RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/why-the-border-crisis-is-here-to-stay/

Absent a credible impeachment threat, President Biden and the progressives are only going to continue abetting illegal immigration.

D on’t blame me, blame the Supreme Court — along with congressional Republicans, Republican presidents, and Washington’s entrenched post-sovereign, transnational–progressive political establishment. But don’t say you weren’t warned: The only hope for reestablishing security on the southern border is a credible threat to impeach President Biden.

And don’t bet on that emerging from a Democrat-dominated House.

That blunt reality is elucidated by the Biden administration’s assault on any remaining vestige of state sovereignty. In El Paso federal court, the Justice Department has sued Texas and Governor Greg Abbott for attempting to protect the state from waves of illegal aliens who are streaming into the country.

The federal government is aiding and abetting illegal immigration. That is a violation of federal law and thus another manifestation of Biden’s disregard for his solemn duty to execute the laws faithfully, on unabashed display this week with his dictatorial eviction-moratorium decree, which he and his administration concede is unconstitutional.

Immigration law commands that aliens who do not have a legal right to be present in the United States “shall be detained pending a final determination of credible fear of persecution and, if found not to have such a fear, until removed.” That is, even those who credibly claim to fear persecution if returned from whence they came — the infinitesimally small percentage of legitimate refugees among the hordes now seeking entry — are supposed to be held in custody until that claim is fully adjudicated.

But Biden has signaled that the border is open and that those who try to cross illegally stand an excellent chance of getting in and staying. Rhetorically, the president pretends the laws are being enforced, but he knows this is impossible in the conditions he has willfully created. The government is woefully short of the detention space, enforcement personnel, and administrative resources that would be needed to handle the vast migrant crowds arriving daily.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/over-800-migrant-children-detained-at-border-in-highest-daily-total-this-year/

Border Patrol agents detained 834 unaccompanied migrant children at the U.S.–Mexico border on Wednesday, according to data released by the Department of Health and Human Services.

That number is the highest since the Biden administration began reporting daily total apprehensions of migrant children earlier this year.

The number of children in custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection rose to 2,784 on Wednesday. Unaccompanied children are typically held in CBP facilities before being transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees care for unaccompanied minors. There are currently 14,523 children in HHS facilities.

The release comes after the Department of Homeland Security estimated that 210,000 migrants crossed the southern border in July, in court documents filed on August 2. That number includes an estimated 19,000 unaccompanied minors for the month of July, in what would be the highest monthly total since the year 2000.

The Biden administration has struggled to process hundreds of thousands of migrants who have illegally crossed into the U.S. in recent months. Border agents encountered 188,829 migrants in June, the highest monthly total in a decade, along with 180,641 migrants in May, 178,850 in April, and 173,265 in March.

On Monday the administration renewed a Title 42 policy allowing border agents to expel migrants directly back into Mexico without a court hearing, citing the risk of coronavirus spread. However, unaccompanied minors are exempt from that policy.

https://townhall.com/columnists/laurahollis/2021/08/05/it-isnt-immigration-its-a-gov

Do you know how many people have come across the border illegally so far this year?

According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (USCBP), it’s 1.1 million people, and the numbers are rising every month.

According to the USCBP’s website, more than 75,000 people crossed the border illegally in January of this year. In February, that number climbed to more than 97,000. In March, it was more than 169,000. In April, 173,000. More than 180,000 people crossed the southern border in May. In June, it was almost 189,000. The June number was a 450% increase over June of 2020, and more than 4% increase from May’s numbers.

USCBP just released the figures for July: 210,000 illegal immigrants crossed the U.S. border that month alone. That is the highest monthly total in more than two decades. 

The number of illegals is already more than twice the total number of those who crossed the border during the entire last year of former President Donald Trump’s term — and these are just the ones we know of. 

CARTOONS | AF Branco

View Cartoon

This is not merely a crisis; it is an existential threat.

First, these are election-changing numbers. As we’ve seen, a few thousand additional votes here and there can flip important counties in battleground states, and in so doing, affect the outcome of elections. We’re now talking about millions. Newsweek put it this way: the number of people who have come to this country illegally so far this year is already large enough to “create the tenth largest city in the U.S.”

Regardless of what the migrants’ own objectives for coming to America are, the Democrats’ plan is for these people to vote. Democrats in Congress have been pushing for “amnesty” for illegal immigrants, granting them citizenship and the right to vote. They’re currently trying to use the budget “reconciliation” process, which would enable them to pass such legislation this summer – well before the 2022 midterms, and without any Republican support. 

How many undocumented immigrants are in the U.S.? The “official” number, at least before the 2021 surge, was around 11 million. But organizations like the Foundation for American Immigration Reform estimate that it is quite a bit higher. FAIR’s estimate in 2019 was closer to 15 million.

Even if it is the lower number, at this rate, more than 2 million people – or twenty percent of the number of illegals already here – will have come into this country illegally by the end of 2021. If this continues — and there are no indications that it will stop — how many people will have entered the country illegally by the end of Biden’s first term? 8 million? 10 million?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/08/05/new-photos-show-the-inhumane-conditions-of-bidens-border-crisis-n1467244

Joe Biden’s laying out the welcome mat for illegal immigrants has resulted in “a human disaster at multiple crossing points,” according to photos provided to the Washington Examiner by the former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Mark Morgan.

“This is crazy what’s happening,” Morgan told Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner. Morgan’s photos of several crossing points show cages (yes, cages) of illegal immigrants, absolutely disgusting bathroom facilities, and thousands of migrants crammed under bridges as they wait to be processed in 100-degree heat.

“It’s nuts. There are 4,000 people under that bridge. We’ve had storms. They were outside …100 degrees outside,” he said.

“The White House said migrants are being handled in a humane and orderly way,” Morgan said. “This isn’t humane or orderly, and it’s not the Border Patrol’s fault. They are doing all they can to deal with the disaster created by Biden.”

One photo provided to the Washington Examiner shows a toilet at the Anzalduas International Bridge holding area at the Rio Grande River near Mission, Texas.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/07/28/kamala-youre-doing-a-heckuva-job-on-the-border/

In the months since President Joe Biden tapped his vice president to run point on the border crisis, Kamala Harris’ poll numbers have plunged as the number of illegals crossing the border swells. Then again, her boss is the one who’s willing to spend $2 billion to stop building a border wall.

At his first press conference in March, a reporter asked Biden about the surge in illegal border crossings that just happened to coincide with his getting the keys to the White House.

“The truth of the matter is: Nothing has changed,” Biden said after he overturned numerous Trump administration border-control policies. “It happens every single, solitary year: There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March.”

Biden even offered a weather-related causes why crossings jumped early in the year: “The reason they’re coming is that it’s the time they can travel with the least likelihood of dying on the way because of the heat in the desert, number one.”

Biden then put Harris in charge of the situation, saying that “I can think of nobody who is better qualified to do this.”

Since then, apprehensions of illegals at the border have climbed every month, even as the temperatures climbed. (See the nearby chart.)

I&I Chart

As the Albuquerque Journal notes:  “The number of migrant families they encountered at the border in June increased by 25% from the previous month even as summer temperatures rise in the deserts and mountain terrain of the southwestern borderlands.”

As of June, apprehensions had topped 1 million, with three months to go in the fiscal year. That’s more than double the number from all of FY 2020.

“It’s as bad as it’s been in memory,” the Center for Immigration Studies’ Todd Bensman told the Washington Times. “By every yardstick that exists, the border — and not just the border areas, but the interior areas now — are in crisis.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/biden-administration-says-cubans-not-welcome-wheres-the-outrage/

It’s impossible to ignore that Cubans often are treated differently.

I n November of 2020, Joe Biden’s Havana-born nominee for Department of Homeland Security secretary, Ali Mayorkas, promised to “oversee the protection of all Americans and those who flee persecution in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones.”

Less than a year later, amid a popular uprising in Cuba, Mayorkas made a volte-face, telling those seeking refuge from Haiti and the communist nation, “You will not come to the United States. . . . Again, I repeat, do not risk your life attempting to enter the United States illegally. You will not come to the United States.”

As far as I can tell, there was no performative outrage from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or any of her progressive cohorts over the United States shutting its doors to the downtrodden. There are no overwrought analogies made between U.S. immigration policy and the MS St. Louis by Democrats. There is no grandstanding reading of “The New Colossus” from CNN hosts.

Even as Biden gave his perfunctory statement about the United States standing with the “Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom,” a senior State Department official was framing protests — in which some unfurled American flags and many chanted “We want liberty” — as unhappiness over “rising COVID cases/deaths,” using puerile activist rhetoric about “mobilizing donations to help neighbors in need.” Collectivist-induced shortages are not an outlier. Every neighborhood is in need.

It’s impossible to ignore the fact that Cubans are often treated differently. Perhaps it’s because a sizeable number of them — having first- or secondhand experience with socialism — vote Republican, and progressives are interested only in future Democrat voters.

After all, President Barack Obama not only ended the embargo on Cuba; he overturned the “wet foot, dry foot” policy instituted under President Clinton in 1995, which allowed Cubans refugees who reached U.S. soil to stay and become permanent residents. There is a genuine debate over the morality of policy that incentivizes refugees to put their lives in danger (Cubans deserve to make that choice), and it is also true that the Cuban regime has taken advantage with mass expulsions of people in a bid to retain power, as it did with the Mariel Boatlift. Obama, though, legitimized the regime by visiting Cuba, allowing himself to be filmed underneath a mural of the mass murderer Che Guevara. He took in a baseball game with the dictator Raúl Castro as FARC terrorists cheered in the stands. Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, known as Antúnez, who spent 17 years in Castro’s gulag, called the U.S. policy “a betrayal of the aspiration to freedom of the Cuban people.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/iranian-goal-death-america-aided-and-abetted-michael-cutler/

Iran is one of the most dangerous nations on earth and has been identified as being the greatest state sponsor of international terrorism.

For decades the leaders of Iran have chanted, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

Virulent anti-American chanting by Iran’s leaders is only the tip of the huge Anti-American Iranian iceberg.

President Abraham Lincoln sagely observed that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

The United States is currently in the midst of a battle for the minds and souls of Americans.

Rather than teaching critical thinking in American schools and universities, students are now being indoctrinated in anti-American Critical Race Theory that pits Americans against Americans along racial lines that were erased by America’s Civil Rights laws.

There are many reasons that this toxic ideology has taken hold in America but let us not forget that as America falters, the enemies of our nation are rejoicing.  Indeed, while we have heard much about supposed Russian interference in the Presidential elections of 2016 and 2020, as it turns out, Iran has been heavily involved.

On June 7, 2021 Time Magazine published an important report, Exclusive: Iran Steps up Efforts to Sow Discord Inside the U.S.

That report began with the following two paragraphs:

Iranian state actors are intensifying their disinformation campaign on social media to spread discord and anti-Semitic tropes inside the U.S., two U.S. intelligence officials say.

Social media accounts tracked to troll farms run by the Iranian government have ramped up disinformation after several major events this year, including Biden’s effort to return the U.S. to the Iran nuclear deal, the April 14 announcement of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin on April 20, and the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas that started on May 10. “It’s a significant level of activity,” one official tells TIME. “It’s active enough that we’re tracking it.” The officials did not offer details on the specific disinformation activity after the events.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/06/29/an_unflinching_guide_to_biden

The crisis of illegal immigration—to give this calamity its true name—is growing increasingly grave. The reason is no mystery. The Biden administration replaced policies that staunched the illegal flow of migrants with policies that actually encourage it.

Instead of securing the U.S. border, the administration says it wants to deal with the “root cause,” desperation in Central America. That won’t work for two reasons. First, the administration doesn’t have the tools to markedly change conditions in Central America. Second, even if the policies could stimulate economic growth, improve safety, and reduce corruption—spoiler alert, they can’t—they won’t have any significant impact for years. Under even the most optimistic scenarios, they couldn’t reduce immigration anytime soon. It’s a policy based on a mirage.

The Biden team is certainly right that bad conditions in Mexico and Central America drive immigration. But it’s easy to show that’s the wrong explanation for our current crisis. The reason, as all social scientists know, is that “you cannot explain change with a constant.” What is constant here? Poverty, corruption, and danger in Mexico and Central America. Since those “root causes” have not changed over the past year, they cannot explain the dramatic rise in illegal immigration since Biden took office. What does explain it? The administration’s decision not to secure the southern border and to give up any serious effort at preventing illegal immigration. Migrants have gotten the message, and they are coming north in unprecedented numbers.

The media, always eager to protect their favorite political party, never asked Vice President Kamala Harris three crucial questions after her “root causes” trip to Guatemala and Mexico.

Can the U.S. really do much to improve conditions there?
Would relatively modest improvements have much impact on migration? And, crucially,
How long before these policies can have a major impact, if they work at all?

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-was-kamala-harris-thinking/

Vice President Kamala Harris “clearly thinks she’s ‘winning’ something by refusing to [visit the border],” I noted at the end of today’s Morning Jolt. “What she thinks she’s winning is anybody’s guess.”

This afternoon brings word that Harris will indeed travel to the border, 91 days after President Biden appointed Harris to “lead efforts to stem migration across the U.S.–Mexico border.” Many Democrats have disputed the characterization of Harris as the “border czar.” But Biden himself said this, referring to her role on this issue: “I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.”

Would Harris have gotten some bad press by visiting the border three months ago? Sure, but it would have been one bad news cycle. White Houses get those all the time, and they survive them all the time. By waiting, Harris ensured that Republicans could bring it up over and over again, while also ensuring she would get asked about it and have awkward moments like her giggling, “I haven’t been to Europe, either. I don’t know what you’re getting at,” in response to NBC News’s Lester Holt. Now, when Harris visits, Republicans will point out, accurately, that U.S. Customs and Border Protection have had three straight months of border captures that are the worst in 20 years. With four months to go, it’s already the worst year since 2006.

To avoid one bad news cycle, Harris accepted three months of bad press.

And we’re left wondering: Just why the heck was Harris so reluctant to visit the border? It certainly isn’t a blanket administration opposition to photo opportunities, or else the president wouldn’t visit an Alexandria rock-climbing facility and joke about scaling a 60-foot wall. It’s become almost cliché in conservative media to say that Harris has bad political instincts, but I think that understates just how much she chooses to make avoidable mistakes.

It’s possible that for three straight months, Harris assumed that the following week or month would bring better news and signs that the waves of migrants are abating. If that’s the case, it’s not encouraging, because it suggests the administration’s policies and messaging will work any day now, despite all the counter-evidence.