border security

Feds discover ‘most sophisticated’ cross-border tunnel with extensive ventilation, rail system

Immigration enforcement agents have uncovered a cross-border tunnel that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is saying could be the “most sophisticated” yet. Stretching from San Luis, Ariz. to San Luis, Mexico, the smuggling passageway includes a fully developed ventilation system, electrical wiring and a rail system. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), authorities discovered the tunnel in late July, before it could be completed. Photos show the tunnel measured three feet wide and four feet high. The discovery was made during an ongoing, multi-agency effort by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). “This appears to be the most sophisticated tunnel in U.S. history, and certainly the most sophisticated I’ve seen in my career,” Border Patrol Yuma Sector’s Acting Chief Patrol Agent Carl Landrum said in a statement Thursday. “We will continue to work closely with our partners – Homeland Security Investigations and state and local agencies — to provide the best national security possible.” Earlier this year, authorities announced they had found the longest known border smuggling tunnel, which stretched from Tijuana to San Diego. The tunnel originated near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry and measured 4,309 feet long — more than three-quarters of a mile. The next-longest tunnel in the U.S., discovered in San Diego in 2014, was 2,966 feet long. In March, authorities located a tunnel containing a variety of drugs — including about 1,300 pounds of cocaine, 17 pounds of heroin, and two pounds of fentanyl. CBP has warned in the past that drug trafficking from the U.S.-Mexico border region results in the loss of American lives. News of the tunnel came on the same day that CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan held a press conference in which he warned about the scourge of smuggling. “As the U.S. continues to take on the challenges posed by COVID-19, we must secure our borders from illegal aliens who show their complete disregard of even the most basic application of health and safety precautions, which have become our new norm against COVID-19,” said Morgan, showing pictures of container trucks packed with migrants He added that criminal organizations and smugglers provide false promises to migrants and “have no concern for their safety or the safety of American citizens — again in this backdrop of COVID-19.” He explained that the migrants are kept in crowded, unsanitary stash houses for days in the sweltering heat, a situation he described as a “perfect incubator” for the new coronavirus.

Indeed..  And that’s just the latest consequence of illegal immigration..  Kudos to the great people in CBP and Homeland Security who discovered this before it was completed, and shut it down.  Excellent!!       🙂

Supreme Court denies request to halt construction of the border wall

The Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote has denied a request to halt construction of President Trump’s border wall over environmental concerns. A number of groups, including the ACLU and Sierra Club, had asked the high court to get involved again after the justices last year cleared the way for the administration to use military funds for construction while the case played out in the courts. A federal appeals court had ruled against the administration last month, but the justices, for now, have given another temporary victory to the administration. “The fight continues,” said Dror Ladin, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project. “Every lower court to consider the question has ruled President Trump’s border wall illegal, and the Supreme Court’s temporary order does not decide the case. We’ll be back before the Supreme Court soon to put a stop to Trump’s xenophobic border wall once and for all.” The four liberal justices dissented from Friday’s order. In June, the Supreme Court also declined to hear an appeal from a coalition of environmental groups that pushed back against the Trump administration’s construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The groups, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, challenged a 1996 law giving the president authority to fight illegal immigration and border crossings, and limiting some legal challenges. The coalition claimed that the Trump administration did not conduct sufficient environmental impact studies for the construction and that endangered species like the jaguar and Mexican wolf would be adversely affected by the barrier. They had asserted in their case that the law’s allowance for the secretary of Homeland Security to waive any laws necessary to allow the quick construction of border fencing violates the Constitution’s separation of powers. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had dismissed the case, citing a prior case from 2007 with “a nearly identical context.” “This Court finds that precedent persuasive, and it compels the conclusion that Plaintiffs’ complaint fails to state plausible constitutional claims as a matter of law,” the Circuit Court’s ruling said.

This is great news!!  Kudos to the Supremes for this excellent decision.    🙂

23 Deported Sex Offenders Arrested by Border Patrol in May

Border Patrol agents arrested 23 previously deported sex offenders after they illegally crossed the border into the United States. “Transnational criminal networks don’t do background checks on the people they help smuggle into the country,” said Chief Rodney Scott. “Our vigilance makes this country safer, one encounter at a time.” Border Patrol officials report that all migrants apprehended after illegally crossing the border undergo a biometric background investigation that includes checking local, state, and federal law enforcement databases for warrants and previous convictions. In these cases, the illegal aliens had previous convictions for sexual offenses — many against children. Here are some of the examples cited by Border Patrol officials: Border Patrol Apprehends Convicted Sex Offender Near Nogales Human Smuggler, Convicted Sex Offender Arrested by Border Patrol Border Patrol Nabs a Sex Offender and Armed Smugglers Over Memorial Weekend Sex Offender, Human Smuggler Arrested by Border Patrol Utah Sex Offender Arrested By Border Patrol Border Patrol Nabs a Sex Offender and Armed Smugglers Over Memorial Weekend Sex Offender, Human Smuggler Arrested by Border Patrol Convicted Criminals Arrested at the Border in the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Agents Apprehend Two Sex Offenders Over Weekend Two Career Criminals Captured at the Border by RGV Agents Border Patrol Agents Arrest Convicted Child Sex Offender

Thanks to the great men and women of the Border Patrol for all they do every day to keep us safe, and make sure vermin like these criminal aliens (many of them sex offenders) are not roaming our streets.  Great work!!  For more, click on the text above.

Largest contract yet for US-Mexico border wall announced, worth $1.3 billion

A North Dakota construction company has been awarded a massive $1.3 billion contract to build a portion of President Trump’s signature wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota confirmed that the contract to build the 42-mile section of wall in Arizona was awarded to Fisher Sand and Gravel Co. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Wednesday that there was no set date to start or complete construction on the latest contract award. Construction will take place near Nogales and Sasabe, both in Arizona. The Army Corps of Engineers, which awards contracts, said Fisher was one of several companies chosen in May 2019 to partake in building $5 billion worth of border wall. This month’s contract to Fisher was part of that award. When asked if there were any additional bidders for this latest contract, a spokesman said the agency couldn’t provide that information because of “procurement sensitivities.” The Arizona Daily Star first reported news of the contract. Trump has promised to build 450 miles of wall along the border with Mexico by the end of the year. So far, the government has awarded millions of dollars in contracts for the construction of 30-foot-tall barriers, along with new lighting, technology and infrastructure. The Trump administration says it has already built 187 miles of wall. Some of it is new but most is replacing old, much shorter barriers that officials said were not sufficient.

The federal government procurement process is a complicated and convoluted one, to be sure.  But, sounds like they’re making some good progress here.  Hopefully now that the contract(s) has been awarded, they can get to work soon.

14 Miles of New Border Wall Coming to Laredo Sector in Texas

Fourteen miles of new border wall is scheduled to be constructed in the Laredo Sector where no physical infrastructure currently exists. Construction will begin in January 2021, officials reported. U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced the awarding of a contract to build approximately 14 miles of contiguous new border wall systems in the Laredo Sector along the Rio Grande. Currently, the Laredo Sector is wide open with no physical barriers to stop illegal border crossings. There are approximately 110 river miles of border in the Laredo Sector, Border Patrol officials previously told Breitbart Texas. The contract awarded on Friday calls for the construction of a 30-foot steel bollard wall system, all-weather access roads, lighting, and enforcement surveillance equipment. The border wall system will create a “complete enforcement zone,” CBP officials said in a written statement. Caddell Construction Company, (DE) LLC received the $275 million award to build the new border wall system. Officials sad the funding comes from FY 2020 appropriations approved by Congress. “The Laredo Sector is an area of high illegal activity, with over 21,000 illegal alien apprehensions and over 19,000 pounds of drugs seized this FY to date,” CBP officials stated. “The majority of its activity is occurring in areas where Laredo Sector lacks infrastructure, access and mobility, and technology. These projects will improve Laredo Sector’s ability to impede and deny illegal border crossings and the drug and human smuggling activities of transnational criminal organizations.” In an interview in April, Laredo Sector Chief Patrol Agent Felix Chavez told Breitbart Texas that the sector is unique in that migrants crossing the border here are not looking to be apprehended like most other sectors. He explained the lack of physical infrastructure makes it challenging for agents to maintain operational control of the area and dangerous for migrants crossing the border illegally. “We are inches away from the heat of summer,” Chief Chavez explained. “Crossing the river here is very dangerous as the lake continues to release water creating deadly currents. The desert-like ranches in this sector are dangerous and present a great risk for injury or death to the migrants being smuggled around checkpoints. Then, add the dangers of COVID-19 on top of all of that.” “We have carried out more than 1,400 rescues during this fiscal year (which began October 1, 2019),” he explained. “Illegal border crossings are down, deaths are down, but rescues are up.” So far this fiscal year, Laredo Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 24,000 migrants who illegally crossed the border from Mexico. That number is up from more than 22,222 during the same period last year.

Some good progress on this issue.  But, it’s still taking far to long to get contracts approved, and construction to begin.  Securing our southern border needs to be our #1 domestic national security priority.  Period.  This whole Wuhan virus crisis only adds to the urgency of it.

Trump’s policies, border wall have been critical in containing coronavirus, CBP chief says: ‘We’re much better positioned now’

The United States would be in a much worse position to combat the coronavirus if President Trump hadn’t implemented a series of reforms surrounding immigration, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan said this week. “Look at where we’ve come because of this president, because of this administration, because of the tools, including the wall … We’re much better positioned now today to handle another threat to our country today through infectious disease,” Morgan told Fox News during an exclusive interview on Thursday. His comments came as the administration faces heightened scrutiny over the way it responded to the pandemic — and in particular, how it limited immigration. According to Morgan, Trump’s policies like the Migrant Protection Protocols helped dramatically reduce the number of illegal immigrants it detained and processed from the height of the migrant crisis last May. “Last May, one month, 144,000 individuals we encountered — most of that at the southwest border. We had over 20,000 individuals in CBP custody. And because of the network initiatives and efforts, including the wall, the wall system — in 10 months, we were able to drastically reduce that. We reduced the flow by over 100,000 per month,” he said. He added that his agency is averaging less than 100 migrants in custody today “versus 20,000 ten months ago. We’re averaging about 500 to 600 encounters per day when back in May, that was thousands per day.” Because of the unsustainable number of detainees, Morgan said the agency was releasing tens of thousands per day. If the current conditions were the same as in May, “that would have meant we would have encountered an additional 200,000 individuals coming across the border right now — 35,000 a week.” “We were overcrowded,” he added. “That means, we would have been back in May, remember, we were being forced to release people to the shelters, at the bus stops, at a tune of tens of thousands a week, we were doing that.” CBP hasn’t needed to process as many detainees, but the coronavirus posed challenges for housing those individuals as the agency’s facilities aren’t set up for isolating individuals during a pandemic. “Most of our facilities are large, open-air facilities or smaller holding facilities where multiple people are required to be housed in that,” he said. “And so clearly, that violates any semblance of social distancing and the other exposure risks. And so, CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] decided that that creates an … exposure risk to not only the CBP employee or the work staff, but also the migrants themselves.” He added that CBP was in the process of converting facilities so that the agency could, if needed, isolate individuals during the pandemic. Morgan warned that without limitations on migration, local public health systems could easily be overwhelmed. At the end of March, the CDC ordered CBP to tamp down on migration, granting them sweeping authority to reject thousands of illegal entries after undergoing an appropriate level of processing. Morgan said that his agency has “almost immediately” been returning about 85 percent of those they encounter on the southwest border. “Literally, in just a few short weeks, our holding facilities dropped by almost 97 percent. Pre the order, we were sitting at about 3,500 in our holding facilities and literally now, we have less than 100,” he said..

Soo…to be VERY clear (since the dominantly liberal mainstream media, and anti-Trump, posturing Democrats will tell you the exact opposite).. The Commissioner of Customs and the Border Patrol is saying that Trump’s policies regarding the Border Wall, and his strong stance on illegal immigration BEFORE this Wuhan virus took hold, put them in a much better position, and that they are working.  And, Commissioner Morgan provided FACTS to back up his assertions.  So, the next time CNN, MSNBC, Jim Acosta, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other agenda-driven Democrats start spouting off their liberal talking points of how the President hasn’t been providing “leadership” (as Nancy shows videos of her and her chocolate ice cream in her fridge), and how his policies are only making things worse… Remember this.  The President should play this interview at one of his daily press briefings, and then drop the mic and walk offstage.  Boom!  For more, click on the text above.

ICE director says deporting illegals from border surge would take 140 years

The head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Wednesday, that at current deportation rates, it would take 140 years to remove all the illegal immigrants who came in during the border surge of the last two years. Matt Albence, ICE’s acting director, said the border surge over the last two years added 900,000 cases to ICE’s non-detained docket, which now totals more than 3.3 million. That far outstrips the agency’s ability to track down and deport people, he told the House Appropriations Committee. “We arrested about 2,500 non-criminal fugitives last year. If we do that, based on just the numbers that came in the last two years, it would take us about 140 years to clear up that backlog,” Mr. Albence said. He was defending ICE’s significant budget increase request for fiscal 2021, which envisions an average of 60,000 detention beds each day. That’s up dramatically from the 34,000 beds the Obama administration had for its final years, and nearly 15,000 more than Congress approved for this current year. “Without additional resources to actually effectuate a judge’s removal orders, we will have an immigration enforcement and court system in which billions of dollars a year are spent to obtain orders, that are not worth the paper they are written on,” Mr. Albence told the House Appropriations Committee.

Absolute insanity…  As we’ve been saying here at The Daily Buzz for over 6 years, we need to be deporting illegals by the hundreds of thousands…and yes, you read that correctly.  Mr Albence’s testimony here gives credibility to our position.  Remember, we have over 22 MILLION illegal aliens in this country.  That’s a staggering number, and it’s crushing our nation’s infrastructure.  The Trump Administration is making progress.  But, they need to take a far more aggressive posture.  Given the new novel coronavirus situation, they can use that to justify a more aggressive posture.  Hopefully they will.  And, of course, it is critical that we BUILD THE WALL NOW!!!…and make that our number one domestic national security priority.  Click on the text above for more of this article.

Hundreds of Chinese migrants detained at US border amid coronavirus-tied travel ban

Since officials first reported the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan in late December and the United States imposed a travel ban for those entering from China, Border Patrol agents have detained 333 Chinese nationals attempting to enter the United States illegally, according to Department of Homeland Security data. While none have tested positive for the virus, the southern border remains a primary focus of the Trump administration, which sees the area as high risk and a gateway for COVID-19 to spread in the U.S. “We have a unique public health threat posed by individuals arriving unlawfully at the border, where migrants, law enforcement officials, frontline personnel, and the American public are put at risk,” said a DHS official who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly by the agency. Under MPP, which stands for the Migrant Protection Protocol, the U.S. has deported some 60,000 migrants to Mexico to await their deportation hearings. Unless the Supreme Court acts, the policy will be ruled illegal in California and Arizona and those individuals and other migrants claiming asylum will be allowed to remain in the U.S. indefinitely. “All it would take is a single infected individual to impact the detained migrant community within DHS facilities without proper precautions, which can only happen through orderly, lawful migration, the virus threatens to spread rapidly,” the official said. “Any halting of MPP would exacerbate this threat.” The U.S. southern border is a microcosm of the world, with foreign nationals from 122 separate countries apprehended or denied entry already this fiscal year — from October through the end of February. Seventy of those countries currently report confirmed COVID-19 cases, led by China but followed by Italy, Iran, India, Romania, Vietnam and Brazil. The virus started popping up on health officials’ radar screens in late December in China and has since spread around the world. Some of the countries on the list have had very low rates of the virus, including Mexico. Meanwhile, the number of cases in the U.S. has risen dramatically in recent days, topping 1,000. China has nearly 81,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, Italy has more than 10,000 and Iran has about 8,000. Last week the Border Patrol asked the CDC to take over testing of those migrants who show symptoms consistent with COVID-19. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also runs 16 detention facilities with airborne infection isolation rooms. So far, it tested 4 migrants, all coming back negative. “It’s absolutely a risk that we’re monitoring and we’re evaluating,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said..

Major kudos to our Border Patrol for all their hard work.  They get beat up daily by the dominantly liberal mainstream media and Democrat politicians who  attack these agents for doing the jobs they were hired to do; protect us.  And with this latest challenge, they’re doing phenomenal work given their limited resources.

DHS waives contracting laws in bid to speed up border wall construction

In a move to speed up the construction of 177 miles of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, the Trump administration is waiving a set of laws that applies to how the Department of Homeland Security can work with federal contractors. The 10 laws the waiver applies to stipulate that the department allow open competition for contracts, justify its contractor selections and secure bonds that protect the government from financial loss should the project not be completed correctly, among other things. “Under the president’s leadership, we are building more wall, faster than ever before,” the department said in a statement, according to the Associated Press. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf has the authority to waive these contracting laws under a 2005 provision that gives him sweeping authority to do so when building border barriers. The option has previously been used to waive environmental impact reviews for sections of the border wall. Trump’s administration has invoked the waiver law 16 times, compared with five times under former President George W. Bush. The wall sections to which Wolf’s waiver applies will be built in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. This is just the latest step the Trump administration has taken to advance its immigration agenda. Last week, DHS deployed 100 Customs and Border Protection agents to work with Immigrations Customs and Enforcement in a handful of U.S. cities that have not cooperated with the federal government in enforcing immigration laws. That move drew criticism from Democrats, including Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, who sent the department a letter over the weekend demanding that it “reverse course” on the decision. Among the 100 agents deployed were members of an elite unit known as BORTAC, essentially the SWAT team of CBP. “Because this initiative is unnecessary, unwelcome, dangerous, menacing, retaliatory and unlikely to achieve its stated goal,” Warren and Markey said, “we write to demand that you reverse course and to pose questions to better understand your rationale for employing paramilitary-style immigration personnel equipped with ‘stun grenades and enhanced Special Forces-type training, including sniper certification’ in Boston and elsewhere in the United States.” Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced its intent to redirect $7.2 billion in funds appropriated for the Pentagon to build the border wall, an action Democrats called a “slap in the face to the members of the Armed Fores and their families.” The Trump administration announced where the funding for $3.8 billion of that $7.2 billion would come from last week. In details first reported by the Washington Post, the Department of Defense plans to divert funding from the construction of 17 aircraft, among other previously planned expenditures.

This is welcome news!  Getting that wall/fence built should be DHS’ #1 priority.  Hopefully the DHS Secretary took that letter from those two self-serving, bloviating Democrat Senators and gave it the Nancy Pelosi treatment…and ripped it up.

1000 Migrants Apprehended at Texas Border in Largest Group Ever

El Paso Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended a historic 1,036 migrants in a single group near El Paso on Wednesday morning. The group included more than 60 unaccompanied minors. Agents patrolling the border near El Paso encountered the largest-ever single group of Central American migrants crossing the border at one time. The previous record migrant group consisted of a group of 430 migrants who crossed the border near El Paso on Monday, according to information obtained from El Paso Sector officials. Prior to that agents apprehended a single group of 424 Central American migrants who crossed the New Mexico border near Antelope Wells one month ago. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials reported that the 1,036 migrants apprehended early Wednesday morning consisted of mostly Central American migrants including 934 family units, 63 unaccompanied minors, and 39 single adults, NBC News reported. The migrants traveled to the U.S. from Guatemala (515), Honduras (135), and El Salvador (76). “Immigration advocates say more immigrants are traveling in large groups because they believe in ‘safety in numbers,’ as conditions along their journey are treacherous,” NBC News reported. “U.S. officials say the large groups overwhelm medical teams and border agents, who are most often patrolling in pairs.” It has been a very busy week for El Paso Sector agents who are responsible for a largely unsecured border that covers far West Texas and the New Mexico boot-heel. On Memorial Day, El Paso Sector agents established a new single-day record by apprehending more than 2,200 migrants, according to information obtained by Breitbart News from El Paso Sector officials. The migrants crossed the border in two large groups and several smaller groups, officials reported. Early Monday morning, agents patrolling near Antelope Wells, New Mexico, apprehended the first large group of the day. The agents captured more than 200 migrants. A few hours later, agents in El Paso apprehended what would be short-lived record group of 430 migrants who crossed near Bowie High School. By the end of the day, El Paso Sector agents would be tasked with processing more than 2,200 migrants. Of those, 1,850 were taken into custody in small groups who crossed in an area of El Paso bounded by Executive Boulevard and Midway Street, officials stated. The migrants will be processed and provided a health screening and criminal background check. Migrants who are suspected of making false family claims will be interviewed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents to determine the validity of their claim. It is likely that most of the migrant family units will be released after processing due to overcrowding. “This fiscal year to date the El Paso Sector has arrested over [130,000] illegal aliens, compared to over 16,000 during the same time last fiscal year,” El Paso Sector officials said in a written statement. “The numbers continue to rise and agents see no end in sight for this current situation.”

Holy crap!!  The need to BUILD THE WALL NOW!!…and put U.S. Army National Guard troops physically ON the border with Mexico, to prevent them stepping one foot on U.S. soil (and secure all sorts of freebies that we-the actual citizens of America pay for), is more urgently needed then ever before!  Call, or email, your member of Congress and BOTH U.S. Senators today, and tell them to fund the wall NOW!  No more playing politics with this one.  If you hear some Democrat or member of the dominantly liberal mainstream media (i.e. CNN, MSNBC, NBC, PBS/NPR, etc) spout off some ridiculous talking point that its a “manufactured crisis” or some other such nonsense, refer them to this article.  We have over 22 MILLION illegal aliens here in America, and this is what is coming across every day, adding to that number.  By definition, this is an invasion on our southern border.  And, if it were N. Koreans, Chinese, or Russians, we’d consider it an act of war.  Well, its WAY past time we treated this problem as such.  We need to BUILD the WALL, and at the same time  start deporting illegals by the hundreds of thousands (and yes, you read that correctly).  That’s just for starters, folks.  To do anything less is NOT in our national security or economic interests.