, according to the outlet.

However, the organization states on its website that it “had no role in bringing migrants to the Springfield area,” and it does not provide “resettlement services in Springfield.”

The national organization Catholic Charities recently came under fire on social media after reports showed the Galveston, Texas, chapter substantially increased its revenue under the Biden Administration.

🚨QUESTION: How does the Revenue for the NGO the Catholic Charities nearly quadruple since the Biden Administration took over?

In 2018 the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston only brought in $44 million

In 2021. the revenue for NGO blossomed to $217 million. pic.twitter.com/m5mGfNY12l

— Merissa Hansen⚡️ (@merissahansen17) September 9, 2024

Illegal immigration to the U.S. has accelerated rapidly under Biden.

The Biden-Harris administration is attempting to make open borders “a part of the infrastructure,” according to Chris Chmielenski, President of the Immigration Accountability Project.

“And just to be clear, all of these people are technically in the country illegally, because they’ve been paroled by the administration,” he emphasized.

Kevin Lynn pointed to Biden’s CBP One app, arguing that it expedites illegal immigration. “They’re granting these blanket paroles, where the whole intention of parole was to be determined on a case-by-case basis.”

He explained the initial intent of parole was to grant travelers temporary status if they needed to come to the U.S. for a specific reason, such as for an emergency medical procedure.

The app was originally created during COVID-19 in Oct. 2020 to reduce the amount of time that travelers spent in person with CBP officers to schedule appointments, according to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

Now, the Biden-Harris administration uses it to allow people without the necessary documentation to enter into the U.S. interior, according to CIS. The app allows migrants to make appointments in Central America and Mexico, which CIS argues incentivizes illegal immigrants to use smugglers.

There is another parole process specifically for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, Lynn told the Caller. A person in the U.S. can sponsor someone from these nations – but the sponsor doesn’t have to be an American citizen, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The agency’s definition of a supporter includes “asylees, refugees, and parolees” along with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) individuals. In June, the Biden administration granted TPS for 300,000 Haitians.

“Now these refugees parolees can sponsor people, people who are here on temporary protected status,” Lynn said.

Chmielenski told the Caller that NGOs are facilitating the resettlement process for migrants. “They’re helping [migrants] go through the process of applying for their work permit,” he stated, adding they could be eligible for public benefits.

“Essentially, the administration is having the NGOs do their dirty work for them,” Chmielenski said.

AUTHOR

Eireann Van Natta

General assignment reporter.

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

More Americans Identify as Republican than Democrat as November Draws Nearer

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For the first time in recorded history, more Americans are identifying with the Republican Party in the third quarter of a presidential election year than the Democratic Party — and are aligning with the GOP on key issues heading into November. Gallup released an in-depth analysis this week revealing that 48% of adults in the U.S. either identify as Republican or lean towards the Republican Party, compared to only 45% who identify as Democrat or lean towards the Democratic Party.

“Party affiliation and voting are strongly predictive of individuals’ vote choices, with the vast majority of identifiers and leaners voting for the candidate of their preferred party,” Gallup noted. The analytics giant continued, “At the aggregate level, there are typically more Democrats and Democratic leaners than Republicans and Republican leaners in the U.S. adult population.” In observing prior elections, Gallup pointed out that Democrats have typically won the White House when they have had “larger-than-normal advantages in party affiliation.”

For example, 52% of Americans identified with the Democratic Party in 1992, as opposed to 40% who allied themselves with the Republican Party, and Bill Clinton, then the Democratic Governor of Arkansas, won the presidency. The margin was a little lower in 1996, when 50% of Americans identified with the Democratic Party and 41% with the GOP, but Clinton won reelection. The margin was significantly narrower in 2000 (48% Democrat, 43% Republican) when Texas Governor George W. Bush, a Republican, beat incumbent Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat. In 2004, the nation was evenly split (47% identifying with the Democratic Party, 47% with the Republican Party), yielding another Bush win.

From that point forward, the margins between the two party identifications stayed fairly close, but still with a decided Democratic advantage. Barack Obama took the White House in 2008 (49% identifying with the Democratic Party, 41% with the Republican Party) and was reelected in 2012 (47% identifying with the Democratic Party, 43% with the Republican Party). Donald Trump ascended to the presidency four years later, with 46% of Americans identifying with the Democratic Party and 43% with the GOP, the slimmest margin seen since 2000. In 2020, 48% of Americans affiliated themselves with the Democratic Party and only 43% with the Republican Party and former Vice President Joe Biden was sworn in as president.

Now, more Americans not only identify with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party, but more Americans identify with the Republican Party than have identified with the Democratic Party over the past 16 years. Gallup noted, “Republicans previously have not had an outright advantage in party affiliation during the third quarter of a presidential election year, and they have rarely outnumbered Democrats in election and nonelection years over the past three decades.”

Beyond party identification, Gallup discovered that Americans have greater confidence in the GOP’s handling of issues voters consider important — namely, the economy and inflation, immigration, and government — than in the Democratic Party’s, by a five-point margin, which Gallup classifies as a “strong” advantage in the context of previous presidential elections.

The Republican Party is also leading on economic issues. As Gallup noted, “Americans currently give the Republican Party a six-percentage-point edge, 50% to 44%, as the party they think would do a better job of keeping the country prosperous.” The party which has held an advantage on this question in the past has won 12 out of 16 presidential elections. Americans also give the economy a rating of -28, with only 22% saying that economic conditions under President Joe Biden are “excellent” or “good.” Gallup added, “Republicans hold a more substantial advantage of 14 points (54% to 40%) as the party Americans believe is better able to keep the nation safe from terrorism and other international threats.”

Additionally, only 22% of Americans say that they are satisfied with how things are going in the U.S. currently, a low unrivaled since 13% said the same in 2008. Gallup observed, “Satisfaction levels this low have been associated with incumbent presidents losing their reelection bids in 1980 (19%), 1992 (22%) and 2020 (28%).” Biden’s low favorability ratings (39%, significantly lower than former President Donald Trump’s 46% heading into the 2020 election) are less likely to impact the 2024 election, Gallup anticipates, since he dropped out of the presidential race. But Gallup noted, “Biden’s unpopularity could still affect the election to the extent voters transfer their frustrations with the Biden administration to Vice President Kamala Harris.”

The survey analysis from Gallup follows news that Republican voter registration is on the rise, outpacing Democratic voter registration in several historically-Democratic districts, and Republicans are accounting for a significantly higher percentage of early voting turnout than in previous years. Historically, early voting and mail-in voting have been dominated by Democrats, with Republicans voting on election day itself.

In its analysis, Gallup concluded, “The political environment suggests the election is Trump’s and Republicans’ to lose. Nearly every indicator of the election context is favorable to the Republican Party, and those that aren’t are essentially tied rather than showing a Democratic advantage.”

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.

Chicago Teachers Instructed to Pass Migrant Students Despite ‘Severe Academic Deficiencies’

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Teachers in Chicago are the latest to voice their concerns over how illegal immigration is changing the landscape in America. Or in this case, how it’s shaping what’s happening in the classroom.

According to WGN Radio, teachers in the city have revealed that “they were instructed by school administrators to give their migrant students a 70 percent in every subject and pass them on to the next grade … even if their migrant students displayed severe academic deficiencies.” It appears “Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez assured that migrant students were held to the same standards as Chicago’s American students.” However, it was only last month that a study from the University of Illinois System proved there was not much of a standard to live up to.

Even beyond the migrant students, many of whom reportedly do not speak English, numerous students throughout the city of Illinois “are still struggling to catch up academically from the learning loss that occurred when schools were forced to close” due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the study found, “[O]nly about one-fourth of all public-school students are back to pre-pandemic performance levels in English language arts while even fewer have returned to pre-pandemic levels in math.”

So, while it’s not looking good for the Chicago Public Schools as it is, teachers have further admitted that part of their orders to pass migrant students has led to “deliberately falsifying grades” — which applies to both classroom grades and academic standardized testing scores.

Sylvia Snowden, a reporter who spoke with several Chicago teachers, explained, “When the tests have been proctored, after they’ve been evaluated, the teachers are able to see the scores. And when the teachers saw the scores, they saw that the students were not at grade level, yet they were instructed to give them 70 percent in every single class, which is the minimum C and pass them on to the next grade.” When asked for an explanation, the Chicago Public Schools responded with this vague statement:

“Chicago public schools aims to provide a rigorous, welcoming, inclusive pre-K through 12 environment for all students, including those who are newly arrived in Chicago with their families from around the globe. As a district, we have high expectations for all students and policies and promotion guidelines in place that are modified to serve the specialized needs of our English language learners, and offer in school, after-school year-round interventions developed with the principal/counselor/teacher and parents to target the students described deficiencies.”

As Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, shared with The Washington Stand, “This report of teachers being instructed to pass students should invoke concern regardless of the type of student involved.” She emphasized that “moving underperforming students through the system robs them of their education” because “they are denied the chance to understand, comprehend, and build understanding and command of facts that build culture and the ability to contribute to society and one’s own success.”

But amid the ongoing learning issues at hand and the concerns that go with them, a quick glance at what Chicago has endured in recent years demonstrates how their education department is not the only area tainted by the border crisis.

Millions of illegal immigrants have flooded into the country and Chicago, being the self-designated sanctuary city that it is, has taken in nearly 50,000 migrants since 2022. In only two years, $400 million have gone toward funding the migrants, which has put a significant dent in the city’s money and resources. Nearly all aspects of life in Chicago have been affected by the newcomers, and allegedly, has caused city residents a great deal of frustration.

“People are angry about the lack of resources in their community,” said Richard Wallace, a man involved with organizing community affairs. “People are angry about joblessness. People are angry about the cost of living skyrocketing.”

Evidently, the decisions affecting the American education system and overall quality of life are not free from having long-lasting consequences — particularly for the younger generations, Kilgannon emphasized. Considering the failing test scores and poor learning environments, she concluded, “When Gen Z ‘quietly quits,’ they are simply following the example that was set for them by a public school system that quietly quit teaching them.”

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.

Trump Pledges to Visit Ohio Town Suffering from Immigration Crisis

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“In the next two weeks, I’m going to Springfield and then to Aurora,” former President Donald Trump announced at a campaign rally in Long Island, New York, this week. “We’re going to take care of Ohio, and we’re going to take care of Colorado, and we’re going to take care of every single state in the union. They’re all under siege,” he continued. Trump joked, “You may never see me again, but that’s okay. I gotta do what I gotta do. ‘Whatever happened to Trump? Well, he never got out of Springfield.’”

Over the past three years, the sleepy Ohio town of Springfield has seen an influx of approximately 20,000 Haitian immigrants, who were granted a “Temporary Protected Status” by the Biden-Harris administration. The administration’s immigrant dump has been responsible for increased traffic accidents, skyrocketing rent and housing prices, overwhelmed and crippled social services, and, in at least one instance, the death of an 11-year-old American boy. Schools and health centers have been burdened, with both spending tens of thousands — and in some cases hundreds of thousands — of dollars annually on Haitian-Creole interpreters.

Trump addressed this point, saying, “So the mayor of Springfield … instead of saying, ‘We’re getting them all out! We’re getting them out!’ He says very simply, ‘We’re hiring teachers to teach them English.’ Could you believe it? ‘We are hiring interpreters so when they go to school and take the place of our children in school, we have an interpreter.’” The former president asked, “What the hell is wrong with our country?”

The crisis in Springfield has garnered national attention thanks to Trump and his native Ohioan running mate, Senator J.D. Vance (R). During last week’s presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump mentioned reports of Haitian immigrants stealing and eating household pets. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” the 45th president declared. He continued, “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” While Harris and mainstream media pundits dismissed Trump’s claim that cats and dogs were being eaten — debate moderators from ABC News “fact-checked” Trump on this point during the debate — video evidence has been found of skinned cats being barbecued, and recordings have been released of multiple reports to police, complaining of immigrants eating pets or slaughtering ducks and geese in local parks.

Vance commented, “Housing shortages have caused rents to skyrocket, hospitals are overrun, schools are ill-equipped to teach students who don’t speak English, and the roads are unsafe as unlicensed drivers have caused a massive increase in roadway accidents.” He continued, “The American media didn’t give a damn about any of this until President Donald Trump mentioned Springfield at the debate. … I’m going to continue speaking up for my constituents and the disastrous effects that Kamala Harris’s open border policies are having on their lives.”

Trump also pledged to visit Aurora, Colorado, where Venezuelan gang members have been taking over entire apartment complexes and shutting down streets. Armed members of the Tren de Aragua gang were reported to have forced property managers out of buildings and gone door to door themselves collecting rent money from terrified residents.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman (R) faulted the Biden-Harris administration for the illegal immigrants’ rampage, noting that Aurora had refused “to participate in the migrant crisis; we were not going to provide taxpayer support, and we were not even going to be a conduit for federal dollars.” He added, “These people didn’t just go there on their own; somebody put them there. Who made this decision to put them there?” He speculated that the Denver suburb was being targeted by the “federal government, perhaps using some of our local nonprofit partners as a conduit.”

At his Long Island rally this week, Trump said, “We’re getting them of our country. They came in illegally. They’re destroying our country. We’re getting them out. They’re going to be brought back to the country from which they came. I will protect our country. I will protect our country.” According to a recent survey, 54% of Americans (including Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters) support Trump’s mass deportation proposals. This is up from 51% earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Harris has refused to address the immigration crisis that she and President Joe Biden have facilitated. Asked what “struck” him about Harris’s response when Politico White House correspondent Eugene Daniels probed the vice president in an interview on how to handle the Springfield situation, Daniels said, “That she didn’t answer. I think that was probably the thing that struck me the most. Because I was trying to get at, there is an underlying concern that people who live in Springfield have that has nothing to do with race, right?” He continued, “So, I was trying to see if she believed that the federal government had a role in it. And, instead, she took the opportunity to talk about the racist conspiracy theories that have been spread by both former President Donald Trump and his running mate.” Daniels also quipped that Harris is “pretty good at dodging” questions.

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.

Residents Fear Small Penn. Town Won’t ‘Come Back from This’ after Biden-Harris Import Thousands of Haitian Immigrants

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The small Ohio municipality of Springfield has made national headlines over the past weeks, thanks to tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants being surreptitiously dumped into the city by the Biden-Harris administration over the past three years. But Springfield isn’t the only “heartland U.S.A.” town suffering after being inundated with immigrants. This week, the America 2100 non-profit organization launched its own on-the-ground investigation in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, to expose how the rural town’s 2,000% increase in Haitian immigrants has impacted American residents.

Last week, America 2100 shared reports from locals and residents chronicling a steep increase in traffic accidents and a rise in violent crime, including Haitians attempting carjackings and mugging Americans outside liquor stores. The non-profit group noted, “It isn’t just Springfield. It’s happening everywhere. In Charleroi, Pennsylvania — a low-income town of just 4,000 — the immigrant population has increased by 2,000% over the past two years. And it’s almost all Haitians.”

In an interview with America 2100, Charleroi councilman Larry Celaschi said, “I wish I could come face to face for 60 seconds … with whoever was behind all this and bringing the immigrants into Charleroi…” He asked, “Where the hell’s the money that should be coming to Charleroi, okay? Why was it all dumped on us, and we’re not being funded with anything. Okay, and again, we can’t even make ends meet with our budget, and so now how — where are we gonna get this extra revenue to pay for them?” Celaschi concluded, “And so now we’ve got to do all these things to accommodate the immigrants. That’s bull****.”

On Monday, America 2100 visited Charleroi, saying, “The media won’t tell their story — so we will.” One resident who was “born and raised” in Charleroi told America 2100 Senior Adviser Nate Hochman that the 2,000 Haitian immigrants have clogged up the small town’s sewage system. “You can smell the raw sewage,” he said. “These 120-year-old pipes can’t handle all the sewage that’s getting pumped into them … from all the people that came in.”

Another resident also complained about the “absolutely disgusting” lack of hygiene among the immigrants and how it has impacted the town. “I feel bad for a lot of these people,” said Andrew, who does housing repairs. “And then some of these houses you go into … they live like they still live in a clay building in Port-au-Prince and they just want to keep it how it was,” he continued. Andrew explained that the houses the Haitian immigrants live in are “disgusting,” recounting that he once spent three days simply scrubbing a kitchen after Haitians vacated a house, before moving on to cleaning the rest of the house. He noted the massive increase in immigrants over the past two years, saying, “The agencies, they just keep bringing these people in and bringing people in and bringing people in.”

“This is one of the most immediately obvious aspects of the immigration crisis in Charleroi,” Hochman noted. “The big businesses are buying up homes in town and packing them with as many as 15-20 Haitians per property. It’s essentially converting the entire town into a gigantic workers’ barracks.”

Local parents reported that schools are being overwhelmed and forced to divert funds to hire multiple interpreters. “They’re having a huge problem, I think, with trying to teach,” one mom said. “There were 45 Haitians that started kindergarten this year,” she added. Another parent explained, “A kindergarten class is probably no more than 60 at most, at most.” Hochman asked, “So like the majority of the kindergarten is Haitian now? In what? Two years?” The parents nodded and replied, “Yeah.” One of the parents noted, “One of the things … about the not speaking English … middle school grades where parents are having a problem because their kids can’t advance because the teachers are having to compensate for the kids who can’t speak English.”

Parents also observed that crimes against American students have increased. “There’s been some assaults with some kids on the bus,” a Charleroi mom said. She recounted, “One student attacked another American child on the bus. … And I guess he was like 20.” The girl who was attacked, the mom said, was about 14 years old. She continued, “He told the girl to move and she said, ‘No,’ and he grabbed her — and like really grabbed her — and like wouldn’t let her go. Like they just get on the bus and like go to school, you know, with like the elementary kids, just to get a ride to school.” The mom added, “The school does nothing about it. People complain all the time about things and they do nothing.”

Delivery driver Andy explained how the immigrant influx has destroyed Charleroi’s economy and job market. “That’s what these staffing agencies are doing. … They said, ‘We can’t find people to work.’ Well, that’s a half-truth. There’s people that would work if you paid them, you know … the going wage for the work,” Andy said. He continued, “But they want to pay less and so they ended up hiring these, getting involved with these agencies that bring in these workers.” He added:

“Those jobs that they [Haitian immigrants] have, they used to be American jobs. But they [employers] decided, ‘We don’t want to pay five bucks more an hour, we’ll pay three bucks more an hour and we’ll take that off the top and we’ll keep that, and we’ll bring in Haitians with them through this work program.’ It’s a lot of jobs that have been lost by Americans. So they bring in … people from third-world countries who will do that work for poverty wages. And they think it’s a great deal — and it probably is a good deal for them.”

“You get a lot of people saying they’re illegals and everyone wants to fight about that term, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is what’s going on and how it’s affecting everybody,” Andy summarized.

Truck driver Ernie told America 2100 how the immigration has increased the cost of living in town, while decreasing the quality of actually living in Charleroi. “This used to be just a nice, blue-collar, middle-of-nowhere town. It was affordable to live in, wasn’t a terrible neighborhood, you could raise your family here and live your life and everybody would just pretty much leave you alone,” Ernie began. He continued, “But I don’t know if it’s going to come back from this, I don’t know if we’re going to come back from this. It’s at the point now, I think they’ve just destroyed the town and they bought all these properties.”

He said that while you “might be able to buy a house cheap,” Charleroi homeowners now have to worry about what kind of neighbors they’ll have. “Right now, I’m surrounded by the immigrants, never used to be that way. They don’t care about their property, they’ll destroy it, run through, steal your stuff, break your stuff. There’s no pride anymore. Nobody cares about anything,” he said, speaking from experience. The truck driver continued, “You’re bringing in people from one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere, paying them nothing because they don’t know what a dollar is, then you got this company who’s buying the houses, renting off them. I mean, it’s full all-around corruption, extortion, somebody’s lining their pockets.”

“We’re over here struggling. I make a pretty decent wage and I’m picking up a second job to try to help cover the bills, my girlfriend’s working two jobs to try to cover the bills,” Ernie said. He added, “And it never used to be like that.” Addressing the number of longtime Charleroi residents leaving town due to the immigration issues, Ernie said, “It’s killing another small town in America. … There’s a lot of fighting people around here and it takes a lot for people to quit. It’s happening. Whenever you see the natives — from this area in particular — going somewhere else, it’s bad.”

Lifelong Charleroi resident Tom talked about the cultural conflicts arising from the mass importing of 2,000 Haitians. “They don’t have anything in common with our culture. … When people say ‘the culture,’ a lot of times they say they don’t know what it means. What culture means is the way we do things around here. Worldwide, that’s what culture is,” Tom said. He continued, “What I’ve seen … since the influx has started is they have no interest in our culture, this culture. They’ve brought their culture here.”

Tom also dismissed the claim that the immigration surge somehow enriches or betters the town. “I don’t believe that argument of ‘They had to bring that population here to save Charleroi’ has any validity. We weren’t prepared for it, we don’t have the tax base for it. This is a town of 4,000 people hanging on the best they can,” he said. He continued:

“So whoever is responsible for putting them here, that is an act of negligence. And when it’s found out who directly decided that this was a good place to do this, they should be held accountable fully, their feet should be held to the fire long-term. They should never be allowed to work in the industry again, whether it’s politics or business, because what they’ve done here is despicable — and they don’t know that because, again, nobody cares about Charleroi, Pennsylvania. The 4,000 people that lived here cared about it and were doing their level best to make it a place to live and want to be.”

Tom shared that, due to the problems caused by the mass migration, he has pulled his son out of school and is selling his house. “If you told me, after all of the other garbage that has been heaped on this community since the early 80s, that this would be the denouement, I would have mortgaged my house and bet you were wrong,” he said. “But here we are,” he concluded.

So who is responsible? Hochman explained, “Charleroi — like Springfield — is a story of Republican betrayal. The people we’ve met here are just trying to survive. They deserve better leaders.” According to America 2100, the state senator representing Charleroi, Camera Bartoletta (R-Washington County), has “put out a statement attacking Trump for talking about the Haitian immigration crisis in her town.” In a statement posted to Facebook, Bartoletta said, “For some of these people saying awful things about these Haitian immigrants, I’d ask them what it might have been like for their parents or grandparents or great grandparents who might have come from another country and spoken a different language.” She added, “Many of the Haitians in Charleroi have been here for two or three years already. They escaped horrific events in Haiti, many having to travel/hide in the jungles for months or years.”

While Senator Bob Casey (D-Penn.) has claimed to be “fighting for the 300+ jobs at a glass manufacturing plant in Charleroi,” the small town’s mayor and a councilman said otherwise. “He needs to get his hind end out here in person and stop wasting time and stop sending aides,” one of the men said. He continued, “We need to talk to the man who holds the title United States Senator and he needs to be here in the borough of Charleroi and he needs to stop what is going to take place that is going to totally decimate this town.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Pledges to Visit Ohio Town Suffering from Immigration Crisis

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.

Majority of Americans Favor Mass Deportation, but Some Dems Continue to Vote Against It

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Some have estimated as many as 24 million noncitizens are roaming the country. Under the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies, millions upon millions of illegal immigrants have flooded into America. And reportedly, anywhere from 1.5 to 2.7 million of them may be voting in the upcoming presidential election. While Americans are currently divided on many issues, a recent poll helped demonstrate how many citizens are willing to come together on the issue of immigration.

According to the Scripps News/Ipsos survey, in which 1,027 Americans adults were surveyed between September 13 and 15, 54% of the respondents support the GOP’s presidential candidate Donald Trump’s policy of a mass deportation of illegal immigrants. Of this percentage, 86% were Republican, 58% were Independent, and 25% were Democrat — all of whom noted they “somewhat” or “strongly” agree with Trump’s proposal.

At least 39% of the respondents believed immigration was the top issue concerning the upcoming election. And as The Post Millennial reported, “Approximately one-third of Americans say securing the US-Mexico border should be the nation’s top priority, followed by a pathway to citizenship for those who qualify (20 percent), deporting those here illegally (18 percent), and ensuring opportunities remain for those trying to legally enter the country (18 percent).”

The poll also revealed some of why those surveyed agreed with the mass deportation policy. As the data proved, it has much to do with the concern that illegal immigrants serve as a threat to election integrity, with 83% of Republicans, 46% of Independents, and 24% of Democrats feeling this way. Yet, Democratic lawmakers continue to vote against policies that would address these concerns.

For instance, on Wednesday, 158 “House Democrats voted against a bill that would deport illegal immigrants convicted of a sexual offense or conspiracy to commit such a crime.” The Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act ultimately passed 266 to 158 with full Republican support as well as the support from 51 Democrats. But in response to those who voted against the bill, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) asserted, “[W]e’re talking about illegals who are here who are committing domestic violence, rape and murder on women and children — they’ve gotta go. They shouldn’t be allowed into our country.”

But with ongoing turmoil over bills designed to protect U.S. citizens from illegal immigration, where do objections to protective measures lead us? As Family Research Council President Tony Perkins pointed out on Wednesday’s episode of “Washington Watch,” the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies have had “tragic consequences” — some of which include the numerous Americans murdered by illegal immigrants.

In America, Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) insisted on Wednesday’s episode, “[Y]ou are less safe than you were a year ago. You’re … less safe than you were two years ago, and definitely than you were three years ago,” all due to “this administration’s policies.” Perkins agreed, adding, “We really don’t know the number of illegal aliens that are in the country,” with the number ranging “from 12 million to 18 million.” But while “not all of them are violent criminals … there are enough to make Americans” feel “insecure” and that “their safety [is] at risk.”

Brecheen agreed, “[T]hese people have to be removed from this country.” America “has to send a signal to people that you cannot come into this country and break the law and expect that you would be first in line” to receiving American benefits. But because this is happening, Brecheen underscored, “[D]eportation is top and center for many of us.”

“[T]he law is the law,” Perkins emphasized, which he felt leads to a conversation occurring within the church of whether “it’s not really the Christian thing to do to uproot these people who have been here in this country and deport them.” But according to Brecheen, this mindset isn’t based on the Bible. Rather, “taking care of the foreigner and sojourner [is] an individual mandate. But there’s also a mandate that you obey the laws of the land.” And in the case of illegal immigration, “we’ve got people who have broken the laws of the land.”

Brecheen emphasized that the problem is rooted in instances where people break the law and do not face consequences, because “it creates the atmosphere where lawlessness is compounded.” Given this, “we’ve got to make sure that the rule of law is upheld in the United States.” Perkins noted how the two recent assassination attempts on Trump “speaks to violence, turbulence, an unsettled country, [and] that lawlessness is manifesting itself at every level.”

Brecheen pressed further, warning that “when we don’t have consequences for infractions … we’re inviting more infractions into a greater level, a greater degree.” Especially in the current administration, it’s clear they’re “time and time again deviating from biblical truths.” But the real question, he insisted, is “where does it end?”

Ultimately, Brecheen concluded, “It’s constitutional in regard to illegal immigration that we are to protect this nation … against an invasion.” And given the quantity of those coming into this country, he added, it “is an invasion.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: NYC Council Democrats Silent On Anti-Sanctuary Bill As Migrant Crime Hits Headlines

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.

1.5 to 2.7 Million Illegals Likely to Vote in 2024: Experts

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Do you plan to vote this November? You’re not alone. Experts say somewhere between 1.5 million and 2.7 million illegal immigrants are likely to cast a ballot in the 2024 elections, impacting races from dog catcher to president of the United States.

The historic flood of illegal immigrants during the Biden-Harris administration has also padded voter rolls, thanks to controversial federal legislation from the Clinton administration. If illegal immigrants and other noncitizens vote in the same proportion as in previous U.S. elections, the number will range anywhere from one-and-a-half to nearly three million votes.

“A 2014 academic journal found that 6.4% of noncitizens voted in 2008,” Kerri Toloczko, executive director of Election Integrity Network and senior advisor to the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, told The Washington Stand. “There are about 24 million noncitizens in the U.S. right now. If they voted only at the same rate of 6.4% this year as they did in 2008, they would account for 1.5 million votes.”

That ponderous number of unlawful votes may just be the tip of the iceberg. “Based on the increased noncitizen activity at state DMVs, and the work of left-wing voter registration activists, this 6.4% could be much higher than it was in 2008. We could be looking at over two million unlawful noncitizen votes,” she told TWS.

Her estimate largely dovetails with a previous study showing 2.7 million noncitizens are likely to vote in the 2024 election.

The author of that study — James D. Agresti, the president and cofounder of the think tank and fact-check website Just Facts — confirmed to TWS that “the most comprehensive, transparent, and rigorous study on this matter found that about two to five million noncitizens are illegally registered to vote, and aggressive attempts to debunk the study have completely failed.”

Opponents of election integrity laws minimize the problem by claiming it is already illegal for foreigners to vote in U.S. elections. But, unlike other purported threats, the problem truly holds the power to undermine our democracy, election experts say. “The Left likes to use phrases like, ‘It’s not that widespread,’” Toloczko observed. “But how many does a moral relativist uninterested in upholding the law think is too many?” And “if every unlawful vote cancels out the vote of a lawful citizen voter, how many of those are acceptable?”

Would two million unlawful votes be “enough to possibly make a difference in House and Senate races, and even the presidency?” she asked. “You bet.”

Agresti noted that “the claim that noncitizens rarely vote is based on studies with absurd methodologies. For example, they measure the prevalence of this crime by merely counting convictions for it.”

This is “ridiculous,” Agresti told TWS. He compared the statistic to measuring the number of Americans who illegally use narcotics “based on guilty pleas and verdicts. The same applies to any other law that isn’t strictly enforced, like driving above the speed limit.”

The House of Representatives released a 22-page report in June documenting illegal immigrants voting in the United States. Under current law, 17 cities in California, Maryland, and Vermont as well as the District of Columbia allow noncitizens to vote. While the noncitizens are supposed to vote only in local elections, “mistakes” have been reported.

Toloczko highlighted documented cases of foreigners illegally voting in U.S. elections. “The federal government recently indicted a group of noncitizens from 15 different countries on federal voting charges. Texas recently purged 6,500 noncitizens from its voter rolls — 30% of whom had voting records,” Toloczko told TWS, expressing similar thoughts in The Stream.

Illegal immigration impacts U.S. elections in a second way: Counting noncitizens in the U.S. Census redistributes eight congressional seats and, with them, their Electoral College votes which elect the president, a team of immigration scholars found. America’s teeming illegal immigrant population gives additional congressional seats to California (3), Texas (2), New York, New Jersey, and Florida (one each); and it takes seats away from Alabama, Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Ohio, Rhode Island, and West Virginia (one seat each). Illegal immigrants alone transfer one seat each from Ohio, Alabama, and Minnesota to California, Texas, and New York, the study from the Center for Immigration Studies found.

House Republicans have sought to address the problem by passing a number of border security and election integrity measures, including the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act (H.R. 8281), which would require local election officials to verify someone’s U.S. citizenship status before registering that person to vote. It passed the House of Representatives in July.

“States are prohibited from requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship” thanks to court interpretations of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) told Fox Business show “Mornings with Maria” on Tuesday. “Democrats who vote against that show what they are really up to: that they want noncitizens to vote and rig our elections.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) has called the bill’s passage “a generation-defining moment.” Johnson favors attaching the election integrity bill to a must-pass continuing resolution to keep the government funded past the end of the fiscal year on September 30 and avert a government shutdown. Yet Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has declared the bill dead on arrival in the Senate. “What is he afraid of?” asked Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) on Tuesday morning on Fox Business.

The underlying numbers behind the 1.5 to 2.7 million noncitizen vote count may undercount the extent of the problem. Yale University researchers estimated the size of the U.S. illegal immigrant population at 16 to 29 million in 2016, before the Biden-Harris administration enacted border policies that saw record-breaking levels of illegal immigration every year to date. While administration officials channeled illegal immigration into ports of entry and other means such as the CBP One app which reduce the number of entries on paper during this presidential election year, experts say the number of overall immigrants entering the U.S. has remained the same or increased.

Americans have increasingly groaned under the strain of illegal immigration. Video footage has shown members of the Venezuelan transnational criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TdA) rampaging through the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, where they reportedly terrorize and extort residents of multiple apartment buildings.

The Biden-Harris administration has placed roughly 20,000 Haitians in the town of Springfield, Ohio — a town of 58,000 Americans — where they have proceeded to drive up housing costs, underbid American workers for jobs, and engage in a spree of car crashes. The problem has reportedly spread to the nearby town of Tremont. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) recently sent the city millions of dollars and deployed a team of Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers to get the deadly traffic problem under control. Although the legacy media attempted to pin a large reported number of bomb threats against Springfield schools and other institutions on J.D. Vance and other politicians who have highlighted the city’s plight, DeWine verified that officials determined that all 33 threats were “hoaxes” that originated overseas.

Mayors of Aurora and Tremont say they were not consulted about the resettling of these foreigners in their cities.

A Axios/Harris poll released in April showed a majority of Americans support the mass deportation of illegal immigrants back to their countries of origin. Overall, 51% of U.S. citizens back the Trump-endorsed policy of deportations, including about half (46%) of all registered Independents. A surprisingly high 42% of Democrats support mass deportations, likely fueled by the increasing number of African Americans — who have voted as high as nine out of 10 for the Democratic presidential candidate — who see their neighborhoods impacted by a surging illegal immigrant population, especially in sanctuary cities. Their cities’ Democratic leaders often divert taxpayer funds, and deny taxpayer-funded services to U.S. citizens, in favor of illegal immigrants.

As the government funding drama plays out in the U.S. Capitol, America First Legal has filed numerous lawsuits contending that two provisions of federal law — 8 U.S.C. § 1373(c) and 8 U.S.C. § 1644 — already allow state and local officials to obtain information about applicants’ citizenship status before registration.

“The reason why [Democrats have] got that wide-open border is so they can get as many illegals in here and get them to vote, so they can dominate the American vote,” Rep. Mike Ezell (R-Miss.) told “Washington Watch” in July. “They want to dominate the House, the Senate, and the White House.”

“They want to get elected by any means necessary,” Ezell said.

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.

Bomb Threats Overwhelm Springfield, Ohio as Nationwide Firestorm over Migrants Continues

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Americans in Springfield, Ohio, are still suffering after the Biden-Harris administration dumped tens of thousands of third-world immigrants into their once-quiet city. Springfield resident and former teacher Diana Daniels told Fox News that life has been a “dystopian nightmare” since the arrival of nearly 20,000 Haitian immigrants over the past three years. “You hope you wake up and it’s 2019 again, and then you realize it’s 2024, and it’s the same thing over and over again, day after day,” Daniels said. “It’s hard sometimes to get up in the morning and hear residents that I’ve known for years struggle. This is a paycheck-to-paycheck … kind of town … working class.”

In a sobering reminder of the national attention Springfield has received, multiple bomb threats have forced the evacuation of the town’s city hall, two schools, and the DMV in the last few days. On Saturday, the terror spread to local hospitals as both Kettering and Mercy Health Springfield were put on lockdown while authorities scoured the floors with security teams. As of Saturday afternoon, there was no indication who was behind the threats, though city officials say they are working with the FBI to track down the culprits.  On Sunday, local community college Clark State announced that, “due to recent events,” all classes and activities would be conducted virtually for the coming week.

Meanwhile, Springfield’s most famous native, singer John Legend, appealed to his hometown to embrace the overwhelming migrant population. The hard-core Democrat posted a video addressing the nationwide news. “We had about 15,000 or so immigrants move to my town of 60,000,” he explained. “Now you might say, ‘Wow that’s a lot of people for a town that only had 60,000 before. That’s a 25% increase.’ That is correct.” He goes on to urge locals to accept the inconveniences without protest. “You might imagine there are some challenges with, you know, integrating a new population. New language, new culture, new dietary preferences. All kinds of reasons why there might be growing pains.”

“How about we love one another?” Legend urged. “I grew up in the Christian tradition. We said to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and treat strangers as though they might be Christ.”

His admonition sparked immediate backlash from residents, who fired back, “He’s just like you. Except he doesn’t live in Springfield. He lives in a multi-million-dollar mansion in Beverly Hills,” one person wrote on social media. Others couldn’t believe his nonchalance about the upheaval in the Champion City. “You should totally listen to John Legend lecture you on his hometown of Springfield, and how 15,000 Haitian immigrants into a town of 60,000 is totally normal,” another user replied, attaching a video of Legend and Teigen showing off their “lavish palace.”

“Why don’t you house some of [these] illegal immigrants in your huge privileged mansion?” one person fumed. “…You cool with that? Come on big guy. Take care of these migrants.” Not to mention, another argued, Legend believes the people of Springfield “should just accept the Haitians and their weird ‘dietary preferences,’” referring to the headlines that Haitians are eating geese and ducks.

Despite the legacy media’s attempt to discredit the story, investigative reporter Christopher Rufo posted Saturday morning that he believes the reports of migrants eating pets are true. “EXCLUSIVE,” he writes with photo evidence. “We have discovered that migrants are, in fact, eating cats in Ohio. We have verified, with multiple witnesses and visual cross-references, that African migrants in Dayton, the next city over from Springfield, barbecued these cats last summer.”

Residents and other news outlets, including The Federalist and The Daily Mail, have corroborated the stories that even captured the attention of the September 10 presidential debate. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump exclaimed, “and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

Since Springfield has come into the national spotlight, reports have also surfaced of Haitians showering and bathing in Walmart bathrooms and Haitian men engaging in sex acts on the street.

In addition to weighing down the community’s social services, the immigrants have also caused a significant number of traffic accidents. “The driving in town is horrendous. We do have a really abnormal number of car accidents that are happening,” former Ohio State Representative Kyle Koehler told Fox News. “And it’s not only the number, but the severity of them. When you go on a street that is a 35-mile-an-hour speed limit and there’s a car sitting on its hood, and I’m not talking about one, I’m talking about five or six accidents a week like that, you begin to wonder.”

Douglass Mackey, who had been targeted and jailed by the Biden-Harris administration for sharing political memes, explained that struggling businesses in the area may be giving immigrants preference for jobs over Americans. “An American citizen gets paid $16.50 per hour. No food stamps. No Social Security. No cash assistance. No rent assistance. No free car. No free car insurance,” Mackey said. “A Haitian gets paid $9 per hour and they get everything else paid for. After considering all the federal benefits, it’s likely that the Haitian is making double, or perhaps much more than that, of what an American worker would make.”

Ohio native Senator J.D. Vance (R), former President Donald Trump’s running mate, wrote on social media, “In Springfield, Ohio, there has been a massive rise in communicable diseases, rent prices, car insurance rates, and crime. This is what happens when you drop 20,000 people into a small community. Kamala Harris’s immigration policy aims to do this to every town in our country.” He added, “Don’t let biased media shame you into not discussing this slow moving humanitarian crisis in a small Ohio town. We should talk about it every single day. Kamala Harris did this. And she’ll keep doing it unless we stop her.”

On Friday, Trump reiterated his plans to deport most of the 10 million illegals imported under Biden. “We’re going to start with Springfield,” the former president insisted, adding the town had been “destroyed” by immigration.

Asked about the firestorm engulfing his small town, Mayor Rob Rue (R) shook his head. “Springfield is a community that needs help,” he told The Washington Post. “We are hurting.”

AUTHORS

S.A. McCarthy

September 14, 2024

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

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Ohio sheriff asks residents to ‘write down’ Harris supporter addresses for migrant housing

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.

Harris Supported Taxpayer-Funded Trans Surgeries in 2019, Called ‘Transition Treatment … a Medical Necessity’

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The Kamala Harris campaign kept her policies (and person) away from the mainstream media for so long that the media went snooping through the past. On Monday, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski first reported Harris’s support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries on federal prisoners and detained illegal immigrants, revealed in a candidate questionnaire she filled out for the ACLU during her abortive 2019 presidential campaign.

On the questionnaire, Harris marked the “yes” box in answer the following question: “As President will you use your executive authority to ensure that transgender and nonbinary people who rely on the state for medical care — including those in prison and immigration detention — will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care? If yes, how will you do so?”

The questionnaire also allowed candidates to explain their answer in 500 words or less. In the space provided, Harris wrote, “It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition. That’s why, as Attorney General, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates.”

She continued, “I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained. Transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.”

“This questionnaire is really an interesting snapshot-in-time of that 2019 Democratic primary,” said Kaczynski. “Kamala Harris was trying to get to the left of [Independent Vermont Senator] Bernie Sanders. She was trying to get to the left of [Massachusetts Democratic Senator] Elizabeth Warren, and you really see that in a lot of these answers.” In a now-archived ranking, GovTrack.us rated Harris as the senator with the most liberal voting record in 2019.

Some snapshots can be consistent across time, as this one appears to be. Harris’s 2024 campaign finally published a page on policy issues on the eve of the one-and-only presidential debate (to quote Edna Mode, “Coincidence? I think not”). In a section on “fundamental freedoms … at stake in this election,” the Harris campaign touted their candidate’s record of LGBT advocacy as far back as 2004.

In particular, the Harris campaign said their candidate would “fight to pass the Equality Act to enshrine anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQI+ Americans in health care, housing, education, and more into law.” This extends the continuity because, as a senator in 2019, Harris was an original cosponsor of the Equality Act. While the campaign website elaborates no further, this far-reaching legislation would “virtually do away with sex-segregated spaces” by allowing “biological men into women’s private spaces,” Family Research Council director of Federal Affairs for Family and Religious Liberty Mary Beth Waddell warned in 2019.

This means that, under the Equality Act, male prisoners who identify as women would have a statutory right to be housed in a women’s prison, wrote Abigail Shrier. This is already law in Harris’s native California, where at least 47 biological males, including violent criminals and sexual offenders, were housed in women’s prisons, as of March 2023. Harris’s pledge to provide gender transition procedures to trans-identifying prisoners at taxpayers’ expense not only implies such a permissive housing policy, in which inmates get to self-define their gender, but it takes it one step further by placing the state’s endorsement behind their gender transition.

While Harris’s policy-light campaign has not explicitly reaffirmed her 2019 endorsement of taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for trans-identifying prisoners, its brief comments are consistent with that position. Fellow Senate progressive Sanders said Sunday that Harris was not “abandoning her ideals” but merely “trying to be pragmatic and doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.”

Even if Harris wanted to change her mind, the transgender lobby would not let her. This summer, left-wing activists poured out their wrath against the Biden-Harris White House over a statement softly opposing gender transition surgeries for minors. The administration quickly folded to the pressure and backpedaled from that position to appease the transgender lobby. If Harris became president, nothing in her record suggests that she would respond differently to pressure from the transgender lobby.

In her 2019 questionnaire, Harris also promised to provide taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries to detained illegal immigrants. However, at the rate the Biden-Harris administration is releasing detained immigrants into the U.S., this seems like a moot point. It would be rendered even further irrelevant if Harris fulfilled another pledge from her 2019 questionnaire, namely to “end … immigrant detention facilities.”

Also in 2019, Harris also pledged to codify abortion-on-demand, “eliminate the Hyde amendment,” “legalize marijuana,” end cash bail, defund ICE, provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and oppose legislation to impede or prohibit anti-Israel protests.

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.

Reports Warn Exponential Immigration Reshaping U.S. Labor Force

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Unprecedented levels of immigration are reshaping the foundation of the U.S. economy, the American labor force, according to a recent analysis. Writing for The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, economics reporter Paul Kiernan stated, “Immigrants are swelling the population and changing the makeup of the U.S. labor force in ways that are likely to reverberate through the economy for decades.”

Kiernan explained that at least nine million immigrants have come to the U.S. since the end of 2020 and are still here — both legally and illegally. “That’s nearly as many as the number that came in the previous decade,” Kiernan wrote of the immigrants remaining in the U.S. Less than 30% of those entered and currently remain in the U.S. legally, Kiernan reported.

Noting the declining birth rate among U.S. citizens, Kiernan pointed out that the immigrants who have entered the U.S. over the past four years are “younger and more likely to be of working age than U.S.-born Americans.” He wrote, “Of foreigners who arrived since 2020, 78% are between the ages of 16 and 64, compared with 60% of those born in the U.S., according to the monthly census data.” The WSJ reporter continued, “Of recent immigrants age 16 or older, 68% — the participation rate — are either working or looking for a job, compared with 62% for U.S.-born Americans. In raw numbers, that likely amounts to more than five million people, equal to roughly 3% of the labor force.” Kiernan also anticipated that the rate of immigrants seeking and claiming jobs in the U.S. “is likely to climb further in coming years.”

While border states are, naturally, heavily impacted by immigration (especially illegal immigration), Kiernan observes that the top five “destination states” for illegal immigrants are Florida, Texas, California, New York, and New Jersey.

Prior reports have placed the numbers of immigrants in the U.S. workforce much higher than WSJ’s estimates. As The Washington Stand previously reported, a new study shows that a staggering 30 million immigrants — again, both legal and illegal — have entered the U.S. labor force just since 2022. While just over 22 million of those immigrants are in the U.S. legally, over eight million are working and living in the U.S. illegally.

Robert Law, the director of Regulatory Affairs and Policy for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), told TWS at the time, “The Biden-Harris administration’s border security and economic policies have significantly harmed the wages, economic opportunities, and security of the American people.” He explained that jobs being taken by immigrants “are not jobs Americans won’t do.” Instead, he suggested that Americans “are being sidelined by administration policies that put American workers last.”

Immigration (again, especially of the illegal variety) has been linked to skyrocketing violent crime and a worsening drug crisis, in addition to the suffering job market. Election integrity has also become a point of concern, as Republicans move to ensure that only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote. Numerous Democrat-led cities and states are expected to spend millions and, in some cases, billions of dollars on housing illegal immigrants and providing them with health care and other related benefits.

Americans are increasingly unhappy with the state of immigration in the U.S. under incumbent President Joe Biden and his deputy, Vice President Kamala Harris. For example, 84% of Americans ranked illegal immigration a “serious” issue, including 61% who ranked it “very serious.” In fact, immigration has consistently been ranked as the second-most-pressing issue facing voters ahead of November’s election, immediately behind inflation and the economy. Continuing reports, like Kiernan’s in WSJ, suggest that the two issues are closely related.

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. ©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.

‘Sorely Needed’: Speaker Johnson May Attach SAVE Act to Government Funding Bill

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Congressional Republicans say House leadership will likely attach a bill to prevent illegal immigrants from voting in U.S. elections — a bill Republicans say is necessary for the “protection of citizenship and our national sovereignty”— to a must-pass government funding bill as a precondition for avoiding a government shutdown.

Multiple sources indicate Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) will add the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to a continuing resolution, or CR, which Congress needs to pass before October 1 to avert a government shutdown.

“I suspect you’re going to see a CR with the SAVE Act coming up in the next two to three weeks,” predicted Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) on “Washington Watch” Wednesday. “What the Speaker has discussed with us is a six-month continuing resolution. You and I both don’t love that,” Perry told the program’s guest host, former Congressman Jody Hice, “but that gets us into the Trump administration, God willing, if he were to prevail. But included with that would be attaching to that the SAVE Act, which requires states then to verify citizenship of every one of their voters. And that’s something that is sorely needed.”

Congressional Republicans see the bill as necessary to fix a loophole in federal law that may incentivize illegal immigrants to vote in U.S. elections. The SAVE Act amends the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (sometimes called the “Motor-Voter Law”), which stipulates that anyone who applies for a driver’s license must be offered the opportunity to register to vote. The form asks applicants to certify they are U.S. citizens, but a court ruling prevents officials from taking any steps to verify the applicant’s citizenship. The SAVE Act would require officials to assure the would-be voter’s U.S. citizenship before an illegal ballot gets cast.

Democrats object to the law as unnecessary and redundant, saying existing laws already bar non-citizens from voting. But Republicans say the current landscape does nothing to prevent illegal immigrants from voting. “Of course, it’s already illegal for people that are here illegally to vote, but that’s not to say it doesn’t happen, because no one is enforcing it,” explained Perry. “This would require states to actually enforce the law.” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote in an op-ed for Breitbart that Congress finds itself “in the historically unique position” of being able to leverage government funding for election security.

“Asking for proof of citizenship should not bother anyone. That’s the only way that we can protect the integrity of citizenship and the integrity of our elections,” Ken Blackwell, senior fellow for Human Rights and Constitutional Governance at Family Research Council, told Hice later in the show. “This is a situation that cries out for more … protection of citizenship and our national sovereignty.”

With just two months before the 2024 presidential election, Republicans see the election integrity bill, which has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, as pivotal. Speaker Johnson called the bill “a generation-defining moment” in U.S. civic history. “We see it as a potential game changer,” said Perry. “We just want our elections to be fair, but determined by American citizens. And the fact that the Democrats oppose that should tell you everything you need to know.” The bill has the support of conservatives in both houses of Congress. “This is where the House Freedom Caucus and I stand: While we oppose passing any CR, if it’s forced upon us, we will fight to ensure the SAVE Act is part of the deal. It’s time to hold the line and demand accountability, because secure elections should be non-negotiable,” said Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand.

As concerns over illegal voting take center stage in Washington, the issue is winding its way through the nation’s courts, as well. On Wednesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) sued Bexar County after its commissioners pressed forward with a plan to send mail-in ballots to all county residents, regardless of their eligibility or citizenship status. “This program is completely unlawful and potentially invites election fraud,” said Paxton. The move comes after Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) removed more than 1.1 million ineligible registrants — including 7,000 non-citizens — from the state’s voting rolls.

In neighboring Arizona, America First Legal sued all 15 county recorders for failing to remove illegal and ineligible voters from the system ahead of November’s election. The lawsuit contends that two provisions of federal law — 8 U.S.C. § 1373(c) and 8 U.S.C. § 1644 — allow state and local officials to obtain information about applicants’ citizenship, an authority which they have failed to use. “America First Legal will do everything in its power to fight mass illegal alien voting and foreign interference in our democracy,” said Stephen Miller, a former Trump aide.

The road ahead at the federal level is not without obstacles. Some in Washington oppose attaching the SAVE Act to the CR, and many House conservatives have expressed displeasure that the House must pass a CR rather than legislating discreet bills for each area of government. Two congressmen — Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) — have announced they will vote against the bill. Perry said the speaker’s solution is the most practical response. “We’re going to be left with a couple options: a continuing resolution, which keeps spending the same amount of money [and the] same policy until the deal is worked out, or an omnibus, which would be terribly written in Chuck Schumer’s office by his staff, spending wildly” and codifying “terrible policy,” said Perry.

Democrats in both chambers have gone all-out to oppose the measure. A meager five House Democrats voted for the SAVE Act in July, with 198 opposed. (The Democrats who voted in favor were Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez Jr. of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.)

Polls show the American people believe the Republicans have the better part of the argument. A whopping 87% of Americans support the bill’s goal of assuring only Americans vote in American elections. “I’m for those wanting a better life to get the opportunity to become a citizen the right way. But if you’re not American, you shouldn’t be voting. Simple as that,” said NFL great Brett Favre.

Despite overwhelming public support, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has pronounced any funding measure including the SAVE Act “dead on arrival.” And Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called the bill’s election integrity measures “outrageous partisan poison pills.”

“Chuck Schumer might say it’s dead on arrival,” but if the House passes the election integrity bill as part of the must-pass bill, the Democrat is “going to have no choice to either accept that, or he will be responsible for shutting down the government,” Perry told Hice. “If the government shuts down over the Democrats’ unholy obsession with noncitizen voting, that’s on Chuck Schumer,” said Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) in a social media post. Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) made similar comments Wednesday during comments to the Republican Jewish Coalition.

“Sure would be a strange reason to shut down the U.S. government,” noted Elon Musk, who became a legal immigrant to the United States in 2002.

But Blackwell does not believe the bill will cause a stand-off in Congress. “By actually shining some spotlight on this challenge, I think that we can we can pull the curtain down on this illegal action,” said Blackwell, who oversaw Ohio’s elections as Secretary of State (1999-2007).

Nothing is more important to American political life than safeguarding the integrity of the ballot, he said. “Every vote counts. And so protecting the integrity of the system by making sure that there’s no illegal vote that cancels out a legal ballot is prudent. We cannot sit on the sidelines. Each citizen of the United States has to demand this integrity, has to demand this sort of transparency, has to get involved. And we must continue to make sure that we have as many people as observers and workers at the polling places as possible at the precinct level.”

“We should not have a polling place in America that is not covered by two sets of eyes, bipartisan sets of eyes, so that we have transparency. So, make sure you go to your local party, go to your local county office, and ask how you can become involved as a worker or an observer,” he exhorted.

“We cannot let darkness prevail in this election,” Blackwell concluded.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

RELATED ARTICLE: A ‘Conservative’ Case against Tennessee’s SAFE Act?

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.

Venezuelan Gangs Rampaging in U.S. Because of Harris Border Policies: Congressman

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The intentional open borders immigration policies of Kamala Harris bear the blame for videos that showing heavily-armed South American gang members terrorizing residents of multiple apartment buildings in Colorado, a U.S. congressman has said.

Video footage leaked out last week showing criminals threatening the largely foreign-born tenets and barging inside apartments in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado. Local officials confirmed members of the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang had taken over three apartment buildings in the area. The nearby Denver Police Department added it found “reasons to believe that members of this gang are tied to crimes in this area.” In July, the Biden-Harris administration designated Tren de Aragua a transnational criminal organization and offered a $12 millionreward for its three leaders. The 5,000-member TdA’ motto is “Real until death.”

Federal officials consider TdA’s menacing presence on U.S. soil another fruit of the Biden-Harris administration’s lax border enforcement policy. “You have a completely open border that anyone can go through,” including “drug dealers, criminals,” and those seeking to take jobs from U.S. citizens, said Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) on “Washington Watch” last week. “When criminals, drug dealers, gangs see an open border — and Vice President Kamala Harris has refused to close it — they’re going to take advantage of it.”

As the videos of TdA’s intimidation broke, Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky (R) spoke openly about the South American gang’s actions. Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman (R) also revealed that “several buildings … have fallen to these Venezuelan gangs.” Residents of the three buildings, made up of “a concentration of Venezuelan migrants,” watched helplessly as TdA “pushed out the property management through intimidation and then collected the rents.”

“I think we’re a victim of a failed policy at the southern border,” Coffman toldFox News.

Despite video evidence, the office of Governor Jared Polis (D) initially dismissed the story. “According to police intelligence this purported invasion is largely a feature of Danielle Jurinsky’s imagination,” assertedPolis’s spokeswoman, Shelby Wieman, last Wednesday. “It’s illegal to take over buildings in Colorado,” she noted in remarks to the New York Post, but the governor’s office is “ready to assist.” Over the holiday weekend, and after public backlash, Polis confirmed the invasion to CNN.

“We’ve taken it very seriously,” saidPolis, adding that Aurora local police are “on the front lines” and Colorado will “assist” only if requested.

The impact on Aurora seemed doubly unjust to Coffman, since his city “took a position early on that we were not going to participate in the migrant crisis; we were not going to provide taxpayer support, and we were not even going to be a conduit for federal dollars,” he said. He suspected illegal aliens from Venezuela settled into Aurora thanks to the “federal government, perhaps using some of our local nonprofit partners as a conduit.”

“These people didn’t just go there on their own; somebody put them there,” said Coffman. “Who made this decision to put them there?”

Although Aurora has rejected the illegal immigrant invasion, former Colorado State Senator Ted Harvey told Newsmax host Carl Higbie Thursday that Denver-area officials posted a banner on county property which proclaimed, “We love immigrants.” Their policies encouraged illegal immigration to the area.

Illegal immigrants “are sleeping 10 to a room in government-paid-for hotels, and now we are having them being terrorized by illegal immigrants that their countries don’t even want there, so they’re pawning them off on the United States,” Harvey told Higbie. He revealed his own area had 44 cars stolen in July, and “a lot of those were tied back to Venezuelan crime.”

The Biden-Harris administration has chartered planes and buses to undisclosed locations throughout its four years in office, settling illegal immigrants across the United States often without the knowledge of local officials.

Human traffickers have made a record-setting number of illegal entries across both the northern and southern borders since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021. Biden put Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris in charge of slowing or stopping illegal immigration across the southern border, a role the media referred to as “border czar,” during a public press conference three months later. Harris’s office later tried to pare back the task to dealing with the “root causes” of illegal immigration from three Central American nations. Immigration watchdogs say the overall levels of immigration from those countries has hardly budged, and may have increased, on her watch.

Few in Colorado seemed surprised the gang brought its deadly ways to the United States. “There’s a lot of criminality in Venezuela. It’s basically a failed state,” Coffman told local media. That and the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies make “a terrible combination.”

Mooney said international criminal syndicates know “they can profit now. They can traffic drugs. They can traffic human beings. They can traffic arms, because nobody’s protecting our border. So, the gangs can get more power now, more money. They’re not being fought.”

They will stop if the president, or Vice President Kamala Harris, begin extracting a legal cost for killing U.S. citizens or otherwise violating the border. “Criminals do evil things. But they’re not stupid,” said Mooney.

Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) previously called Harris’s tenure as Border Czar “one of the most catastrophic failuresin American history.”

As a presidential candidate, Harris has promoted a “bipartisan” border bill, which includes some funding for border construction. Immigration experts say the bill is unacceptably, and irreparably, flawed. The bill ‘required DHS to process and release 1,400 inadmissible a day into the United States,” noted NumbersUSA.

Yet Harris has largely skated on her poor border record, said Mooney. “The mainstream media these days is trying to downplay [the] role” of Harris as Border Czar, but “She was put in charge of this three years ago. She is directly responsible for” the border’s “lawlessness and chaos,” said Mooney. “Kamala Harris and President Biden have jeopardized our country intentionally.”

As bad as things are, experts worry about the future, in the next four months, or another four years. “What we’re seeing right now could just be a preview of much more to come,” said “Washington Watch” guest host, and Mooney’s former House colleague, Jody Hice. The administration needs to “get tough on crime and, in this case, get tough on the border. We’ve got to stop letting these people come in.”

“I think this is just the beginning” of what could lie in store, agreed Mooney. “I think there are sleeper cells that have come in from Iran and other places.”

The conservative Republican said Congress has some tools at its disposal to hold the administration accountable — if it has the courage to use them.

“The power of the purse is the most important thing invested in the U.S. House of Representatives, where I serve and served,” Mooney told Hice. “Our chamber needs to guard that power and make sure for the people who elected us that we use it to restrict the president when [he gets] out of control.”

Unfortunately, the House has whiffed so often that no one takes it seriously, he said. “Frankly, you’re seeing Democrats don’t really care. And weak Republicans who are just so afraid of a Democrat-caused government shutdown, just cave in and give the Democrats all the money they want with no restrictions.”

GOP leadership could be the silent partners to the Biden-Harris administration’s open borders policies, he stated. “It’s like we’re enabling Kamala Harris to have an open border, because we don’t punish them,” he said. “The president has just assumed to themselves all these powers they don’t have, and the House of Representatives has allowed it, because we keep giving them the money. We just shouldn’t give them the money. It’s really that simple.”

Republican congressmen have lobbied Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) to at least attach the SAVE Act — which would take practical steps to prevent illegal immigrants from registering to vote in U.S. elections — to a continuing resolution funding the government.

In the meantime, Harris’s decision to flout the law has created “a constitutional crisis. You have a president and Vice President Kamala Harris who think they can just ignore the law,” Mooney told Hice. “We have a process by which laws are made. And for the president to just say, ‘I can do whatever I feel like doing’ — ignore student debt, not secure the border — that’s really a problem for our system of government, in addition to what’s happening with the invasion at the southern border.”

As soon as possible, Americans must make their voices heard at the ballot box, border security advocates say. “This is why Donald Trump must be elected,” said Harvey. “This is why we must make sure that Kamala Harris and the other Marxists who have taken over our government right now are thrown out.”

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.

‘My Grammar’s Not Always Correct’: Fact-Checking Harris and Walz’s CNN Interview

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A full 39 days after being anointed the Democratic Party’s presumptive leader, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris sat down for her first in-depth interview. As CNN’s Dana Bash rattled off numerous flip-flops and apparent lies, Harris said her “values have not changed,” that she is “very proud” of her record on inflation and illegal immigration, and that she has no regrets over describing Joe Biden’s mental health as “strong” in late June. Meanwhile, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz blamed his misstatements about serving “in war” on poor grammar and before pivoting to an alleged “national abortion ban.”

Unlike most presidential candidates, who are elected in primaries and vetted by voters, Kamala Harris — who received the nomination through a virtual roll call 27 days ago — has yet to hold an extended in-person interview. To date, she has not held an in-depth interview or press conference on her own, opting to have Walz at her side throughout the process.

Word Salad

The interview got off to a rocky start. When asked what she would do on day one, Harris replied she would “do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class,” to “look at the aspirations, the goals, the ambitions of the American people,” and provide “a new way forward” filled with “hope and optimism.”

“So, what would you do day one?” Bash repeated.

Twice, Harris said she represents “a new way forward” from polarization “dividing our nation,” because “the last decade … I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies.” Bash pointed out Harris has served as vice president for 40% of the last decade.

In a question about her apparently evolving views on fracking and climate change (see below), Harris said: “I believe it is very important that we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate. And to do that, we can do what we have accomplished thus far.”

Harris also received mockery for saying, since “the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter,” the U.S. government “should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.”

Perhaps the most memorable comments of the interview came, not from Harris, but from Walz, when he tried to explain allegations of stolen valor.

Walz Blames ‘Stolen Valor’ Claim on Poor Grammar

Tim Walz has stated he carried “weapons of war … in war,” allowed others to say he served in active combat zones during the War on Terror without correction, and claimed for two decades to have retired from the National Guard at a higher rank than he earned. Critics accuse him of stolen valor, which is viewed as perhaps the most shameful activity among veterans. The Harris-Walz campaign claimed the Minnesota governor “misspoke” in his remarks.

In his CNN interview, Walz blamed poor English skills.

“You said that you were in war,” pressed Bash. “Did you misspeak, as the campaign has said?”

“Yeah,” replied Walz. “My wife the English teacher told me my grammar’s not always correct.”

Walz taught English during a stint in the People’s Republic of China, leading to a long series of trips to the communist nation.

Walz’s explanation was “hilarious,” said former collegiate athlete Riley Gaines, scoffing at the notion that falsely “claiming you fought in war is just a silly grammar mistake.”

“I certainly own my mistakes when I make them,” claimed Walz, moments after replying he made counter-factual statements, because “I speak like” the American people.

Bash also asked about Walz’s erroneous remarks that he conceived through IVF. Walz replied his comments cut “quite a contrast [against] folks that are trying to take those rights away from us.” Ultimately, Walz refused to offer any remorse for his statements, saying, “I won’t apologize for speaking passionately, whether it’s guns in schools or protection of reproductive rights.”

Walz then pivoted to a hypothetical “abortion ban.” Most Americans, he said, are not splitting “hairs on IVF or IUI. I think what they’re cutting hairs on is an abortion ban and the ability to be able to deny families the chance to have a beautiful child.”

Donald Trump — who has repeatedly announced he opposes any abortion ban at the federal level during his second term — earlier in the day announced during a rally in Potterville, Michigan, that “under the Trump administration, your government will pay for, or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment, fertilization for women.” During an unscripted interview, he also implied he would vote for Florida’s Amendment 4 to institute an on-demand abortion regime in Florida before his campaign released a statement walking his remarks back.

‘My Values Have Not Changed’ about Fracking, et. al.

Faced with a series reversals and flip-flops from her previous policy proposals, Harris repeated a variation of the phrase “My values have not changed” three times.

“Let’s be clear. My values have not changed” on “the Green New Deal,” which she supported as a 2020 presidential candidate and co-sponsored as a U.S. senator. “I have always believed and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real,” she said. She repeated the phrase on her anti-fracking stance.

Harris forcefully rejected the notion that she had changed her mind on fracking, despite recordings showing her saying there is “no question” fracking should be banned.

“No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking,” answered Harris. “In 2020 I made very clear where I stand. We are in 2024, and I have not changed that position, nor will I going forward. I kept my word, and I will keep my word.”

Harris appears to be referring to her debate with then-Vice President Mike Pence at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on October 7, 2020. Yet she did not say she opposed a fracking ban during the debate — commenting only that Pennsylvania native Joe Biden did.

“Joe Biden will not end fracking,” said Harris in 2020. Later, she repeated, “Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact. That is a fact.”

“Nowhere in there does she make clear that she had abandoned her previous support for a fracking ban,” noted CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale about an hour after the interview. “Rather, she repeated that Joe Biden, the head of the Democratic ticket at the time, would himself not ban fracking.”

During the campaign, Harris had endorsed a fracking ban. At a 2019 town hall meeting, a participant asked Harris, “Will you commit to implementing a federal ban on fracking your first day in office, adding the United States [to] the list of countries [that] have banned this devastating practice.”

“There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking. Yes,” replied Harris.

“It makes perfect sense that at the time she was speaking on behalf of Biden, the president, not the vice president,” said Dale. “I certainly did not hear anywhere in there Kamala Harris saying she personally had abandoned her 2019 view rather she was speaking for Joe Biden.”

Did Kamala Harris Reduce Illegal Immigration?

Harris defended her record on illegal immigration, as well.

“Why did the Biden-Harris administration wait three and a half years to implement sweeping asylum restrictions?” asked Bash.

“Thee root causes work that I did as vice president, that I was asked to do by the president has actually resulted in a number of benefits,” replied Harris. “The number of immigrants coming from that region has actually reduced since we’ve began that work.”

It’s not clear that is correct. After being appointed Border Czar by Joe Biden, Harris raced to pare down the job, saying she merely examined the “root causes” of “migration” from the three countries in Central America that had historically provided the largest share of illegal immigrants aside from Mexico: the “Northern Triangle” nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

The number of apprehensions at the southern border fell from 684,000 in fiscal year 2021 to 447,000 in 2023. But experts say those statistics alone do not tell the full story.

The number of illegal immigrants from the Northern Triangle processed for removal under Title 8 exploded from 177,000 in fiscal year 2022 to more than 309,000 in 2023, and the Border Patrol is “on track to make about 418,600 Title 8 apprehensions by September 30,” reported the Center for Immigration Studies. At the same time, illegal entrants from the region who were denied admission at ports of entry steadily rose from about 17,000 in fiscal year 2021, to 21,000 in the following year, to about 48,000 in fiscal year 2023. “In other words, while total apprehensions FY2022-24 (projected) declined by roughly 20 percent, apprehensions under Title 8 grew by 138 percent over the same time period,” states CIS.

In raw numbers, Title 8 expulsions rose by 241,000 in just one year of the Biden-Harris administration, not including other illegal entries. Nor does this include Biden-Harris programs to expedite the legal entry of putative “refugees” from these and other countries.

There are two additional reasons to question the relevance of the statement: While most illegal immigration has come from Mexico and the Northern Triangle, “in December 2023, 54% of encounters involved citizens of countries other than these four nations,” according to the Pew Research Center. And the number of illegal immigrants has broken historic records each consecutive year since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office.

No Regrets about Telling Americans Joe Biden Is ‘Extraordinarily Strong’

“Right after the debate, you insisted that President Biden is extraordinarily strong. Given where we are now, do you have any regrets about what you told the American people?” Bash asked.

“No, not at all,” replied Harris, reiterating, “Not at all.”

A mere 63 days earlier, Harris not only described Joe Biden as the picture of health but placed an onus on those who questioned his acuity. Moments after Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate with former President Donald Trump, Harris told ABC News Biden had “a slow start, but a strong finish.”

“Joe Biden is extraordinarily strong, and that cannot be debated,” she quipped.

The legacy media have revealed it was precisely the threat of a cognitive test that helped force Biden out of the presidential race. The New York Times reported that, according to two attendees of a July 11 meeting between Biden and U.S. senators, Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.) issued an ultimatum (in the Times’ words): “If Mr. Biden wanted to stay in the race after a disastrous debate performance that underscored concerns about his condition and mental acuity, he should submit to examination by two independent neurologists who were willing to report their findings at a news conference.”

Harris ‘Very Proud’ of Bidenomics

“You have been vice president for three and a half years. The steps that you’re talking about now, why haven’t you done them already?” Bash asked Harris.

“I’m very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%,” the vice president responded.

“So, you maintain Bidenomics is a success?” asked Bash.

After rattling off a list of the administration’s putative accomplishments, Harris concluded, “I’ll say that that’s good work. There’s more to do, but that’s good work.”

Inflation for 2023 stood at 4.1%, a marked increase from the 1.2% the Biden-Harris administration inherited. Wages have barely kept pace with inflation, as groceries, gasoline, and other household staples have increased by double digits — the highest inflation level in 40 years.

Despite pressing for clear answers from the pair, many observers faulted Bash for not following up on key assertions made by both Harris and Walz, as well as her question choice. Megyn Kelly noted Bash asked “not a single Q on the Emotional Support Governor’s radical trans policies.”

CNN also appeared to make a few misstatements about the interview. Although the network prerecorded the interview, the network’s feed claimed it was aired “live.” After the interview, anchor Abby Phillip referred to the closed-doors segment as a “town hall” event.

Despite reports that CNN would not offer a transcript of the interview, CNN has issued its official transcript of the historic interview.

Kamala Harris will debate former President Donald Trump on ABC News September 10 at 9 p.m.

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.

Harris Tough on Border Security? ‘That’s a Joke’

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If you’re trying to follow along with the Democrats’ narrative on immigration, good luck. In the last several weeks, the media’s gone from disputing that Vice President Kamala Harris was ever “border czar” to the claim that she’s been “tough as nails” on border security. What used to be the “challenge” of millions of illegal migrants crossing into America is finally a “crisis,” according to even Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). And the man who hasn’t been in office for four years is somehow to blame for all of it.

Harris’s disinformation campaign continued at the Democratic National Convention, where she tried to talk Americans out of what they’ve seen since 2021. “Let me be clear,” she said. “After decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border.” This, despite the Harris-Biden plan of amnesty, which Republicans have warned will lead to absolute lawlessness.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Government Oversight and Accountability Committee, called it laughable that anyone who’s lived through this administration would think this White House is tough on the border. “I mean, that’s a joke,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on the Hill.” “The Democrats are very good at theater. They’re always united. Whoever controls the Democratic Party — and … it’s definitely not Joe Biden, but whoever is in control — they coordinate with the mainstream media, and they always put together a good production. … [E]veryone’s obedient and they [stay on] message. Kamala Harris, thus far as a candidate, has been very disciplined. She sticks to the teleprompter, and she doesn’t deviate.”

But at the end of the day, Comer warned, “No matter how many times the dishonest politicians say the Democrats are tough on the border, or the dishonest media writes that the Democrats were tough on the border, I think every American knows that the Democrats have allowed the southern border to be wild, wide open, which has allowed for millions and millions of illegals to pour into this country, bringing with them fentanyl as well as a massive amount of human trafficking.”

And yet, as Perkins pointed out, Democrats — with the help of a compromised media — are trying very hard to flip the script that this administration had anything to do with the stampede of illegal immigrants. They can blame-shift all they want, Comer agreed, but “the president is the commander-in-chief. His sole responsibility is to protect the American people, [including] securing the southern border.”

As for these claims that Republicans sank the silver-bullet legislation Democrats pathetically offered as political cover, that’s baloney, Comer emphasized. Not only was the policy weak, but it was also unnecessary. “We never had to have a bill to protect the southern border when Donald Trump was president or when George W. Bush was president or even when Barack Obama was the president. That’s the job of the president and Homeland Security.”

The only reason the border is wide open, Comer continued, is because this White House wants it that way. “[This is] the policy position of the Biden-Harris administration. They want a border that’s wide open. They invite illegals to pour in across that border from all over the world. They want to get those people in this country, get them registered to vote, and get them to become active citizens in their communities.”

But the level of suffering caused by these policies, which he’s seen even in rural Kentucky, has been astounding. “You have no idea the amount of human trafficking cases that are popping up in communities in America that you would never expect. … And we’ve got to stop that. And the one way to stop that is to have a president that tells the Border Patrol, ‘Do your job. Don’t be doing administrative work. Don’t be changing diapers. Secure that border.’ And if the Border Patrol can’t do it, then allow the National Guard to do it. If the National Guard can’t do it, then focus the military there. … The number one priority for our national security right now, today should be securing that southern border. You don’t need a bill to do that. You’ve got the whole United States military, as well as the National Guard.”

As the FRC president pointed out, it isn’t that Biden or Harris have lacked the tools, it’s that they lack the “willpower and desire” to fix the problem they created.

To Democrats, this is the real area of vulnerability for Trump’s opponent. Publicly, they worry that the border is one issue where Harris can’t recast herself as moderate. Former Democratic Governor David Paterson of New York warned of this on Sunday. “She has got one real big problem: 72% percent of Americans think that the number of people crossing the border from the south is going to increase [under her]. Only 21% feel that it’s going to decrease if she is president.”

“It’s not about choice,” Paterson said, referring to the Harris campaign’s hyper-focus on abortion. “It’s not about minimum wage. … It’s about the border and, to some degree, it’s about the economy,” Paterson said.

On this, Comer agrees. “I certainly hope this is an election about the issues. And the two main issues right now are the massive inflation that’s a 100% result from the Biden-Harris big spending policies. … The second issue is … crime and the lack of southern border security. We’ve got a crime outbreak in America, especially in our big cities. And a lot of this is due to lax Democrat[ic] policies. Liberal Democrat prosecutors — like Kamala Harris when she was a prosecutor in San Francisco — [are] not securing the southern border. So I hope American people focus on that. And I hope the conservatives take this very seriously.”

And it doesn’t just matter who’s at the top of the ticket, Perkins warned, but in all the races down the ballot. The White House is important, he acknowledged, but “when you talk about the border, you look at what Texas has done to secure their border. You talk about the economy. We see some states with favorable tax policies that are growing [and] attracting jobs. And then, of course, there’s the social policy, which the Democrats have made really the top-tier issues for them: abortion [and] the transgendering of our children. A lot of these are decided by state legislatures, by attorneys generals, and Congress. So those are very important races that will be on the ballot this fall as well.”

We need a motivated conservative base, the Kentuckian insisted, “because this is going to be a close election and every vote is going to count.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior 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.