Border Wall

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.    🙂

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.

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.

Trump says wall needed to stem drugs, too

President Trump said Wednesday the sheer amount of drugs flowing across the border — from meth to cocaine to deadly fentanyl — bolsters his case for declaring an emergency at the border, as Congress prepares to complete its rebuke of his decision to go around lawmakers for funding. “We’ve got to get the wall up, otherwise it all doesn’t work,” Mr. Trump said. The administration is building the case for his wall — a core 2016 campaign promise — ahead of a Senate vote Thursday to disapprove of the emergency Mr. Trump declared to tap Pentagon funds for the project. The House already passed a resolution to overturn the declaration, and enough Republicans appear ready to join Democrats in the Senate to approve it, though not enough to override Mr. Trump’s expected veto. “We’ll see whether or not I have to do the veto,” Mr. Trump said. The president also downplayed his decision’s impact on Republicans, who’ve been forced to choose between supporting the White House and defending Congress’ power over the nation’s purse strings. “Nobody’s beaten up. I said, ‘Use your own discretion,’” he said. The president would prefer to avoid the embarrassing rebuke, however. He said Republican senators are “overthinking” the vote and should see it as a simple choice to bolster border security and prevent crime. “This is a vote on border security and drugs and trafficking and all of that,” Mr. Trump said. “I think most Republican senators fully understand that.” Also Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence visited a Customs and Border Protection training facility in West Virginia to build the case for the wall. “Despite the extraordinary work of all of you and those you represent in law enforcement, drug cartels and smugglers are exploiting this crisis to flood drugs into our country, tearing apart our families, claiming American lives,” he told officers.

Trump scolds CNN’s Jim Acosta, as angel moms confront reporter in Rose Garden: ‘You have an agenda’

President Trump scolded CNN’s Jim Acosta on Friday during the president’s Rose Garden announcement that he is declaring a national emergency on the southern border, telling the reporter he has “an agenda” — before angel moms in attendance confronted the chief CNN White House correspondent. The clash came as Acosta challenged Trump over what he described as a “disconnect” concerning his description of illegal immigration. “You are presenting information about what’s happening at the border, calling it an invasion, talking about women with duct tape over their mouths and so on, and yet there is a lot of reporting out there, a lot of crime data out there … that shows border crossings at a near record low,” Acosta said. Trump fired back, “That’s because of us,” as the CNN reporter attempted to talk over the president. “Excuse me,” Trump intervened. “It’s still massive numbers of crossings.” Acosta – who has emerged as a hero among progressives for attacking Trump and members of his administration when they’re available to the press – then said stats show “undocumented immigrants committing crime at lower levels than native-born Americans.” Trump rebuked Acosta by asking, “You don’t really believe that stats, do you?” As Acosta tried to keep talking, Trump repeated himself. “Do you really believe that stat? Take a look at our federal prisons,” Trump said as he gestured Acosta to hurry up with his longwinded question. “What do you say to critics who say that you are creating a national emergency? That you’re concocting a national emergency here to get your wall,” Acosta said. Trump pointed to angel moms in attendance, asking them for their thoughts. “You think I’m creating something? Ask these incredible women who lost their daughters and their sons,” Trump said. “OK, Because your question is a very political question because you have an agenda. You’re CNN. You’re fake news.” Trump told Acosta the statistics he provided were “wrong” and told him to take a look at the federal prison population for proof. “See how many of them,percentage-wise, are illegal aliens,” Trump said. “Just see, go ahead and see. It’s a fake question.” Acosta was subsequently confronted by the angel moms in attendance, after the press conference. As angel moms confronted the CNN reporter, he invited them to appear on the network in the background of a live shot. “There is no attempt whatsoever to diminish what they’ve gone through, or take away what they’ve gone through, but as you heard in that question that I had with the president … it was really about the facts and the data,” Acosta said on CNN following his exchange with Trump. “Some of these folks came up to me right after this press conference … they’re holding up these pictures of loved ones who lost their lives.” An angel mom then discussed that a previously deported illegal alien murdered her son. “President Trump is completely correct on this issue, we need to protect this country,” the angel mom told Acosta.

Take that Jim!!  lol   Jim Acosta is SUCH a nauseating, self-righteous, liberal agenda pushing tool..  Kudos to these “Angel Moms” for putting Jim in his place.  Excellent!!    🙂

San Diego-Based KUSI: CNN Disinvited Our Journalist Because We Reported Border Wall ‘Does Work’

KUSI News, a television news outlet based in San Diego, California, said Thursday that CNN invited — and subsequently rescinded the invitation — for it to provide a reporter to give “a local view of the debate surrounding the border wall and government shutdown.” The San Diego-based outfit speculated on CNN’s rationale for the decision: “We believe CNN declined a report from KUSI because we informed them that most Border Patrol Agents we have spoken to told us the barrier does in fact work. We have continuously been told by Border Patrol Agents that the barrier along the Southern border helps prevent illegal entries, drugs, and weapons from entering the United States, and the numbers prove it.” KUSI News shared a segment of its programming related to CNN’s editorial move. Click here for more.

CNN.. Typical FAKE NEWS!  They only want to air information which comports to their extreme liberal narrative.  They knowingly/actively censor, or ridicule, any dissenting view that conflicts with their liberal agenda.  We have documented time and again this pattern by CNN, here at The Daily Buzz.  It is total garbage.

‘The President Is Right’: Former Border Patrol Chief Under Obama Says Walls ‘Absolutely Work’

The chief of U.S. Border Patrol during Barack Obama’s presidency said Monday that President Trump is right in his view that border walls are effective. Mark Morgan said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that walls “absolutely work” and that there is no real argument against building and implementing one. He added that although he was removed from his position by President Trump’s administration, Trump’s stance on border security makes sense. “The president is right. … That’s based on historical data and facts that can be proven,” Morgan said. He said that opponents of a border wall are looking to make a political point. “I cannot think of a legitimate argument why anyone would not support the wall as part of a multi-layered border security issue,” noting his experience with the FBI in Texas. People are too concerned about the president’s style and the delivery of his case for a border wall as opposed to the substantive issues at hand, Morgan said. He added that Trump is correct in calling the issues at the border a national security problem, and that border security professionals think the same. “Why aren’t we listening to the experts and the people who do it every day? I don’t understand that.”

Neither do we, Sir.  And keep in mind.. This is a former Obama (Democrat) official, who was let go when the new Trump administration took over.  We definitely appreciate his candor and integrity on this critical issue.  To see this exchange, click on the text above.

Rep. Steve Scalise: Democrats need to stop playing games with America’s safety and fund border security now

We need to secure our border. There have been many words spoken about the funding fight to do this, but consider these: “The bill before us would certainly do some good. It would authorize some badly needed funding for better fences and better security along our borders that should help stem some of the tide of illegal immigration in this country.” No, that statement wasn’t made by a Republican. It was a speech given by then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in 2006, when 26 Senate Democrats – including Obama and Sens. Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer of New York – voted for The Secure Fence Act, which allocated $50 billion over 25 years for 700 miles of fencing along the border. That’s right. Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer voted for 10 times more funding than President Trump is requesting now to secure our border. What has changed Democrats’ recognition that our southern border needs to be secured? Two words: President Trump. From the day President Trump took office, Democrats have vowed to oppose him at every turn in an effort to appease their radical-left base, putting the politics of obstruction over the security of our country. There’s been no better example of that than the current partial government shutdown. Last month, House Republicans acted to keep our government open and our country safe. We passed a bill to continue government funding and provide the full $5.7 billion President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security said is necessary to secure our border. Yet Senate Democratic Leader Schumer – who voted for border security funding in 2006 – blocked our bill from being considered in the Senate, choosing open borders over an open government. But the time for political games is over. Lives are at stake. An illegal immigrant who crossed our southern border in Arizona is accused of murdering California police officer Ronil Singh just last month. Singh was an immigrant himself who came here legally from Fiji seeking the American Dream. Corporal Singh leaves behind a wife and 5-month-old son. The crime caused by open borders has to stop. According to the Homeland Security Department, over 17,000 criminals were apprehended at the border last year, many smuggling drugs that fuel the opioid crisis plaguing our country. Last year alone, the department prevented more than 3,700 known or suspected terrorists from traveling to or entering into the United States. Just last year! Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents also saved over 900 children from human trafficking and sexual assault last year. Since President Trump took office, ICE agents have made over 235,000 arrests of illegal immigrants with criminal records. These include more than 4,000 homicides and 27,000 sex crime offenses. And today, we are averaging nearly 2,100 illegal crossings per day at the southern border. It’s clear we are facing a crisis. It’s been proven time and again that walls work.

Agreed!!  For more of this spot-on op-ed by Congressman Steve Scalise (R-LA), click on the text above.  Thanks Steve!!    🙂