RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/what-the-viral-border-patrol-video-leaves-out/

News outlets seized on the video as evidence of the Trump administration’s cruelty, but they omitted the crucial context.

In an attempt to justify Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s absurd comparison of American detention facilities to Holocaust-era concentration camps, many figures within the media have shared a viral video clip of a legal hearing in which a Department of Justice attorney debates a panel of judges as to what constitutes “sanitary conditions.” The majority of the shares were of a version put out by NowThis News, which claimed that the video shows a Trump administration official arguing that “children don’t need soap, toothbrushes, or beds to be ‘safe and sanitary’ while in Border Patrol custody.” The claim has led to several days of outrage, and has been used repeatedly as evidence that the current administration is being intentionally cruel to migrant children. Countless journalists, along with clickbait outlets such as The Hill and the Huffington Post, have highlighted the video inside this framing.

Unsurprisingly, it is not that simple. Indeed, the hearing in the video was related not to actions taken by the Trump administration, but to a challenge of a 2017 ruling that the CBP under the Obama administration had violated the Flores Settlement agreement with its treatment of children in custody. The judge in that case cited specific infractions that she felt were in violation of the “safe and sanitary” requirement under the Flores agreement and recommended a special monitor be appointed to ensure these facilities were complying with the original standard. The DOJ attorney in the video, Sarah Fabian, was not arguing that the United States should decline to provide those items to children, but rather that the Flores Settlement agreement didn’t specifically require those items. The notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit judges disagreed with this argument, preferring to read Flores narrowly. Fabian has been arguing similar cases on behalf of the Justice Department for years; that is her job. Some of her legal arguments have upset immigration advocates before. But they have never led to this type of media coverage, or to the claim that her fulfilling her legal role is indicative of a moral shortcoming.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/now_the_cartel_members_are_asking_for_asylum.html

If there’s any proof the asylum system is a mess, take a look at who’s getting in on ‘credible fear’ reasons from the Center or Immigration Studies:

KVOA News 4, the Tucson NBC affiliate, has reported on a June 10, 2019, gun battle that took place across the border from Douglas, Ariz., in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico. That gun battle apparently involved an internal dispute among members of the Sinaloa drug cartel and, by the end, almost 12 people had died. A gun battle directly across the border from the United States in which almost a dozen people were killed would be shocking enough.

One passage in that report, however, underscores the biggest difficulty the United States faces in securing its Southwest border: “Sources told News 4 Tucson four cartel members showed up at the port of entry asking for asylum and claimed ‘credible fear’.”

Given the low standard, the regrettable thing is that those cartel members likely were found to have a credible fear of persecution and/or torture.
So now it’s not just welfare seekers getting in on the credible fear argument, it’s the cartels they pay to get them in. And once those brutal thugs get into fights among themselves, whether it’s over alien-smuggling profits, drug routes, or cheap little whores, the losing party has rights to enter the U.S. to seek asylum as a consolation prize, citing perfectly logically the credible fear of torture, beheading, being dropped into acid pots, being run over alive over and over by semi-trucks, being fed to pigs and buried in the desert, or being strung up naked by one foot from the local bridges. Technically, they would likely have more credible fear than anyone else applying for asylum, and by leftist logic, that would put them at the front of the queue.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/florida_sets_an_important_precedent.html

As reported in the Miami Herald News, on Friday 14 June, 2019 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Federal Immigration Enforcement bill, SB 168, keeping a promise he had made during his campaign for governor.

Here is a summary of the bill’s provisions shown on the Florida Senate website:

Prohibits a state entity, local governmental entity, or law enforcement agency from having a sanctuary policy, which is a law, policy, practice, procedure, or custom that restricts a law enforcement agency’s ability to communicate or exchange information with a federal immigration agency on immigration enforcement matters or from complying with immigration detainers.
Provides procedures for a court to follow to reduce a defendant’s sentence by up to 12 days and thereby permit a law enforcement agency to transfer the defendant to a federal facility and complete the remaining 12 days of the sentence.
Requires a law enforcement agency that has custody of someone who is subject to an immigration detainer to notify the judge of the detainer, record in the person’s file the existence of the detainer, and comply with the detainer.
Requires a county correctional facility to enter into an agreement with a federal immigration agency for the payment of costs associated with housing and detaining defendants.
Provides that the Governor, in an exercise of his or her constitutional duties, may initiate judicial proceedings against any executive or administrative state, county, or municipal officer to enforce compliance with duties under the act or restrain unauthorized actions contrary to the act.
Permits the Attorney General to institute an action for a violation of this law or to prevent a violation of the law.
Requires any sanctuary policies currently in effect be repealed within 90 days after the effective date of the act.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/whats-wrong-with-asking-about-citizenship-on-the-census/

A donnybrook has broken out over how the administration decided to add a citizenship question to the census. We’ll presumably learn more one way or the other, but it’s worth asking why it is considered such a scandal to ask about citizenship, which is a question on other government surveys and isn’t new on the census. Here is the Census Bureau itself describing what it asks as part of the very important, ongoing American Community Survey and why:

We ask questions about a person’s place of birth, citizenship, and year of entry into the United States to create data about citizens, noncitizens, and the foreign-born population.

Agencies and policymakers use our published statistics to set and evaluate immigration policies and laws, understand the experience of different immigrant groups, and enforce laws, policies, and regulations against discrimination based on national origin. These statistics also help tailor services to accommodate cultural differences.

And explaining the origins of these questions:

Citizenship originated with the 1820 Census, place of birth originated with the 1850 Census, and year of entry originated with the 1890 Census. They transferred to the ACS in 2005 when it replaced the decennial census long form.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273975/politicians-must-face-consequences-crimes-they-michael-cutler

The phrase, Failure is Not An Option served as the title of the book written by Gene Kranz, Flight Director for NASA who helped create the U.S. manned space program and was instrumental in successfully returning the crew of Apollo 13 to the earth after their spacecraft suffered a catastrophic explosion half-way to the moon.

In most professions, especially where lives are on the line, failure to do the job is not an option.  This is particularly true where law enforcement and the military are concerned.  

Politicians, not unlike members of the military and law enforcement officers, take oaths of office where they swear (affirm) that they will enforce our laws and defend the Constitution.  While law enforcement officers and members of the armed forces may face dire consequences for violating their oaths of office, politicians generally do not.

Their oaths of office do not provide an “escape clause” whereby they may opt to ignore any of the laws that are not to their liking.

Unlike the entries on the menu of a restaurant where the patrons order the food that they find palatable or where they may substitute one item on the menu for another, their oaths of office demand that those who take that oath agree to enforce all laws and honor and defend all of the provisions of our Constitution.

Dereliction of duty is a serious offense for members of the armed forces and for law enforcement officers and one that carries significant consequences.

On June 4, 2019 ABC News reported, Police arrest ex-deputy who ‘did absolutely nothing to mitigate’ Parkland school massacre.

We will not delve in the specifics of this ongoing case, but it is important to note that the deputy sheriff in this case has been charged with multiple crimes, some of which are felonies, all emanating from his alleged failures to act to protect the children who were killed in that school.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/george-will-demands-open-borders-im-for-as-much-immigration-as-the-economy-can-take/

The sesquipedalian (using long words, long-winded) Will was once a great journalist, but he has clearly lost his footing but retained his pomposity …..rsk

Establishment Conservative columnist and author George Will told Hill.TV yesterday morning that he supports as much immigration “as the economy can take.” According to Will, America needs mass immigration because of an aging workforce and millions of “unfilled jobs.”

Will was on the show because he has written a new book, The Conservative Sensibility. In this book, he argues that conservatives “made a wrong turn,” and he advocates a “return” to the principles of “small government.”

However, with “small government” Will doesn’t actually mean small government. What he does mean is cheap labor for Big Business. You see, according to Will, the entire system of entitlements is “here to stay.” The problem is “how to pay for them.” To do so, America needs a “dynamic” economic system, by which he means the capitalist free market system… and mass immigration.

“I believe immigration is an inherently entrepreneurial act,” Will said (much to the surprise of European watchers who see many ‘entrepreneurial immigrants’ from Syria come to Europa, after which they prefer to cash in welfare checks rather than get to work). “It’s people uprooting themselves, taking a risk for themselves and their families.”

“I think in a country in which baby boomers are retiring, where we have an aging workforce, where we have seven million unfilled jobs at the moment, and we have people clamoring to get into our country, to get to work, I’m for as much immigration as the economy can handle. The economy needs immigration just as much as the immigrants need the American economy.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/a-win-at-the-border/

“The New York Times had a report over the weekend throwing cold water on the deal, saying its component parts had already been agreed to months ago. It’s no secret that the U.S. has been pushing Mexico in this direction for a while (indeed, prior talks that the Times calls “secret” were publicly announced). It’s still an accomplishment to get Mexico to commit openly to fuller, more urgent cooperation with the U.S.”

President Trump evidently knows something about the art of the tariff threat. His unorthodox Twitter diplomacy has gotten Mexico to make potentially important public commitments on immigration enforcement.

Trump said he was going to slap steadily escalating tariffs on Mexico unless it did more to help with the border crisis, a threat with huge downside risks. If implemented, the tariffs would have been disruptive at a time when U.S. growth is perhaps slowing, been an economic gut-punch to an allied country whose stability is important to us, and probably precipitated a congressional revolt against the policy. Instead, Trump has a win that is likely more than a mere PR victory.

Mexico is devoting 6,000 troops to attempting to better police its own border with Guatemala. It’s unclear what this will produce, although it can’t hurt. More important is the extension of the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), or the “remain in Mexico” policy. Under this arrangement, we can return asylum-seekers to Mexico while their claims — almost always ultimately rejected — are adjudicated. This avoids one of the biggest problems of our current policy, which allows asylum-seekers into the country, never to be removed, even if their claims are rejected and they are ordered deported.

Mexico wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about MPP and limited the number of asylum-seekers it would accept to a trickle. Now it is saying it will accept them with no restrictions. That’s a big deal, although our capacity to process the migrants for return is limited, and it remains to be seen how much Mexico will do to follow through on its commitment. The deal at least makes it possible, though, for us to prevent Central American family units from automatically gaining entry into the country, and thus it significantly reduces the incentive for a future flow of migrants.  

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/09/trumps-wins-one-on-immigration/

Tariffs don’t work. Or so the talking heads kept saying. We watched for days as Democrats and Republicans lambasted President Trump’s threat to impose steeper and steeper tariffs on Mexico unless and until that country takes concrete action to stem the tide of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States.

“I think it’s both bad politically and bad economically and I don’t think it’s really going to help solve the immigration problem, either, which is what Mr. Trump said he’s trying to attack,” said John Negroponte, the former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations, and Iraq.

“This is a stunningly stupid idea on many levels,” wrote Eric Boehm at the libertarian Reason magazine. “Making it more expensive to import goods from Mexico is a pretty roundabout way to get Mexico to change its border policies.”

“Mr. Trump is blaming Mexico for a mess it can’t solve,” the Wall Street Journal editorialized

Well, now we know.

Late Friday, President Trump announced that an agreement was reached to suspend the threatened tariffs “indefinitely” in exchange for Mexico agreeing to house many of the illegal immigrants who are overtaxing America’s broken asylum system. Instead of releasing so-called asylum-seekers into the interior of the United States, often never to be seen again, tens of thousands will remain in Mexico while they await their court dates.

Clearly, the threat of tariffs works very well.

Democrats and their allies in the media continually bemoan President Trump breaking long-standing political norms.  They still seem unwilling to grasp one of the central tenets of the 2016 movement that led to his election.  Yes, accepted practices and “norms” of Washington worked well for apparatchiks of the administrative state and their crony allies among big business and K Street influencers.  But this crooked system failed miserably to enhance the well-being of millions of working-class Americans who therefore chose, very knowingly, to send an agitator to Washington, D.C. 

President Trump has been particularly forceful in breaking protocol and bucking conventional Beltway wisdom in the international arena.  For example, he scuttled our participation in the unfair Paris climate accord.  He also successfully shamed NATO partners into paying their proper share of the alliance’s defense burden.  In international trade, he demands reciprocity and honest dealings from China, a country that has serially abused America for decades. 

Trump also smartly confronted Mexico over its inaction regarding our volatile shared border.  The recent situation there has grown totally untenable, on pace this year to send over 1 million unvetted and uninvited trespassers pouring into our country. The overwhelming majority of these people, contrary to media narrative, are economic migrants willfully abusing our nation’s generous and well-intended asylum provisions.  But, because the Democrats in Congress seem to prefer a controversy to a solution when it comes to illegal migration, the internal options for Trump and his Department of Homeland Security remain limited.  But thinking creatively, the president determined that our immense economic leverage over Mexico could be summoned to coax them into acting as a good neighbor.  For too long regarding Central American migrants, we have allowed Mexico to transfer its temporary trouble into our permanent problem.

But President Trump warned Mexico of imminent trade sanctions unless it shared proactively in the burden of stopping this dangerous flow of people and the attendant humanitarian border crisis it caused.  Predictably, critics shrieked in disapproval over the last week. 

Many media mavens recoiled to their standard default position of criticizing Trump as a racist.  My CNN colleague Chris Cuomo, for example, claimed that Trump characterized the border crossers as a “marauding brown menace.”  First, he used no such description. Second, America is not a race, and defending American citizens, of all colors and persuasions, does not represent a prejudiced construct in any sense.  In point of fact, black and brown American citizens suffer disproportionately from a lawless border, due to totally preventable illegal alien crime and illicit competition in the labor markets.  It is neither xenophobic nor bigoted for any country to determine the processes and qualifications for becoming legal new citizens. 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mexico-is-sending-6-000-troops-to-secure-its-border-ahead-of-trumps-tariff-deadline

Mexico intends to send 6,000 National Guard troops to its southern border to head off the threat of U.S. tariffs over its lax border policies.

Despite Mexico’s intent to beef up border security, the White House is still planning to enact a 5% tariff on about $350 billion worth of goods flowing from Mexico into the U.S. on June 10. Tariffs will increase by 5% each month up to 25% in October.

“Our position hasn’t changed. The tariffs will move forward and go into effect on Monday,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Friday.

If negotiations are not settled before the weekend, the White House will issue a notice Friday of the tariffs expected Monday.

“There’s a legal notification that goes forward today with a plan to implement [Mexico] tariffs on Monday, but I think there is the ability — if negotiations continue to go well — that the president can turn that off at some point over the weekend,” Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, said Friday.