Roger That Sheriff Clarke!

Where The Government Won't, The People Will

4/26/2019 - Sheriff David Clarke (Ret.) Townhall.com

Last week it was reported that an “armed militia group” had detained a group of illegal migrants crossing the United States southern border. The story said the militia group held the illegal migrants and turned them over to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents. Many supporters of illegal migration screamed foul that this group engaged in this behavior.

First of all, no one should be surprised that this occurred. I do not necessarily support this type of citizen involvement in detaining bands of migrants illegally crossing into the sovereign territory of the United States—not yet anyway. However, I am getting to that point.

I was recently at the border in the Rio Grande Valley and Big Bend Sector at the Texas border. What I saw with my own eyes shocked me. I watched as groups of 30 to 40 people casually crossed the unsecured border into the U.S. They had no fear that they would be apprehended, rather, they sought out border patrol agents to turn themselves in and claim asylum. All were well-dressed and appeared well-fed. No one was famished or thirsty. This was obviously an organized effort. Some had temporary Mexican visas. It is nearly 2,000 miles from their home country of Guatemala and Honduras to the U.S. border. They indicated to me that their journey had taken about two weeks to get to the U.S. border. That long trek on foot to arrive in clean clothes, not hungry or thirsty doesn’t pass the eye test.

As a former law enforcement officer, it was a helpless feeling not being able to do something about blatant law violations occurring right before my eyes. I lacked the authority to act. While at the border I talked to ranchers and landowners who told me about the constant flow of illegal migrants across their property. Their homes and sheds have been broken into, their property has been stolen, and sometimes they were confronted menacingly. Border Patrol agents were too far away to respond in a timely fashion, as was the local sheriff. In the Big Bend sector in Sanderson County, they had about ten deputies to cover 2,400 square miles. The Border Patrol had about 19 agents to cover that area. At the height of their staffing, the Border Patrol had 92 agents covering that sector. Law enforcement is devastatingly overwhelmed at the border. 

In Sanderson County, I spent several days with the Texas Minutemen—a group of volunteers who were serving as eyes and ears passing on information to the Border Patrol when they observed illegal border crossings, and yes, they were armed, which was their right. They never detained anybody. What this group was doing in Texas was entirely lawful. The ACLU aided by their accomplices in the liberal media slanders these groups with inflammatory labels calling them armed militia vigilantes.

That gets me back to what occurred in New Mexico. The ACLU demanded the governor investigate this group, in part, because they were armed. So what? As long as they are lawfully armed, who cares? I don’t. I think they would be stupid to be out in the middle of nowhere and unarmed. In a letter to the governor and the New Mexico attorney general, the ACLU, of course, not wanting to waste the opportunity to politicize this, blamed President Trump for encouraging this citizen group. The ACLU, not surprisingly, labeled them as racists and referred to them as white nationalists and fascists with no credible connection. This is straight off of the pro-illegal immigration talking points memo. The ACLU described these illegal aliens as having been kidnapped. They cited the citizen group as breaking the law but said nothing of the law violation of the illegal aliens. My response to this inflammatory rhetoric is… shut up.

New Mexico Governor Grisham issued a statement saying, "It should go without saying that regular citizens have no authority to arrest or detain anyone." Grisham went on to claim, "My office and our state police are coordinating with the Attorney General's Office and local police to determine what has gone on and what can be done." 

Grisham said nothing about investigating illegal border crossers or demanding that the Federal government step up their game to seal and protect the New Mexico border. Yeah, that’s right. Let’s make the U.S. citizens the bad guys. That is tacit approval for support of illegal migration.

People along the southern border, dealing with this crisis, have had enough of their government not protecting them. When the government refuses to protect, it has an obligation to allow individuals to protect themselves. I know this is a slippery slope but it is caused by the left’s systematic destruction of the rule of law. When states set up sanctuary status and provide a safe harbor for illegal aliens, it has a cascading effect. Citizens will do the same by taking the law into their own hands, and the result won’t be pretty. Support for the rule of law and the federal government enforcing our immigration laws would lessen the need for citizen groups to feel they have to do it themselves. Groups like the United Constitutional Patriots are no longer going to outsource to the federal government their right to be protected from illegal immigration.

Too many people forget that the government derives its authority from the consent of the governed. That is us. We the people gave them that authority and we the people can take it away. We are approaching that point. When the government doesn’t act on our behalf, the people will. The Founding Fathers taught us this.

Sheriff David Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of AmericasSheriff LLC, Senior Advisor for America First, author of the book Cop Under Fire: Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com

Common Sense Must Prevail Or All Is Lost!

Beware Soros-Funded Hijacking of US Census

4/24/2019 - Michelle Malkin

"Are you a U.S. citizen?"

Only in self-defeating, sovereignty-eroding America is the idea of asking whether people living in America are American citizens for the American census a matter of controversy.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the Trump administration can include a citizenship question on the high-stakes 2020 Census questionnaire. Thank goodness, the conservative majority indicated support for allowing it. There's already such a question on the annual American Community Survey administered by the Census Bureau. It was asked in long-form questionnaires sent to a sample of households in 2000. And it was regularly asked in historical census forms from 1820-1950.

But we live in a Trump-deranged age, so now it's tantamount to an international human rights crime to ask anyone about citizenship status at any time for any reason. Heaven forbid we inconvenience or discomfit legal noncitizens or illegal immigrants with a question!

Open borders activists, left-wing immigration lawyers and identity politics radicals exploded on cue:

--Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder decried the "unconstitutional and irresponsible action" to "suppress the count in minority communities."

--The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee fumed about the "political stunt that unfairly targets immigrant communities throughout our country in an attempt to SILENCE immigrants and benefit Republicans."

--Histrionic social justice actress Alyssa Milano called it an "attack on immigrant communities and our democracy itself."

--Jorge Luis Vasquez Jr. of LatinoJustice, funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundations, vented that a citizenship question would "damage all our daily lives for decades."

--Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, another Soros-funded outfit, which sued over the citizenship question, blasted the "scheme to hijack the 2020 Census."

--The Soros-funded Asian Americans Advancing Justice lobbying group condemned Trump as "racially and politically motivated."

Let's all practice our deep pranayama breathing and ground ourselves in reality. It's the radical left, much of it fueled with Soros' money, that has hijacked the U.S. Census, not President Donald Trump. "No Illegal Immigrant Left Behind" is crucial to their strategy. Why?

Remember: The Census is used to divvy up seats in the House as a proportion of their population based on the head count. The redistribution of power extends to presidential elections because the Electoral College is pegged to the size of congressional delegations. More people equal more seats. More illegal immigrants equal more power. Indeed, the Center for Immigration Studies determined that in the 2000 election cycle, the presence of noncitizens (illegal immigrants, temporary visitors and green card holders) caused nine seats in the House to switch hands. California added six seats it would not have had otherwise. Texas, New York and Florida each gained a seat. Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin each lost a seat. Montana, Kentucky and Utah each failed to secure a seat they would otherwise have gained.

Our Founding Fathers explicitly warned against the perils of foreigners manipulating representation by overwhelming the country. Immigration scholar and author Daniel Horowitz points to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story's prophetic admonition: "If aliens might be admitted indiscriminately to enjoy all the rights of citizens at the will of a single state, the Union might itself be endangered by an influx of foreigners, hostile to its institutions, ignorant of its powers, and incapable of a due estimate of its privileges."

Statesman Roger Sherman similarly emphasized the need to "guard against an improper mode of naturalization" by states adopting "easier terms."

Too late. Multiple illegal immigrant amnesties, coupled with massive legal immigration, failure to deport visa overstayers and the metastasis of sanctuary policies, have taken their toll. Moreover, our constitutionally mandated decennial count has become a full-employment program for ideologically driven liberal interest groups cashing in on the census-gathering process and reshaping the electoral landscape. During the last census under President Barack Obama, with $300 billion in federal funding at stake, social justice groups from Soros-funded ACORN to Soros-funded Voto Latino to the Soros-allied SEIU were enlisted to count heads and help noncitizens feel "safe."

The Census boondoggle has become a tax-subsidized national future Democratic voter outreach drive. Soros' operations, along with 77 other liberal foundations, have invested $30 million to make illegal immigrants count. The Open Society Institute's grantees and partners on coopting the Census for Democrat gains include the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Miami Workers Center, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Southwest Workers Union, New York Community Trust, New York Foundation, Center for American Progress, People for the American Way and the Funders Census Initiative. A recently leaked internal board document revealed that the Soros network has coordinated efforts for the past four years to "influence appropriations for the Census Bureau" and add new racial and ethnic categories.

The Census Bureau will need 500,000 temporary workers to conduct the count in what will already be a hyperpolarized election year. However the Supreme Court rules on the citizenship question, the Trump administration must ensure that Open Borders Inc. does not co-opt the enumerator corps. As SorosWorld well understands:

Power lies not just with who is being counted, but who's doing the counting.

Common Sense - Merit - What a Novel Idea!

When Commonsense Becomes Modernization

4/20/2019 - Ryan Shucard Townhall.com

For Congressman Ken Buck (R-CO), and members of a recently established Select Committee, the effort to modernize Congress is serious business. But what passes as “modernization” seems more like good old-fashioned commonsense to Buck, his constituents, and millions more Americans across the country.

Seemingly simple things like appointing Members of Congress to committee posts based on their unique backgrounds, professional expertise, and collective experience – instead of the amount of money they raise for their party’s campaign committees – passes muster for modernization these days.

In testimony before the Select Committee, Buck said in part that, “Chairmanships and “A” Committees require an even greater dedication to fundraising for the party. This should not be the way we do business. Our constituents didn’t elect us to raise money, they elected us to solve problems. This practice must stop.”

But Congressman Buck, also the newly elected Chairman of the Colorado Republican Party and conservative firebrand, has shown to be all in for this sort of effort despite the fact that many of the proposed reforms are what Americans would already expect from their elected representatives, not to mention they may find it a bit ridiculous that Members are having these types of seemingly obvious conversations.

While many Members of Congress may agree with some of the proposed “modernizations”, most will condemn the committee’s work as a PR stunt and not worth the circular discussions regarding legislation they feel would be dead-on-arrival – especially with Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the helm. Much of her power has been obtained via the very processes which committee testimonials have identified as problematic.

Still others will criticize the efforts pointing to the irony of Congress proposing fixes to itself. But that kind of mentality speaks to the jadedness many in Congress feel. As Rep. Buck pointed out, “Too often, Members arrive in Washington expecting to make a difference, but quickly lose faith after realizing that their ability to make a difference is tied to their fundraising prowess.”

When the Member, especially a new one, loses faith in their ability to lead, propose new ideas, advance legislation, convince their colleagues, build relationships, or forge bipartisan coalitions to tackle big issues, he or she inevitably realizes their existence is mostly relegated to the binary options of either succumbing to the whims of party elders and unelected, self-interested party operatives or work from the political fray and wear the label of “outsider” or “wrench thrower.”

However, Buck rarely accepts binary options and is known for embracing the crucible of today’s political climate which means he’s willing to go the distance with additional measures like enacting five-day work weeks. What a novel concept – Congress working as least as many days as the average American they represent.

Sarcasm aside, it’s easy to dismiss these kinds of “modernizations” as overly simplistic, even sophomoric when cast in the backdrop of the world’s oldest and most esteemed democracy. But five-day work weeks have the ability to fuel our representatives in another not-so-tangible way.

“We would have more time to foster those relationships that allow us to effectively legislate. It will also give Members more time in committee to learn their roles and build out their legislative ideas. This might just stop us from the current system where committees are all but bypassed to rush bills to the floor,” says Buck.

Curious how we got Obamacare? Or why they can’t seem to pass any comprehensive reform packages for immigration or unauthorized spending practices exploding the national debt? This is the root cause.

The priorities infused into the day-to-day processes of serving as a federally elected representative are misaligned. Members spend more time on politics than policy when their primary responsibility is to fully execute on the latter.

Compounding these chronic ailments is a severe brain drain among congressional staff. The demands of modern governing far exceed the capabilities of a lone Member and even a few key staff to manage on their own. Still, Members operate on a handful of mostly dedicated staff members who help them navigate a portfolio of hundreds of issues and thousands of constituent service needs. But with uncompetitive salaries and lack of benefits, staff often leave for more lucrative offers from the private sector. The result is a loss of institutional knowledge and connectivity which exacerbates the problem of effective policymaking.

While Congress shouldn’t need a select committee to enact commonsense reforms on itself, it does have fighters like Buck who are still willing to look past its vanity and engage with Members interested in bettering its processes, its people, and ultimately a better product delivered to the American people.

Disease - One of the Many Horrific Consequences of Illegal Immigration

Less Border Security Brings More Disease to America

4/15/2019 - Brian Lonergan Townhall.com

Despite the best efforts of the Trump administration over the last two years, the situation at our southern border is a mess. The numbers of those seeking entry into the United States and those apprehended by immigration agents are surging. Even Barack Obama’s former homeland security director now concedes that there is a crisis at the border. While the anti-borders media and politicians seem to only care about family separations, there is another problem that apparently must not be spoken: high-volume, unstructured immigration brings with it infectious diseases that are a threat to all Americans. 

This is something of a taboo subject because the left has made great efforts to shut down any debate or mention of it. If you have legitimate concerns about infectious diseases at the border, surely you must be a Cro-Magnon nativist who wants to spread fear and dehumanize a large population, presumably because they are mostly indigent people of color, right?

The elephant in the room of this argument is the ever-expanding collection of facts and testimony from those on the ground at the border. Last month, over 2,200 people exposed to a mumps outbreak in at least two immigration detention facilities had to be quarantined for 25 days. It was reported that in the past year 236 detainees have had confirmed or probable cases of mumps in 51 facilities.   

In 2016 authorities confirmed 22 measles cases in Arizona’s Eloy Detention Center, a privately managed facility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.     

National Public Radio last month interviewed a Border Patrol official who reported that more migrants are arriving with communicable illnesses such as flu, mumps, impetigo and even one case of flesh-eating bacteria. 

The Immigration and Nationality Act mandates that all immigrants and refugees undergo medical screening exams. However, this applies mostly to those who apply for immigrant or refugee status prior to their arrival in the U.S. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website lists communicable diseases that would cause a migrant to be deemed inadmissible. They include tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhea and leprosy. The agency also states that “Ideally, each new migrant should receive a complete health assessment that includes screening for migration-associated illnesses.”  

Given that the situation at the border is the opposite of ideal, it’s likely that not all migrants are being given sufficient medical exams. Immigration agents confirm that they are overwhelmed by the recent surge and there aren’t nearly enough doctors available to process everyone. Add to that our current policy of catch-and-release, and it’s not hard to see how migrants with untreated, communicable illnesses could end up in schools, hospitals and other public places throughout the country. 

To counter this reality, the mainstream media has sought out medical professionals to throw water on the idea that unfettered illegal immigration brings with it a threat of infectious diseases. One expert reassured us that there is nothing to fear because immunization rates in migrant feeder countries are comparable to those in the U.S. So we are to believe that the same Third World countries that are rife with poverty, illiteracy, corruption and narco-terrorist gang violence also have top-flight healthcare comparable to that in the prosperous, First World United States. 

Another report from NBC News made the apocryphal claim that not only is there no evidence that migrants are spreading disease, but migrants actually prevent disease by working in the healthcare field once they arrive here.     

Keep in mind that all of the reports on migrants with infectious diseases refer only to those in the custody of U.S. immigration officials. At least a good number of them are receiving some degree of medical examination. That is not the case with those who simply enter the U.S. illegally at any point along the border where there is no wall or point of entry. We have absolutely no idea what diseases they may carry or where they are in the country.

Even at the high-water marks of immigration flow into America, new arrivals were put through a standard battery of medical tests. Immigrants who came through Ellis Island in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries were required to first stop at a quarantine checkpoint near Staten Island where doctors would look for symptoms of diseases such as smallpox, yellow fever, plague, and cholera. Only after the ship passed inspection were immigration officers allowed to board and begin processing the passengers. 

Is the point of this article that illegal aliens coming to America are inherently bad people or somehow inferior to Americans because they may carry infectious diseases? Absolutely not. It is to indict the current, chaotic immigration policies that lure those people here with the promise of easy entry into America and the “opportunity” to find jobs that exploit them for substandard wages. 

A prudent immigration system that keeps the flow of migrants at a manageable number would be able to provide necessary medical checks for all applicants. That is the best system for migrants as well as the current residents of their new home country. What we have in place now fails both parties.    

California Hungry For Taxes - Again

California Has Become America's Cannibal State

4/11/2019 - Victor Davis Hanson Townhall.com

For over six years, California has had a top marginal income tax rate of 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. About 150,000 households in a state of 40 million people now pay nearly half of the total annual state income tax.

The state legislature sold that confiscatory tax rate on the idea that it was a temporary fix and would eventually be phased out. No one believed that. California voters, about 40 percent of whom pay no state income taxes, naturally approved the extension of the high rate by an overwhelming margin.

California recently raised gas taxes by 40 percent and now has the second-highest gas taxes in the United States.

California has the ninth-highest combined state and local sales taxes in the country, but its state sales tax of 7.3 percent is America's highest. As of April 1, California is now applying that high state sales tax to goods that residents buy online from out-of-state sellers.

In late 2017, the federal government capped state and local tax deductions at $10,000. For high earners in California, the change effectively almost doubled their state and local taxes.

Such high taxes, often targeting a small percentage of the population, may have brought California a budget surplus of more than $20 million. Yet California is never satiated with high new tax rates that bring in additional revenue. It's always hungry for more.

Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator from San Francisco, has introduced a bill that would create a new California estate tax. Wiener outlined a death tax of 40 percent on estates worth more than $3.5 million for single Californians or more than $7 million for married couples.

Given the soaring valuations of California properties, a new estate tax could force children to sell homes or family farms they inherited just to pay the tax bills.

Soon, even more of the Californian taxpayers who chip in to pay half of the state income taxes will flee in droves for low-tax or no-tax states.

What really irks California taxpayers are the shoddy public services that they receive in exchange for such burdensome taxes. California can be found near the bottom of state rankings for schools and infrastructure.

San Francisco ranks first among America's largest cities in property crimes per capita. The massive concrete ruins of the state's quarter-built and now either canceled or postponed multibillion-dollar high-speed rail system are already collecting graffiti.

Roughly a quarter of the nation's homeless live in California. So do about one-third of all Americans on public assistance. Approximately one-fifth of the state's population lives below the poverty line. About one-third of Californians are enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state's health care program for low-income residents.

California's social programs are magnets that draw in the indigent from all over the world, who arrive in search of generous health, education, legal, nutritional and housing subsidies. Some 27 percent of the state's residents were not born in the United States.

Last month alone, nearly 100,000 foreign nationals were stopped at the southern border, according to officials. Huge numbers of migrants are able to make it across without being caught, and many end up in California.

A lot of upper-middle-class taxpayers feel that not only does California fail to appreciate their contributions, but that the state often blames them for not paying even more -- as if paying about half of their incomes to local, state and federal governments somehow reveals their greed.

The hyper-wealthy liberal denizens of Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the coastal enclaves often seem exempt from the consequences of the high taxes they so often advocate for others. The super-rich either have the clout to hire experts to help them avoid such taxes, or they simply have so much money that they are not much affected by even California's high taxes.

What is the ideology behind such destructive state policies?

Venezuela, which is driving out its middle class, is apparently California's model. Venezuelan leaders believed in providing vast subsidies for the poor. The country's super-rich are often crony capitalists who can avoid high taxes.

Similarly, California is waging an outright war on the upper-middle class, which lacks the numbers of the poor and the clout of the rich.

Those who administer California's plagued department of motor vehicles and high-speed rail authority may often be inept and dysfunctional, but the state's tax collectors are the most obsessive bureaucrats in the nation.

What is Sacramento's message to those who combine to pay half the state's income taxes and have not yet left California?

"Be gone or we will eat you!"

History & Politics a Strange Combination

Already Deep in the Politics of Hate

4/9/2019 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com

During an Iowa town hall last week, "Beto" O'Rourke, who had pledged to raise the level of national discourse, depicted President Donald Trump's rhetoric as right out of Nazi Germany.

Trump "describes immigrants as 'rapists' and 'criminals'" and as "'animals' and 'an infestation,'" said Beto.

"Now, I might expect someone to describe another human being as 'an infestation' in the Third Reich. I would not expect it in the United States of America." The crowd lustily cheered the analogy.

By week's end, Beto's Third Reich comparison had been matched in nastiness by Bernie Sanders' description of the president to the cheering activists of Al Sharpton's National Action Network:

"It gives me no pleasure to say this but today we have a president who is a racist, sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe and a religious bigot."

Sanders managed to appeal to almost all elements of the Democrats' coalition by accusing Trump of hating blacks, women, gays, foreigners and Muslims.

Sanders' outline of Trump calls to mind Hillary Clinton's now-famous attack on the white working-class folks who would give Trump his victory:

"(Y)ou could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables ... racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic -- you name it ... he has lifted them up."

Where Hillary's slander of the Donald's MAGA constituents as a thoroughly rotten crowd of Americans came two months before the 2016 election, Bernie's assault on Trump's character comes fully 20 months before the 2020 election.

If this is the level of discourse from Beto and Bernie, two of the leading candidates for the nomination, two years from Election Day, 2020 looks to be one of the ugliest campaigns in American history.

And what does it say about democracy if this is the character of politics at the highest level in the world's leading democracy?

When such language is deployed without admonition from the major media, what does that say about the sincerity of the media's calls to unite and heal the country?

And if Democratic leaders are openly massaging the hatreds of the party base with such slanders, what does it tell us about those leaders?

If they believe such charges -- "It is the truth and we need to confront that," said Sanders -- why do Democrats not impeach and remove such an ogre? Why has Nancy Pelosi ruled that out?

At the end of a week where he withdrew his nominee to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement and saw the departure of his Secretary of Homeland Security, Trump, referring to the 175,000 migrants apprehended crossing the U.S. border in February and March, protested repeatedly, "Our country is full."

Echoes of Hitler's Germany, said The Washington Post:

"Adolf Hitler promised 'living space' for Germans as the basis of an expansionist project, which historians said distinguishes the Third Reich from today's xenophobic governments. Still, experts found parallels.

"'The echoes do indeed remind one of the Nazi period, unfortunately,' John Connelly, a historian of modern Europe at the University of California at Berkeley, said in an interview with The Washington Post.

"'The exact phrasing may be different, but the spirit is very similar. The concern about an ethnic, national people not having proper space -- this is something you could definitely describe as parallel to the 1930s.'

"The president's words became even more freighted when he repeated them on Saturday before the Republican Jewish coalition in Las Vegas, saying, 'Our country is full, can't come. I'm sorry.'"

Trump's actions and words last week do seem to portend tougher action on illegal immigration, but one need not look to Nazi Germany for precedents. They may be found in our own history.

The 1924 immigration act restricted legal immigration into the U.S. and imposed ethnic quotas. That was American, not Nazi, law and was enforced by Presidents Coolidge, Hoover, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy.

Eisenhower, who led the Allies to victory over Germany, sent Gen. Joseph Swing to the U.S. border to remove a million people who had entered Texas illegally from Mexico, which the general proceeded to do.

Ike had crushed fascism and understood that securing the homeland against illegal mass migration is fascism only in the minds of those who have forgotten, if ever they knew, what a country is.

From his words and actions, Trump clearly senses that this may be the existential issue of his presidency: Can he secure the border against what seems to be an unstoppable invasion from the global south?

Nor is this only an American issue. In the capitals of Europe -- Budapest, Berlin, Paris, Rome, London, Madrid -- the gnawing fear is not of Vladimir Putin leading a mighty Russian army back to the Elbe to recreate Stalin's empire, but of the African and Muslim hundreds of millions looking hungrily north to the pleasant lands of the former mother countries.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."

'Catch & Release' = Destruction of the U. S. A.

Must Fix Crisis at Southern Border

4/4/2019 - Jackie Gingrich Cushman Townhall.com

Something must be done. A policy crisis has turned into a security crisis, and now a humanitarian crisis. In February, there were over 76,000 apprehensions at our southern border. This is nearly double the average monthly number (41,735) during the last five years. Additionally, the percentage of people apprehended with their families has dramatically increased. In 2006, only 10% of those apprehended were members of family units and unaccompanied minors; now, we are at 60%.

Our policy of releasing families into the United States has dramatically increased the number of family units and unaccompanied minors coming into our country illegally.

"This migrant situation is called a 'crisis,' but that word is overused," CNN Anchor Chris Cuomo told viewers on Monday. "It doesn't do the situation justice."

According to the Department of Homeland Security, there were about 32,000 family units and unaccompanied alien children apprehended in December of last year. This is over 2 1/2 times the average for fiscal year 2017.

Why are these numbers rapidly increasing?

Because the current policy does not work. Families apprehended can be held for no more than 20 days. According to Border Patrol Deputy Chief Patrol Agent Raul Ortiz, whom Cuomo interviewed, this limitation is incentivizing more migrants to cross our borders illegally. "We apprehend, we process, and we turn them over to the other agencies that are out there," said Ortiz. Cuomo responded: "So, it's a domino effect. You can only keep them 20 days ... You got to let them go. That gets perceived as weakness. Now you're doing catch and release again." This drives up the number of migrants who, once they cross the border, look to surrender to a Customs and Border Patrol agent.

Additionally, while we want to help asylum seekers, migrants have learned to work the system, according to Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. "Many of the people coming are economic migrants," she told Fox News' Tucker Carlson on Tuesday. "They are not truly seeking asylum. We want to help those who are, but many of them have been given magic words to come in."

The current process allows those who come across to be released until they are processed either through an immigration court or by a review for potential asylum.

According to acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Ronald Vitiello, we have released 125,000 family units into the United States since December. Once they are released, they are supposed to show up in court to be properly processed. According to Vitiello, most don't show up for their court appearance.

What we are seeing is not just a security crisis for our country but also a crisis for those crossing illegally. The journey is dangerous. According to DHS, one-third of the women who make the trip are sexually assaulted along the way.

And children are also subject to abuse. Nielsen said that DHS has broken up rings of smugglers who recycle children. Smugglers use them to pose as part of a family whose heads of household are seeking asylum. Once the group is released into the United States, the smugglers arrange for the children to be returned to Mexico to cross again -- as part of another family unit.

The practice results in more than people getting across the border illegally. Almost 90% of the heroin that comes into our country does so through the southern border. And fentanyl smuggling has doubled in the past year, with Customs and Border Protection agents seizing 254 pounds in a single case in January, enough to kill more than 115 million Americans, investigators told The Arizona Republic. These drugs are killing our people.

President Donald Trump has been talking about securing the southern border since the 2016 election, but legislators have yet to take action. First, they have to acknowledge the crisis.

In January, when Trump attempted to negotiate a solution to the crisis at the southern border with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the Democrats brushed aside any talk of a crisis. Instead, Schumer chastised Trump, accusing him of talking up the border issue in an attempt "to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear and divert attention from the turmoil in his administration."

I hope the Democrats will agree that this is a real crisis and take real steps to fix it. We can't fix the humanitarian problem -- or the security problem -- without changing our operational policy.

Please Close the Border - It's a National Emergency!

How Bad Does Border Have To Be For Democrats To Admit It's An Emergency?

4/2/2019 - Byron York Townhall.com

Is there any number of illegal border crossings into the United States that would strike Democrats as an emergency?

As they resisted President Trump's efforts to stem the flow of illegal migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border, many Democrats made the point that fewer migrants are coming today than years ago, during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies. The implication was that today's situation cannot be an emergency, because it used to be worse.

That doesn't make sense, of course. One could argue that crossings were an unaddressed emergency back then, and that today's figures, although lower, also qualify as an emergency.

But now, the border numbers are surging back to the bad old days. It appears that Customs and Border Patrol apprehended more than 100,000 people in March (the precise figure has not yet been released), a pace that could mean more than 1 million apprehensions this year.

For some perspective: According to Border Patrol statistics, U.S. authorities caught 1,643,679 people trying to cross the border illegally from Mexico in fiscal year 2000. In 2001, the number was 1,235,718. In 2002, it was 929,809. In 2003 it was 905,065. In 2004, it topped the million mark again, with 1,139,282. In 2005, it was 1,171,396. In 2006, it was 1,071,972.

After that, due to a combination of slightly more assertive border security policies, plus -- far more important -- a massive economic downturn, the number of apprehensions began to fall. They hit a low point of 327,577 in 2011, leading many in Washington to assume that the problem -- if they ever thought it was a problem -- no longer existed.

Then the number began to creep back up, to 479,371 in 2014. Then it fell back down in 2017, to 303,916. That was likely due to would-be migrants' fear that newly elected President Donald Trump would get tough on illegal crossings. But the courts, resisting Democrats, ambivalent Republicans and Trump's own lack of focus, stopped any great progress on the border.

In a matter of months, migrants knew Trump could not stop them from entering the country illegally -- and staying.

It should surprise no one that the numbers headed up again, to 396,579 in 2018. Now, crossings have gone through the roof, with 76,103 apprehensions in February 2019 and 100,000-plus in March -- numbers that could have come from the early- and mid-2000s.

And the numbers do not tell the whole story. In the Clinton-Bush years, the overwhelming number of illegal crossers were single, adult men trying to avoid detection as they sneaked across the border. When caught, they were quickly returned. So when 1.2 million were caught crossing, that did not mean that 1.2 million stayed in the United States.

Now, however, the nature of the flow has changed. Today, the large majority of those caught crossing are families and unaccompanied children. They are not trying to sneak in -- they are crossing for the purpose of giving themselves over to the Border Patrol. They do that knowing U.S. law forbids them being returned, or separated, or even held for more than a few days. In short order, they are released into the United States.

It seems safe to say that more illegal crossers are staying in the U.S. than in the days of Clinton and Bush.

Yet Democrats steadfastly refuse to recognize that the situation constitutes an emergency. Instead, they accuse Trump of making the whole thing up. They call it a "fake emergency" and a "manufactured crisis" and every possible variant of those terms. And they reject the idea that adding barriers on the border will decrease the number of illegal crossings.

Formally announcing his presidential candidacy Saturday, Democrat Beto O'Rourke vowed to "find security by focusing on our ports of entry." Ports of entry are where the majority of illegal drugs crossing the border are seized, so that is indeed important (and why Trump proposed new funding and technology for drug detection efforts at the ports).

But the 100,000-plus migrants crossing the border are not waiting at ports of entry. They are walking across the border in areas with inadequate barriers or no barriers at all. O'Rourke would not strengthen that security -- he has actually said he would tear down some of those barriers.

The only Democrats who will admit there is a crisis are the ones no longer in office. Recently Jeh Johnson, who was Barack Obama's last secretary of Homeland Security, said that while in office, he checked the apprehension figures every day. Noting that there was a recent day in which there were 4,000 apprehensions, Johnson said, "I know that a thousand overwhelms the system. I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 a day looks like, so we are truly in a crisis."

That is something Democrats in Congress will not admit. Perhaps they believe doing so would give a victory to Trump, which they cannot abide.

An expanded and strengthened border barrier would help in the long run. But in the immediate crisis, Trump realizes that the U.S. must change its policy of giving immediate and de facto permanent entry to virtually anyone requesting asylum. A large majority do not have a valid claim, yet get to stay in the United States anyway.

"Democrats, working with Republicans in Congress, can fix the asylum and other loopholes quickly," Trump tweeted Monday. "We have a major National Emergency at our Border. GET IT DONE NOW!"

It could be done. But doing so would require recognizing the emergency at the border as real, not fake, and not manufactured. Can Washington do that?

Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner.