Tag Archive for: Rio Grande

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House reporter. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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

Lifelong Hispanic Democrats Are Tired Of The Party’s Rule. Now, They’re Striving To Make History

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Many Hispanic voters in Texas’ historically blue Rio Grande Valley are fed up with Democratic Party rule and are looking to flip the area red Tuesday, locals told the Daily Caller.

The Valley, which borders northern Mexico and the Rio Grande River, is largely Hispanic. Many voters in the area are lifelong Democrats. Skyrocketing costs in one of the country’s poorest areas, a growing dissatisfaction with the Democratic party’s stance on culture war issues and a more energetic GOP, however, are all factors that may be pushing them across the aisle.

The five main counties that compose the Rio Grande Valley — Starr, Hidalgo, Willacy, Zapata and Cameron — all went heavily blue for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But in 2020, Trump gained major ground in all five counties, even winning Zapata, the first time the county went red in 100 years, Zapata County Republican Chair Jennifer Thatcher told the Daily Caller.

“What they want is change,” Thatcher said of Zapata County voters. “Everybody’s tired of the same thing, you know, same empty promises and nothing getting done.”

In 2016, Clinton defeated Trump in Zapata, which is 94 percent Hispanic, with 65 percent of the vote to Trump’s 32 percent. But in 2020, Trump edged Biden 53-47, picking up 1,000 voters in the 12,000 person county.

That trend played out across the Rio Grande Valley. Trump picked up 69,493 votes across the five Valley counties from 2016 to 2020. Local Republicans believe he could make even bigger gains this time around.

“His support is just really remarkable,” Toni Trevino, Starr County’s Republican Chair, told the Daily Caller. It’s “off the charts, more so than in ‘16 and ‘20.”

While some voters in the border counties cited Trump’s immigration policies, it’s the economy and cost of living that seems to be by far the biggest reason for the shift.

“Things are getting very expensive,” Jorge Bazan, a Starr County voter who described himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” told the Caller. “To go to a restaurant, it’s expensive. Expensive groceries.”

Bazan, who works for a water company, says a foot of pipe used to cost his company $8 in 2020. Now, he says, it costs $21.

This time, he says he’s voting for Trump. “The economy was better when he was in office.”

Many Starr County Democrats voted blue for their local candidates but revealed to Trevino that they also voted for Trump, she told the Caller.

Another local organizer, Col. Ross Barrera, heard the same thing.

“A lot of the people, they were hinting to me, ‘Mr. Barrera, we’re voting Democrat locally, but at the national level, Trump.’ These are people who barely speak English. They’re first generation Mexican-Americans,” he told the Caller.

Former Democrats told Barrera, Thatcher and Trevino they were voting Trump because they’re hurting financially.

Voters often mention prices for groceries and other staples. “The main issue for these people is, of course, bringing money home” Barrera said.

The Rio Grande valley is one of the poorest areas in the U.S. The area has a 27 percent family poverty rate, according to the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. That number is well over double the national rate of 11.5 percent.

“To have there be such a tangible difference in the cost of living and in how much it costs us to feed and clothe our family and at the same time to have less job opportunities — or if we do have job opportunities, they’re lower-paying jobs — that is what I mean. People here, they saw the difference,” Trevino told the Caller.

“They saw the four years of Donald Trump, when their lives were better, and then they’ve seen the last four years when their lives have been not as good for their family.”

Despite the hardships, local Hispanic voters are not looking for handouts, Barrera said.

“The reason they come to America, not because they want abortions. They come because of jobs. These people, they want to work. They don’t want a giveaway. But the Democrats [say], “Oh, we’ll give you this. We’ll give you that. No, no, no, give me a job,” Barrera said.

While the economy appears to be the key catalyst in the valley’s rightward shift, other issues on the Democrat platform like the funding of foreign wars, border security, sex-changes for children and abortion (the area is heavily Catholic) are contributing to the party exodus as well.

For instance, Bazan mentioned abortion as a key issue for his rejection of Democrats, and county officials heard similar stories from others.

Still, the economy appears to be the main reason these voters are walking away.

“The economy, illegal immigration, inflation and oil, are the four key issues for voters in Starr County,” Barrera told the Caller. “Notice, I didn’t say anything about the transgender issue. Nothing about abortion. These are the issues that hit people hard. People want to work. They don’t want [the Democratic Party’s] ways.”

Flores illustrated her constituents’ opposition to Democrats by outlining their party platform.

“When the government leaves our border wide open, allowing 13,099 known murderers and 15,811 known [convicted sex offenders] into our country, people want a change. When the government advances legislation using tax dollars to pay for sex-changes for children, people want a change. When groceries become unaffordable and quality of life drops dramatically, people want a change. When we have crisis after crisis in our communities being ignored by our government while they’re sending hundreds of billions of dollars overseas, people want a change.”

The region has been reliably blue for decades. In 2020, The New York Times listed Texas as a toss-up, claiming Joe Biden could be the first Democrat to win the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976, citing “the arrival of a formidable multiracial Democratic coalition in the country’s largest red state.”

The outlet specifically cited the Hispanic vote and the Valley’s local Democratic candidates, who often run unopposed. That lack of opposition led to what former Republican Texas Rep. Mayra Flores called “single-party rule.”

“So many voters believe the only election of consequence is the primary election. Most voters, even those with conservative beliefs, vote in the Democrat primaries so they can have a say in who their locally-elected officials are,” Flores told the Caller. “It’s only recent that Republicans have been considered competitive in this area, and the investment in campaigning and outreach has been a priority.”

In the past it was frowned upon socially to not vote for Democrats, Barrera told the Caller.

“You couldn’t say you were a Republican because they would paint you as, ‘Oh, you want to be white. Oh, you wanna be rich. You’re in the wrong party.’” Barrera said.

But the tide is evidently turning.

In Barrera’s Starr County, Trump went from earning 19 percent of the vote in 2016 to 47 percent in 2020, narrowly losing to Biden despite picking up over 6,000 votes. Biden received 123 less votes in 2020 than Clinton did in 2016.

“I think it is almost certain that he will over-perform from 2020, and it is entirely possible that he sweeps the entire Rio Grande Valley,” Flores told the Caller.

The trend is playing out nationally too, as Trump is outperforming Kamala Harris with Hispanic male voters, according to an October AP/NORC poll.

Harris has struggled with Hispanic voters compared to her Democratic predecessors.

Hillary Clinton carried the Hispanic vote by 40 points and Biden did so by around 30. Harris led Trump by 12 points with registered Hispanic voters, according to an Economist/YouGov poll from late October.

Trevino and other party officials cited an uptick in the intensity and cohesion of their organizing efforts as part of why Trump has made these strides.

The area, which has one of the lowest turnout rates in the country, has experienced rapid growth in turnout in the last two presidential elections.

“Almost 12 percent of the early votes cast so far this year are from voters who have not voted in the last four elections,” Flores said. “The enthusiasm is high, but, at least in South Texas, seems to be one-sided.”

“Latino voters have been abandoned by the Democratic party. After decades of one-party rule, being taken for granted, and only seeing things get worse, they want a change.”

AUTHOR

Robert McGreevy

Reporter.

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

Drone Video of Illegal Aliens on Rio Grande Setting up Camps Before Biden Ended Title 42

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I wish to thank the Texas Department of Public Safety for the drone footage contained in the below article. May I further thank each and every law enforcement officer, National Guardsman and fireman/medic standing post along what use to be America’s southern Border. The southern Border of the United States which helps define the national sovereignty of this exceptional nation, has, by all accounts, collapsed. This has been the plan, written and spoken about by Obama when he declared that he would “forever change America.” The well-stated and written plan is to collapse the United States into the New-World Order, a global community where nations no longer have sovereign status but are part and parcel of the global community which is divided into ten regions world wide.

Not only are approximately 1 million illegals from 160 countries coming into America commencing with the abolishment of Title 42, but you need to add the approximate 6 million illegals already here. These numbers are law enforcement and threat assessment close working estimates, minus the “get aways” who could not be interdicted, recorded, checked or even detained. It is well known that hardened criminals and gang members along with military age Chinese males have made their way across the border already, NOT counting what is now crossing. The danger being allowed into America is beyond comprehension. May 6th at the Douglas, Arizona border crossing, US Customs discovered and IED (explosive device) being smuggled into our country. Cartels and Chinese military have been sending weapons and munitions for many months securing them in storage lockers at various locations across America.

Another dimension not even discussed is the medical crisis looming. My national show ARIZONA TODAY will have a presentation on this sobering and alarming dimension shortly. I already did two shows on this subject, but as I write this report one of my nationally recognized medical specialists contacted me with updated medical concerns of a serious nature now landing on our lands.

Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and each elected office holder who has not vigorously fought to protect and defend the sovereignty of the United States should be impeached or arrested for treason. Deliberately, publicly and consistently pushing to weaken our national sovereignty is a High Crime and Misdemeanor – Treason as outlined in our Constitution. Such acts are far and above political rhetoric or grandstanding. Very shortly, within days even, Americans will witness, firsthand, the effects of said treason as 1 million pour into America. Do your very best to get ready…an ugly human tidal wave is about to become reality, and quite possibly in your city or community as they are deliberately transported across America, especially into historically conservative communities and regions. That is the well thought out plan to bring disruption and even chaos to America.

Drone footage shows makeshift camps built along Rio Grande by migrants waiting for Title 42 to end

Drone footage taken along Rio Grande, the river that serves as the natural border between most of Mexico and the United States, shows sprawling tent encampments stretching out all over the border.

Hundreds of people reside in a massive camp made of tents and other dwellings with thin blue plastic sheets acting as roofs right outside of Brownsville, near the southern tip of Texas. (Related: Thousands of migrants set to flood the US once Title 42 expires this week.)

The drone footage also shows an “enormous line” of illegal immigrants who recently crossed into Brownsville. Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, who shared the footage, noted that a large majority of the illegals are single adults.

“Nonstop flow of illegal crossings here in Brownsville. Working on scripts in my car and look at the window and see another large group gathering for processing after crossing over,” wrote Melugin on his Twitter account. “Border Patrol buses have been coming and going constantly. It’s going to be a very busy week.”

Brownsville is one of the key spots along the border where officials have noted that the illegal immigrants are congregating in the thousands in order to cross, with the other notable crossing points being El Paso, Texas and Yuma, Arizona. But similar situations are developing and getting worse all along the nearly 2,000 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.

[ … ]

Watch this clip of Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Lt. Chris Olivarez talking about the illegal crossings along the Rio Grande.

Read more.

©2023 Lyle J. Rapacki, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

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Biden actually told voters during the  2020 presidential campaign “that the choice between him and Donald Trump was between the lawful and the lawless.” So here’s what’s happening now on the Southern border, where illegal, unvetted migrants are invading.

The Commander-in-Chief of the American Army and Navy and the leader of the free world (once upon a time) has abandoned all concern for national security and the American economy. And everyone knows what he did to Americans in Afghanistan.

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: 600 Migrants Cross Border in 3 Hours into Texas Border Town

by Bob Price and Randy Clark, Breitbart, December 28, 2022:

EAGLE PASS, Texas — Breitbart Texas posted along the Rio Grande south of town and observed a single group of nearly 300 migrants emerge from the riverbank and surrender to Texas National Guardsmen and Border Patrol agents Wednesday. Two large groups of nearly 600 crossed the Rio Grande in the early morning.

The first group of migrants consisted mainly of single adult male and female migrants from Colombia, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Scattered within the group were a few family units with small children and several elderly migrants. This was the first of two large migrant groups that would cross within three hours.

The large migrant groups have shifted their crossing points near Eagle Pass from just outside the north side of the city to a more remote crossing far south of the heart of the city.

The video shows the migrants emerging from the riverbank and being guided to a gap in a ranch fence on the edge of a nearby roadway. Once guided around the ranch fence, the migrants are interviewed by awaiting Border Patrol agents. The migrants are then sorted by nationality and gender and prioritized for transportation to a nearby processing center.

The group crossed shortly after 2:00 am as Breitbart Texas posted at several busy migrant crossing points. The large migrant group would not be the last for a weary shift of Border Patrol agents and Texas National Guard soldiers stationed in the area.

Another large group of 278 migrants crossed the Rio Grande at about 4:30 a.m. just north of the first group, according to a source operating under the umbrella of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The group crossed onto private property located about two miles from the Camino Real Port of Entry in Eagle Pass. The crossing point is near the south edge of a border wall built under orders of Governor Greg Abbott.

Within three hours, more than 600 migrants had crossed the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass.

Agents scrambled to that area about two miles away and repeated the process. The migrants crossing into the area are from countries not amenable to a speedy return to their home country under the CDC Title 42 emergency COVID-19 authority. According to a source within CBP, not authorized to speak to the media, the migrants crossing in Wednesday’s groups will be released into the United States to pursue asylum claims. The Supreme Court voted on Tuesday to leave Title 42 in place until it rules on the lawsuit filed by 19 states, Breitbart reported.

Once processed, the migrants will be taken to a charity shelter in the Eagle Pass and later transferred to a larger charity shelter in San Antonio, Texas. Many will depart San Antonio for other parts of the United States.

On Tuesday, nearly 1,100 migrants crossed the Rio Grande in just five hours in the same area south of the city…..

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.