Biden and the Southern Border – More Lies and Deceit

Since President Biden was inaugurated in January of 2021, the Southern Border of the United States has been effectively thrown wide open. According to the House Committee on Homeland Security, “[i]n February 2024, the Biden administration officially surpassed a shocking nine million border crossings nationwide, not including the more than 1.8 million gotaways…[c]ompared to February 2021, nationwide border encounters have increased more than 120 percent, including an 87-percent increase just at the Southwest border. These numbers further establish that Secretary Mayorkas has refused to secure our border, instead opting to incentivize illegal crossings and endanger the lives of Americans. Since February 2021, encounters at ports of entry have increased over 500 percent.” Southwest border [alone].” Even more disturbing, “[i]n February 2024, 11 more individuals whose names appear on the terrorist watchlistwere stopped trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry. Since FY21, 351 of these individuals have been caught crossing our Southwest border illegally.”

And are these illegal border crossers suddenly following the law once they settle into our country?

According to The Heritage Foundation, “[a] 2021 Department of Justice report revealed that 64% of federal arrests in 2018 involved noncitizens, despite them comprising only 7% of the population at that time. While the Biden administration fails to provide continuous updates on illegal alien crime data, Texas’ Department of Public Safety maintains a running database of such incidents. Other states should follow suit. Several chilling examples underscore the urgency of the situation. Alexis Saborit, an illegal alien from Cuba with a history of violence, beheaded his girlfriend with a machete in July 2021. In April of [2023], Francisco Oropeza, deported four times in the last 14 years, was accused of gunning down five Honduran immigrants in Cleveland, Texas—including an innocent 8-year-old. In February, Bryan Marquez, who had deportation orders but was still in the United States, brutally murdered his roommate by beating him. He was charged with first-degree murder. In January, Jose Hernandez faced five counts of indecency with a minor after allegedly sexually assaulting a young child multiple times. And in March of last year, Jean Macean, an illegal alien who posed as an unaccompanied minor, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder after allegedly murdering a Daytona Beach couple.”

Obviously, from a law enforcement standpoint alone, illegal immigration is an enormous problem. And like any problem of this magnitude, Congress proposed a solution.

Or did they?

In May of 2023, the House passed the “Secure the Border Act” (HR-2) which was described as “a bill House Republicans passed last year that would reinstate Trump-era immigration policies such as the construction of the border wall.” Yet, in the hands of the Senate, the bill was transformed into a form unacceptable to the House Republicans who had passed the original bill. As described by the American Immigration Council, “[o]verall, the bill represents a serious attempt to acknowledge, and solve, some of the key problems with current border and asylum policy…[h]owever, its positive steps in this direction are smothered by a new ’emergency authority’ that repeats mistakes made by the Trump and Biden administrations.”

This “Border Emergency Authority…would enable the administration to summarily deport migrants who enter between ports of entry without permitting them to apply for asylum. The new emergency authority could be activated if border ‘encounters’ reach a daily average of 4,000 over a period of seven days and would become mandatory once border encounters reach over 5,000 over a period of seven days or 8,500 over a single calendar day.” Significantly, “the bill defines ‘encounters’ to exclude apprehensions of unaccompanied migrant children.”

Further, the Senate bill “gives the federal government significant discretion over exactly when to implement this new emergency summary-deportation process and does not require it to be publicly announced…[c]rucially, the emergency authority does not ‘close’ or ‘shut down’ the border. It does not prevent unauthorized migration entirely…[f]urthermore, the bill requires the government to allow people to seek asylum at ports of entry even during a border emergency and requires the government to maintain capacity for 1,400 daily entries in this manner…”

In other words, the Senate twisted the House Republican bill to allow for thousands of illegal aliens to gain entry into the United States on a daily basis, and give discretion to Homeland Security as to when to close the border without notice to the American public.

Predictably enough, “[t]he U.S. Senate failed in {May of this year] to advance a border security bill…[t]he Senate bill failed to advance on a 43-50 procedural vote.” Also predictably, “President Joe Biden in a statement said Senate Republicans ‘put partisan politics ahead of our country’s national security…Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system,’ he said. ‘If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history.’”

Judge John Wilson’s (ret.) article concludes tomorrow

Quick Analysis

NATO’s Growing Challenges

Gen. Christopher Cavoli, supreme allied commander Europe and the head of U.S. European Command has warned of growing threats facing NATO. “There is a lot of work to be done, and there are big challenges looming — some of them are right in our face, right now,” he warned at the Aspen Security Forum. He is not alone in his concern. the Germany-based Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom notes that “The beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine … marked a deep break … Questions concerning Europe‘s self-image as a voluntary alliance of nation states, its ability to defend itself and the protection though NATO as well as the values for which it stands are further tested by refugees coming to Europe from Ukraine. The democracies of the European Union are vulnerable and their reaction to Putin’s war are carefully watched. Authoritarian states, such as China, predict Europe’s decline and emphasize their own superiority over the ‘Western systems.’” The most interesting fact General Cavoli emphasized was that, in addition to the renewed danger from expansionist Russia, is the growing threat from China. The German Marshall Fund describes the problem.. “Russia and China continue to deepen their partnership, mounting a common challenge to the West. They can advance their strategic objectives better together, undermining perceived Western domination of the global order and impacting Europe’s future security. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has de facto upended the post-Cold War security architecture in Europe and is a direct, existential threat to European security. Beijing plays an important role for Russia’s war efforts, regardless of China’s status as Europe’s largest trading partner or its desire to hedge on Europe to win its geostrategic competition with the United States. “ NATO has continued to concentrate on the potential threat from Beijing. . It developed its concern against the backdrop of China’s designation as a “long-term strategic competitor.” Both the Trump and Biden administrations have sought to expand transatlantic cooperation on China, motivated by the belief that greater European support to US policies is key to effectively addressing the economic, political and strategic challenges associated with China’s growth. While Washington has put much emphasis on discussing with the EU and individual European countries how best to tackle the geo-economic, technological and diplomatic challenges associated with China’s rise and behaviour, NATO has also become an increasingly important partof transatlantic cooperation on China. Some Chinese military threats to Europe are conventional. China and Russia have engaged in joint maneuvers in the Mediterranean, and the Chinese naval presence in the Middle East has grown. Others are of a different variety. The Atlantic Council says that some Chinese threats to European security are merely insidious. For example, China undermines Europe’s military capabilities by stealing defense-related intellectual property and sharing it with its own military and defense industry as China develops new weapons and capabilities. Similarly, Chinese investment in European infrastructure—especially shipping terminals, utilities, and telecommunications networks—provides an excellent platform for intelligence-gathering on NATO military operations. In a worst-case scenario, China could weaponize its ownership or operation of infrastructure in Europe to frustrate, limit, or prevent US or allied use. In other cases, the Chinese threat to Europe manifests in the form of outright attacks. Chinese cyberattacks on European government, industry, military, academic, and civil institutions—including, reportedly, on hospitals during the pandemic—are relentless and massive. In 2014, NATO declared that cyberattacks could trigger the invocation of Article 5, the Alliance’s mutual-defense clause. Increasingly, the links between Russia, China, and now Iran as well, are a source of deep concern to Europe, the United States, and other nations.