Another great post describing a positive action against our Nation's illegal immigration problems!

 

In four months, border agents arrest 1,000 child sex offenders in Tampa area

The 1,000th arrest was a Trinidad national who was in the U.S. illegally on an expired visa and attempted to evade prosecution on child sex offense charges

By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor justthenews.com 5-3-26

Border Patrol agents working in Tampa, Florida, have arrested their 1,000th child sex offender in just four months. The 1,000th arrest was of a Trinidadian man convicted of five felony child sex offenses in Hillsborough County with a lengthy criminal record.

They’re working out of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Miami Sector’s Tampa Station, one of the oldest Border Patrol stations in the country.

The Tampa Station first opened in 1925 to respond to large smuggling rings entering Florida using Cuban fishing boats. It is the only station on Florida’s west coast.

Its area of responsibility covers 12 counties in central and western Florida, spanning 190 miles long and 125 miles wide. It also includes three seaports. From the Gulf, it stretches east to Lake, Osceola, Highland and Glades counties. It stretches north to Levy and Marion counties and south to Lee County.

The 1,000th arrest and “significant milestone is further proof that Border Patrol agents remain committed to making our communities safer by apprehending and removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” Acting Chief Patrol Agent Samuel Briggs II, Miami Border Patrol Sector, said. “

The 1,000th arrest was a Trinidad national, Troy Antonio Baldeo, who was in the U.S. illegally on an expired visa. His criminal history in the U.S. dates to 2015, when he attempted to evade prosecution on the child sex offense charges. CBP officers arrested him in December 2015 at JFK International Airport in New York as he attempted to board a flight to Trinidad and Tobago. He was extradited to Hillsborough County and convicted in 2016, the same year his nonimmigrant visa expired.

After he was released from prison last December, he wasn’t deported. He moved to Baltimore, Maryland, then returned to Florida where he was arrested this month, CBP said. He remains in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and is being processed for removal.

Other recent notable Tampa Station Border Patrol child sex offender arrests include a Mexican national and confirmed Sureños 13 gang member and a Venezuelan national and confirmed South American Theft Group member. The Venezuelan was convicted of grand theft and three counts of larceny - grand yheft, CBP said. Florida law enforcement officers have been arresting SATG members statewide, including those who are targeting minority small business owners, The Center Square reported.

Other notable child sex offender arrests include a Micronesia national convicted of charges for “Use of Computer Services for Lewd and Lascivious and Out of State Transmission of Harmful Material to a Minor” and a fugitive wanted by Venezuelan officials for financial crimes.

The station’s arrest milestone puts them “well ahead of their 2025 pace for apprehending criminal aliens,” Briggs said. Last year, they recorded their 1,000th child sex offender apprehension last August. They also finished the year with 1,229 apprehensions of child sex offenders, he said.

The Miami Sector is one of the busiest in the country. It covers four southeastern states, not just south Florida, including all of Florida, Georgia and North and South Carolina.

Border Patrol agents in the Miami Sector are well known for apprehending foreign nationals attempting illegal entry by sea and made a record number of arrests off Florida’s coast during the Biden administration, The Center Square reported.

As of April 30, agents from the sector apprehended more than 6,600 illegal foreign nationals and criminals, already surpassing last fiscal year’s total of 6,475, according to CBP data.

Miami Sector Border Patrol is also encouraging members of the public to report border security concerns in Florida by calling 1-877-772-8146.

 

This post is a very important document to explain a definite positive to correct a portion of our illegal immigration problems!

 

USCIS chief launches historic offensive against immigration fraud, armed with denaturalization

Joseph Edlow says pending asylum cases exploded from 400,000 in 2021 to 1.5 million after the Biden years.

By Amanda Head justthenews.com 5-3-26

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has created a special team of criminal investigators to root out immigration fraud, equipping newly designated special agents with expanded law enforcement powers to investigate, arrest and prosecute violators and even denaturalize cheaters. 

"We're going to get to a place where people are going to know that if they file, and they're going to file something fraudulently, or they're not giving us their full story, we're going to find that," United States Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow told Just The News.

"What we are doing, what we saw a need for, was a very specialized group of criminal investigators. Many are in training right now, and we are bringing more on all the time who are going to be going out to various field offices across the county and investigating actual immigration fraud."

Edlow announced the initiative in September under a final rule that allows the agency to hire and train 1811-classified officers who can carry firearms, execute warrants and handle cases from start to finish without always referring them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  

“USCIS has always been an enforcement agency,” Edlow said in the agency’s news release. “This historic moment will better address immigration crimes, hold those that perpetrate immigration fraud accountable, and act as a force multiplier for DHS and our federal law enforcement partners, including the Joint Terrorism Task Force.” 

The move fulfills a delegation of authority from former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and aims to strengthen fraud detection and national security vetting in the legal immigration system.

In one early test of the heightened scrutiny, USCIS’s Operation Twin Shield in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area uncovered suspected fraud in 275 of more than 1,000 cases reviewed during a 10-day surge of site visits and interviews. Edlow declared the operation part of a broader crackdown. “USCIS is declaring an all-out war on immigration fraud,” he said. “We will relentlessly pursue everyone involved in undermining the integrity of our immigration system and laws.”

Edlow also commented on building on the work of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) investigations, with the ability to zoom in on specific crimes: "This is with all due respect to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). They do a great job, but they have such a broad set of authorities. This is a narrow set. We're only going to be focused on the immigration and naturalization work, and that's what's going to finally bring some order to the legal immigration system."

Individuals found to have committed immigration fraud, particularly in procuring naturalization through concealment of material facts, willful misrepresentation or illegal means, face potential denaturalization and subsequent deportation, according to U.S. law and ongoing enforcement actions. 

The Department of Justice (DOJ), often with assistance from USCIS, pursues civil or criminal denaturalization cases in federal court when evidence shows citizenship was illegally obtained, such as through sham marriages, false identities, hidden criminal history or fraudulent documents, after which a person reverts to prior immigration status and becomes removable.  

Recent examples include filings against naturalized citizens involved in tax fraud schemes, identity concealment to evade prior deportation orders and naturalization fraud via fake divorce decrees. 

Edlow has emphasized that revetting of past cases and accountability will be used to root out fraudsters and there is no statute of limitations for most civil denaturalization actions.

Amanda Head serves as White House Correspondent for Just The News. You can follow her here. 

 

The current administration not only must confront a national problem but also renegade District Judges.

 

Judge blocks Trump's pause on immigration processing for travel ban countries

The ruling included a stay on several administrative policies, including the pause in immigration processing. The Trump administration is certain to appeal.

By Ben Whedon justthenews.com 5-1-26

A federal judge this week blocked the Trump administration's pause on processing immigration applications from countries subject to his myriad travel bans.

As of press time, President Donald Trump has imposed travel bans on a litany of countries, primarily in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Trump significantly escalated travel bans and immigration pauses in response to the shooting of two members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., by an Afghan national last year.

U.S. District Court Judge Julia Kobick issued the ruling, asserting that the government had failed to link isolated instances of Afghan nationals committing crimes to the broader policies affecting more nations.

"With respect to the criminal acts planned or committed by Afghan nationals, the government makes no argument as to how two serious, but isolated, violent crimes planned by two people from one country is rationally connected with a policy stopping adjudication of benefit applications by people from 39 different countries, as well as applications for asylum by people from every country in the world," she said.

The ruling included a stay on several administrative policies, including the pause in immigration processing. The Trump administration is certain to appeal.

The case marks the latest legal battle over mass deportations, one of Trump's top campaign promises. The administration has estimated that as many as 22 million illegal aliens are currently in the United States.

 

The convoluted aspects of immigration have always presented difficult problems for everyone involved.

 

SCOTUS Weighs Whether Temporary Status For Foreign Migrants Is Actually Temporary

By: Shawn Fleetwood April 30, 2026 thefederalist.com

SG Sauer argued that the law governing TPS bars courts from reviewing a president’s decision to designate or terminate TPS status for groups of foreign nationals.

The U.S. Supreme Court is gearing up to effectively decide whether temporary status for hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals residing in the United States is actually temporary.

The high court held oral arguments on Wednesday in a pair of consolidated cases known as Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot, which center around Trump’s revocation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for approximately 6,000 Syrian and 350,000 Haitian nationals, respectively. Both groups of migrants are currently living in America under the TPS program, which may be used by the executive branch to offer temporary residency to foreign nationals from countries experiencing natural disasters, violent conflicts, and other “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”

The Trump administration’s efforts to end TPS for the aforementioned groups were halted by lower courts. This was done despite SCOTUS previously pausing similar injunctions in a separate TPS case involving Venezuelan nationals.

Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer contended that a provision within the Immigration and Nationality Act that governs TPS prohibits any form of judicial review “of any determination by the [DHS] secretary with respect to the designation or termination or extension of a designation of a foreign state for Temporary Protected Status.”

“That provision means what it says … [and] bars judicial review of both the secretary’s ultimate decision whether to designate, extend, or terminate, and of each antecedent step along the way to that determination,” said Sauer, who added that “even if [challengers’] claims are not barred [by judicial review], they are meritless.”

The solicitor general’s biggest pushback came from the court’s more outspoken Democrat appointees.

Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson kicked off the inquisition by pressing Sauer on what, if any, executive actions regarding TPS are reviewable by federal courts. The Biden appointee’s back-and-forth with the solicitor general ultimately prompted Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor to join the fray and pile on with questions about the scope of judicial review as it relates to the TPS program.

Sotomayor’s refusal to allow Sauer to respond one of her queries on the issue prompted Chief Justice John Roberts to interject and permit Sauer to answer. It was sometime after this exchange in which Sotomayor and Jackson referenced President Trump’s past “sh-thole countries” remarks to push the narrative that, as the former put it, “a discriminatory purpose may have played a part” in the administration’s decision to end TPS for the various groups in question.

Associate Justice Elena Kagan took a more sober-minded approach, pressing Sauer about his argument that “all the things that the statute says that the secretary is supposed to do in order to determine country conditions are unreviewable.” She also probed him about whether, under his view, the secretary is required to consult with relevant administration officials about a country’s conditions before taking specific actions on TPS, as well as the substance of that consultation.

Sauer also fielded questions from several of the court’s Republican appointees.

While Associate Justice Clarence Thomas asked if Congress possesses the power to limit TPS regulations if the executive “has constitutional authority to do this in a discretionary way,” Roberts questioned whether Sauer’s argument amounts to a “significant expansion” of the court’s holding in Trump v. Hawaii (2018). That was the case in which a majority effectively upheld Trump’s travel restrictions on several countries.

Meanwhile, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed the solicitor general on respondents’ “procedural objection” argument and what “standards a court would apply when reviewing the sufficiency of the consultation” issue if the court were to rule against the government’s argument that the matter is not subject to judicial review. Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, on the other hand, asked Sauer to “explain the reasons why Congress would have barred judicial review as broadly” as he claimed.

The conservative justices’ more pressing concerns, however, seemingly came during their questioning of the attorneys representing the respondents, Ahilan Arulanantham (Syrian case) and Geoffrey Pipoly (Haitian case).

Both lawyers argued that the legal provisions governing TPS do not bar courts from reviewing an administration’s actions on the program and that the government is required to undertake certain steps (ex. consultation and assessment of a country’s conditions) before implementing such policies. They further claimed that the Trump administration did not adhere to this purported process, with Pipoly separately arguing that the president’s decision to end TPS for Haitians was racially motivated.

Thomas extensively probed Arulanantham and (to a lesser extent) Pipoly on how they interpret the statute at hand’s “jurisdiction-stripping provision.” The Bush 41 appointee’s questioning of the latter led Roberts to ask the left-wing attorney if whether, “more generally, there was anything [Arulanantham] said that you disagree with,” to which Pipoly replied, “No.”

In her questioning of Arulanantham, Barrett posed a hypothetical in which a DHS secretary decides to terminate TPS for Syria even after she consulted with members of the State Department, who told her that conditions in the country “remain terrible.” Testing how far challengers’ argument would go, the Trump appointee asked if such a decision could be reviewed by courts.

Arulanantham acknowledged that they “could not challenge on the ground that [the secretary] is wrong and the State Department is right” but added that “what is reviewable is whether she actually asks anything and gets any information about country conditions.” The response prompted Barrett to pose a question highlighting the absurdity of such a standard.

“Is this going to get you very much? I mean, if it’s just kind of a box-checking exercise, I mean, why would Congress permit review of the procedural aspect when, really, what everybody cares about much more is the substance?” Barrett asked.

Another particularly notable moment occurred when Kagan was questioning Pipoly about how he squares his claims that the president’s termination of TPS for Haitians is racially motivated with the notion that TPS programs are being revoked “across the board.” The left-wing attorney circled back to the previously cited Trump comments to subsidize his argument — which Jackson eagerly piled onto.

The argument didn’t appear to sit well with Associate Justice Samuel Alito, who interjected and forcefully challenged the attorney on his claims.

“I don’t like dividing up the people of the world arbitrarily into three racial groups, but you … say [the groups whose TPS is being revoked are] all non-white,” Alito said. “But do you think that … if you put Syrians, Turks, Greeks, and other people who live around the Mediterranean in a lineup, do you think you could say … that all of them, are they all non-white?”

The Bush 43 appointee also expressed concerns about the potential consequences arising from Arulanantham’s judicial review arguments.

Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch also appeared skeptical of Arulanantham and Pipoly’s arguments.

A decision in Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot is not expected until later in the court’s 2025-2026 term, which is set to end in late June-early July.