The House Judiciary Committee approved yesterday the Asylum Reform and Border Protection Act (H.R. 391), which would narrow the “credible fear” standards that illegal aliens must meet in order to make an asylum claim. The bill, which passed by a 19-11 vote, is sponsored by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) after being first introduced by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).
The House Judiciary Committee passed Rep. John Carter’s (R-Texas) Protection of Children Act of 2017 (H.R. 495) by a 15-12 vote. This bill would remove loopholes to ensure that unaccompanied minors who cross the border illegally are promptly returned to their families in their home countries.
A Customs and Border Protection whistleblower turned over documents showing that under the Obama administration CBP officials released at least 16 teenagers they knew had ties to the deadly MS-13 gang. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the documents showed that the teenagers were caught crossing the border in 2014 but then were shipped to juvenile homes across the country.
A new report from the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General found that ICE deportation officers are so overloaded that they lose track of aliens that have been released pending their deportation, including some posing national security risks. Under the Obama Administration, deportation officers based in Washington, D.C., handled more than 10,000 released deportable aliens per person on average, while those in Atlanta averaged more than 5,000 released to the streets. Due to caseload and lack of direction, “ICE is almost certainly not deporting all the aliens who could be deported and will likely not be able to keep up with growing numbers of deportable aliens,” the report said.
Last Friday Rep. James Sensenbrenner was named as the new Chairman of the House Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee for the 115th Congress. Rep. Sensenbrenner has been a long time advocate for border security and tougher enforcement against illegal aliens.
For the second month in a row the number of illegal aliens apprehended at the border hit the highest number since June 2014, the height of the border surge. 47,214 illegal aliens were apprehended last month a 44% increase from November 2015.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) obtained government ICE records that show that the agency has spent over $100 million in the last few years in transporting illegal alien children who have crossed the border since the 2014 border surge began. According to the IRLI’s calculations ICE spent on average $665 per minor in 2014, mostly on transportation costs to fly the children between government agencies, to relatives in the U.S. or back to their home countries if deported.
Multiple media reports say President-elect Donald Trump has chosen retired Gen. John F. Kelly to head up the Department of Homeland Security. Before retiring, Gen. Kelly served as Chief of Southern Command, which oversees military operations across Central and South America and the Caribbean.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Immigration and Border Security Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), and Immigration and The National Interest Subcommittee Chairman Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to stop the current border surge that has overwhelmed Border Patrol and ICE.
In a recent interview with Breitbart Texas National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) President, Brandon Judd, claimed that Border Patrol is overwhelmed with holding the greatest number of illegal border crossers in custody in history and that the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency is hiding this information from the public.
The Obama administration has started delaying deportation proceedings for more than 56,000 illegal aliens who crossed in the 2014 border surge. The administration says that a lapse in enforcement allowed many of the illegal aliens to go free instead of being enrolled in an electronic monitoring program, saving the government from paying the daily $4-$8 fee for the GPS devices, so they have pushed back their deportation cases.
A recent Customs and Border Protection (CBP) report shows that illegal border crossings surged 10% in August countering the usual decrease in crossings due to the hot temperatures. This puts the agency on track to break the 2014 record of family unit apprehensions.
The Obama Administration announced yesterday that it will expand the Central American Minors program that was first established as a response to the 2014 border surge. The program looks to resettle unaccompanied alien children to the United States directly from their home countries in an attempt to discourage them from traveling though Mexico and crossing the border illegally.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, Gil Kerlikowske, has named FBI assistant director, Mark Morgan, as the new chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, though he has no prior experience with the agency. This is the first time in the Border Patrol’s 92-year-old history that the chief has been chosen from outside the agency.
According to new Border Patrol statistics, apprehensions at the southern border rose for the third consecutive month led by increases in illegal-alien family units. The Border Patrol apprehended 32,117 family units so far in fiscal year 2016, more than double the amount for this period last year and a 62% increase over the record number in fiscal year 2014 for that period. The numbers suggest a new border surge from Central American countries of record proportions.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is planning a nationwide campaign to locate and deport illegal aliens who have illegally crossed the border since last year. This move comes after a recent DHS report shows that deportations have declined by 25% since 2014.
The number of illegal alien minors coming across the border is steadily increasing hitting a record high for the month of October according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. Around 5,000 unaccompanied minors were caught at the US-Mexico in October, double the number from October 2014 during the border surge.
The Department of Homeland Security said it is complying with an order from Federal Judge Dolly M. Gee who ruled in July that ICE violated a decades old settlement by holding illegal-alien families and children in detention centers.
Last year’s border surge of unaccompanied minors has stalled the immigration courts, creating an average 3 year wait time for illegal-alien adults with only one in six minors showing up for their legal hearings according to the Migration Policy Institute report.
According to the Associated Press, the Obama administration has deported fewer illegal aliens in the last 12 months than any other time since 2006. There were approximately 231,000 deportations in fiscal year 2015 that ended on Sept. 30, a 42% decrease since 2012.
According to statistics released by the U.S. Border Patrol yesterday, nearly 10,000 unaccompanied minors and families were arrested last month along the U.S.-Mexico border, a 52 percent jump from last year.
The NYC Department of Education told the schools that it plans to enroll 2,350 illegal alien children this year, with more to come.
The Center for Immigration Studies released a new report, based on monthly Census Bureau data, that shows the legal immigrant and illegal alien population in the second quarter of this year reached a record of 42.1 million.
According to Deputy Border Patrol, Chief Ronald Vitiello, the number of illegal alien families captured at the border rose unexpectedly in July despite the harsh warm weather. This upward trend may continue after Judge Dolly M. Gee’s July 24 preliminary ruling that severely restricts the detaining of illegal alien families.
At a Senate hearing this week an Obama Administration official said that nine out of 10 unaccompanied alien children (UACs) who crossed the border illegally during the border surge were placed with family members or friends in the United States. The vast majority of these minors were never eligible for placement, however, because the law Obama used to shield them from deportation defines a UAC as an illegal-alien minor without a parent or legal guardian in the U.S.
An internal document that the Obama Administration sent to congressional appropriators last spring on the expected surge of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) has been made public with startling new information. In it, the Obama administration predicted a large number of UACs to arrive last summer and record numbers for summers to come. The document counters claims that top federal officials did not anticipate the surge last summer.
Pushed by Democratic Members of Congress and special interest groups, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson today announced DHS would further limit the detention of those who illegally crossed the border as family units. Johnson's announcement comes despite a FOX News report this week indicating that 84 percent of Central American families who were released during last year’s border surge failed to appear in court.
The Washington Times’ Stephan Dinan explored one product of President Obama’s decision to relocate and care for, rather than deport unaccompanied alien children that surged over the southern border. He found that some of the minors have been charged with serious crimes such as murder and aggravated rape – a harbinger of problems to come this year as DHS begins to handle another surge. This undermines Obama's "felons, not families" rationale for his November 2014 amnesties, which are now the subject of litigation in a Texas District court
The Center for Immigration Studies obtained DHS statistics that say the Border Patrol and other agencies apprehended over 2,000 illegal alien minors during each of the last several months. The minors came from 27 different countries, although 90 percent came from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. 70 percent were male, 84 percent were between the ages of 13 and 17 when apprehended, and thirty-one percent claimed to be age 17.
The Senate passed a border amendment to its budget resolution late Thursday night that attempts to prevent future border surges like the one experienced last summer along the U.S.-Mexico border. The amendment, offered by Sen. John McCain (#360), passed by a 58-to-42 margin, but not before a bit of drama.
A report released on Friday cited the causes for the surge of illegal aliens across the border late last summer. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the debate over legalizing illegal aliens was “a primary cause” of thousands of Central Americans crossing into the United States illegally.
CBS News Poll. July 29-Aug. 4, 2014.
How serious a problem do you think the issue of ILLEGAL immigration is for the country right now: very serious, somewhat serious, not too serious, or not at all serious?
Very Serious: 62%
Somewhat Serious: 22%
Not Too Serious: 10%
Not At All Serious: 4%
Unsure/No Answer: 1%
Which should be the higher priority now: securing the nation's border, or addressing the status of illegal immigrants currently in the U.S.
Securing the Border: 59%
Denver Post -- Nancy Lofholm
Thousands of immigrants attempting to seek legal status or other court actions in Colorado are having their cases delayed for nearly five years — an unprecedented backlog in this state's immigration court.
The backlog that some Denver immigration attorneys call "a standstill" is part of national immigration court jam of almost 430,000 cases. But the legal pileup is particularly bad in Colorado, where all the immigration judges have been ordered to hear only priority cases.
ABC News -- Alicia Caldwell
President Barack Obama wants to spend $1 billion to help curb illegal immigration from three Central American countries, according to the president's budget request.
The request was outlined in the president's $4 trillion budget request sent to Congress Monday.
Deportations of illegal aliens in the past year have dropped lower than any other time in President Obama's tenure, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The report is another example that refutes the Obama administration's claim for "record deportations".
The Washington Times -- Stephen Dinan
The Obama administration quietly announced a program late last week to create a legal channel for thousands of Central American children to come to the U.S., a move designed to prevent a repeat of this summer’s illegal immigrant surge but which Republicans said amounted to “border sabotage.”
Breitbart -- John Sexton
The number of unaccompanied minors at the southwest border was up 77% in FY 2014 while family apprehensions were up 361% overall compared to the previous year.
The Washington Post -- Andrew Becker
Most of the people the Border Patrol stopped from sneaking into the country last year were from countries other than Mexico, according to agency statistics, a shift that might have provided fodder for politicians leading up to Tuesday’s election.
But they didn’t get much of a chance. The Border Patrol’s annual statistics were posted on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Web site for about five hours on Oct. 10, then taken down.
This summer, thousands of families and unaccompanied minors who entered the country illegally were released to sponsor families with an immigration court hearing date and a promise to appear. However, newly released documents reveal a staggering number of illegal aliens are failing to appear for their hearings.
On Thursday, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell inquiring about the "stewardship of taxpayer dollars in question during unaccompanied minors influx". In the letter, Senator Grassley said he received information about a facility run by Southwest Key Programs that includes expensive amenities.
A report was released today by the Refugee Resettlement Watch taking a look at how much the refugee resettlement program costs U.S. taxpayers. They found that the United States spends around $1 billion a year in tax dollars to resettle just over 100,00 refugees and asylees in per year.
The Daily Caller -- Neil Munro
The government-facilitated inflow of Central American migrant children and youths into U.S. schools and workplaces is at least 50 percent larger than has been reported by most establishment media outlets.
The media has copied President Barack Obama’s focus on 68,000 so-called “unaccompanied children,” but has mostly ignored the equally large inflow of 68,000 parents and minors who crossed the border in so-called “family units.”
Breitbart -- Jonathan Strong
Despite no official action from the president ahead of the election, the Obama administration has quietly begun preparing to issue millions of work authorization permits, suggesting the implementation of a large-scale executive amnesty may have already begun.
Daily Mail (UK) -- David Martosko
The federal government has sent more than 37,000 illegal immigrant children to adults in every part of the U.S. who claimed to be their guardians during the first seven months of 2014, data from the Department of Health and Human Services show.
But tens of thousands more are languishing in 116 shelters operated with taxpayer dollars in at least 16 states.
The Obama Administration announced earlier this week that they would set aside $9 million to help provide legal assistance to thousands of unaccompanied alien children who illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this year. Approximately 2,600 illegal aliens will receive legal representation under the grants issued to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants by Health and Human Services.
Approximately 70% of the illegal-alien families, who illegally crossed the border earlier this year, failed to show up for their follow-up meetings with federal immigration agents, according to a new report from the Associated Press. According to the report, an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that the illegal aliens were detained crossing the border illegally, given an appointment to meet with ICE officials a few weeks later, and then released into the U.S.
New data from the Department of Homeland Security show that the Obama Administration is deporting a significantly lower number of illegal aliens in fiscal year 2013 as compared to past years. In the current fiscal year, which started on October 1, 2012, through the end of July, the Administration has deported only 258,608 illegal aliens compared to 320,167 over the same time period the previous year and compared to 344,264 two years ago.
NumbersUSA launched TV ads in Dallas-Fort Worth and Harlingen-Brownsville-McAllen, Texas today calling on President Obama to stop talking amnesty and start securing the Texas border. The ads call attention to costs associated with increased flows of illegal aliens as a result of the Obama administration's past amnesty, ongoing calls for amnesty and actions to dismantle immigration enforcement. The ads are funded by the 250,000 Texas members of NumbersUSA.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry said terrorist groups, including ISIS who earlier this week killed an American journalist, could be using the ongoing border surge crisis alon the U.S.-Mexico border to sneak operatives into the United States. Perry spoke at The Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. as part of a discussion panel called The Border Crisis and the New Politics of Immigration. Perry said Congress needs to focus on securing the border before discussing broader immigration reform.
