CBP

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!!       🙂

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.

Supreme Court rules for Border Patrol agent in suit filed by Mexican family over cross-border shooting

A divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in favor of a Border Patrol agent who faced a lawsuit from parents of a Mexican child he killed in a June 2010 cross-border shooting. Jesus Mesa Jr. and the parents of 15-year-old Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca gave different accounts of what happened, with the parents claiming the teen and his friends were playing a game where they ran back and forth across the border, and Mesa claiming they threw rocks at him during an illegal border-crossing attempt. The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling said that regardless of the circumstances, precedent regarding lawsuits against officers, known as “Bivens claims,” does not apply to cross-border shootings. “As we have made clear in many prior cases,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his opinion, “the Constitution’s separation of powers requires us to exercise caution before extending Bivens to a new ‘context,’ and a claim based on a cross-border shooting arises in a context that is markedly new.” In the 1971 opinion Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, the Supreme Court held that a person claiming they were unlawfully arrested and searched could bring a lawsuit under the Fourth Amendment, even if there was no statutory basis for it. In Tuesday’s opinion, Alito noted the high standard of extending Bivens to a “new context” and gave several reasons why it was inappropriate in this case. The first factor was the impact a lawsuit in such a case could have on foreign relations. “A cross-border shooting is by definition an international incident; it involves an event that occurs simultaneously in two countries and affects both countries’ interests,” Alito wrote. “Such an incident may lead to a disagreement between those countries, as happened in this case.” The U.S. had determined that Mesa should not face criminal charges or be extradited to Mexico. “To avoid upsetting the delicate web of international relations, we typically presume that even congressionally crafted causes of action do not apply outside our borders,” the opinion said. “These concerns are only heightened when judges are asked to fashion constitutional remedies. Congress, which has authority in the field of foreign affairs, has chosen not to create liability in similar statutes, leaving the resolution of extraterritorial claims brought by foreign nationals to executive officials and the diplomatic process.” Alito also pointed to concerns with the court getting involved with matters of national security. “Since regulating the conduct of agents at the border unquestionably has national security implications, the risk of undermining border security provides reason to hesitate before extending Bivens into this field,” he said. The court also pointed to Congress’ history of not awarding damages in cases against federal officials where the injuries took place outside the U.S. While Mesa was on American soil at the time, Hernández was on the Mexican side of the border when Mesa shot him. In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas asserted that “the time has come to consider discarding the Bivens doctrine altogether,” noting that the court “has consistently refused to extend the Bivens doctrine for nearly 40 years, even going so far as to suggest that Bivens and its progeny were wrongly decided.”

Even though a split decision, it was the right one.

Trump Admin to Send Border Patrol Special Ops on Raids in Sanctuary Cities

The Trump administration is sending officers from a special operations unit of the Border Patrol to assist in raids by Immigration Customs and Enforcement in so-called sanctuary cities. The officers from BORTAC, the Border Patrol’s version of a SWAT unit, will deploy to New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and various other cities whose local governments forbid law enforcement from working with federal immigration officials, the New York Times reported on Friday. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Lawrence Payne confirmed the initiative. BORTAC officers will be deployed “in order to enhance the integrity of the immigration system, protect public safety, and strengthen our national security,” Payne said. “As we have noted for years, in jurisdictions where we are not allowed to assume custody of aliens from jails, our officers are forced to make at-large arrests of criminal aliens who have been released into communities,” ICE acting director Matthew T. Albence said in a statement. “When sanctuary cities release these criminals back to the street, it increases the occurrence of preventable crimes, and more importantly, preventable victims.” BORTAC usually operates in hot, rugged areas along the U.S.-Mexico border and specializes in capturing criminals and cracking down on smuggling operations. While embedded with ICE in sanctuary cities, BORTAC officers will engage in more run-of-the-mill arrests. The news comes after Attorney General William Barr announced Monday that the Justice Department would begin a “significant escalation” against sanctuary cities. Barr said the department would move to file lawsuits against sanctuary cities and locales that actively impede federal immigration enforcement.

Robert Perez: Combating distribution of counterfeit goods an ‘important effort’

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) push to crack down on the distribution of counterfeit goods under the Trump administration is “a very important effort,” CBP Deputy Commissioner Robert Perez said Saturday. Appearing on “Fox & Friends: Weekend” with host Griff Jenkins, Perez said that success in combatting the distribution and smuggling of these goods is a “direct result of the president’s last memorandum from last April directing the DHS to really put forth an action plan to directly impact the trafficking of illicit counterfeit items.” In his April 2019 memorandum, President Trump pledged to rein in the sale of counterfeit products on sites such as Amazon, eBay and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. With the ever-increasing rise of e-commerce, the White House on Friday declared it would step up efforts once more. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol would subject online retailers and warehouse operators to increased scrutiny and potential penalties under measures announced by DHS’s acting secretary Chad Wolf. Additionally, the department vowed to apply fines and penalties to a broader range of participants in e-commerce and look for additional ways to interfere with fraudulent commerce. Within the last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have seized more than 27,000 shipments of counterfeit goods with intellectual property right enforcement violations worth more than $1.5 billion in their efforts to combat the border crisis. “That’s $1.5 billion of lost potential revenue for the actual trademark holders and American businesses who hold these trademarks, and $1.5 billion of less-than-optimal commodities purchased by consumers oftentimes presenting health and safety risks to the purchasers here in the American public,” he explained to Jenkins. “So, that is what we’re combatting,” Perez added.

Kudos to the CBP and other law enforcement agencies working this issue!

Self-identified MS-13 gang member arrested by Border Patrol agents says he came to US with caravan: CBP

A self-identified MS-13 gang member arrested over the weekend told Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that he was part of the caravan of immigrants trying to enter the U.S. Agents working the El Centro Sector crossed paths with the man eastward of the Calexico Port of Entry in California on Saturday around 6 p.m., the agency said in a news release. Border Patrol agents questioned the man, who they “suspected of being in the United States illegally,” upon which he revealed he was a Honduran citizen and part of MS-13, CBP said. “The man also told agents he traveled to the United States border with a large group of people from Central America intending on filing for asylum in the United States,” the news release said. The individual was later identified as Jose Villalobos-Jobel, 29, who will be held until he’s ultimately sent back to Honduras, CBP said. “As President Trump and Secretary Nielsen warned, over the last few weeks we have identified over 600 known criminals and gang members in the caravan,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. “We are now predictably seeing members of the caravan – which includes criminals – show up at the border and claim asylum. These threats are only going to increase in light of illegitimate judicial injunctions and loopholes created by Congress.”

President Trump was criticized by Dems and the dominantly liberal mainstream media when he said MS-13 and other bad actors were in this so-called “caravan of migrants.”  Apparently he was exactly right.  Of course this story isn’t being reported by those liberal news agencies, as it undermines their narrative.  Typical..

Large Group of Central American Migrants Apprehended 60 Miles into Texas

Laredo Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended a large group of mostly Central American migrants marching through a ranch located about 60 miles north of the Texas-Mexico border. The group included an unaccompanied minor. Agents assigned to the Hebbronville Border Patrol Station came upon a suspicious vehicle in an area known for human smuggling. As the agents approached the vehicle, the driver jumped out and fled into the brush. Agents said that no one else was inside the vehicle, according to Laredo Sector Border Patrol officials. Agents could not locate the driver but managed to find a presumed drop-off location for what appeared to be a group of migrants attempting to circumvent the immigration checkpoint by walking through a ranch. After picking up the trail, the agents tracked the group until they eventually caught up with them. The agents apprehended 17 people they determined to be illegally present in the U.S., officials said. The migrants came to the U.S. from El Salvador (2), Guatemala (13), and Mexico (2). The group reportedly included one unaccompanied minor. The agents arrested the group of migrants and transported them to the station for processing. Officials seized the abandoned vehicle. Human smugglers frequently abandon migrants in the brush under circumstances that often lead to injury or death. In July, Border Patrol agents rescued a woman who had been left to die. Hebbronville Station agents received a call that a woman had become lost on a ranch, Breitbart News reported. Quickly responding, the agents managed to find the woman and provide her with medical assistance. A few days earlier, Hebbronville agents received another call from a woman who said she and her male companion were lost and the man desperately needed medical attention. The agents responded with the assistance of a National Guard helicopter aircrew and quickly located the couple. Unfortunately, the man had become unresponsive and eventually died from symptoms of heat and dehydration. So far this year, 344 migrants died during or shortly after illegal border crossings. Of those, 207 died in Texas alone.

Assaults on ICE, Border Patrol surge as illegal immigrants get more violent

Assaults on ICE agents reached a decade high in 2017, and assaults on Border Patrol agents have also surged in recent years, according to new government numbers that seem to back up agents’ claims that illegal immigrants are increasingly looking to fight rather than flee. The new numbers, reported by Homeland Security’s inspector general, could even be underselling the problem, investigators said, because the government doesn’t do a good job of tracking incidents, and agents and officers don’t always report them properly. But the report does signal renewed danger particularly on the southwest border, where agents say a surge in illegal immigration in recent years generally correlates with growing violence. Prosecutors, meanwhile, often refuse to bring charges or win cases against the perpetrators, the audit found. At the border, the most frequent method of attack was projectiles — usually large rocks — which accounted for half of assaults. But bombs, clubs, knives, guns and even laser pointers to blind agents have all been used. Most of the injuries were minor and didn’t require treatment, the audit found. Customs and Border Protection recorded 1,089 assaults in 2010, which steadily dropped through 2014, when there were just 381 assaults. But things turned violent once again, steadily rising to 856 assaults in 2017. Last year was the most violent this decade at the border, with 28 assaults per every 10,000 apprehensions. In the interior, meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and officers saw 48 assaults in 2017, tying 2010 as the highest in records going back to the beginning of the decade. That was nearly double the number from 2016. ICE officers, who handle deportations, and Border Patrol agents, who patrol the line between the U.S. and Mexico, say they’ve seen an increasing willingness on the part of migrants to resort to violence in recent years. One of those assaults recorded in 2017 came when ICE officers tried to apprehend Lester Sadict Cruz-Garcia, an illegal immigrant from Honduras who was arrested by police in New York on a domestic assault charge. Police released him into the community, ignoring a request by ICE that he be held. Deportation officers then had to go out into the community to track him down at his home. When they approached him he struggled and kicked, attempting to get away, the officers said. They eventually got him in handcuffs and tried to get him into the back of an ICE vehicle when he bit one of the officers on the arm. The officer was taken to the hospital where he was prescribed antibiotics. Cruz-Garcia was sentenced in June to 364 days in jail.