Tag Archives: Border Patrol

Chinese are sneaking in and Cartels are using drones to find weak points, watch border patrol’s response warns AF General

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Important Takeaways:

  • AF Gen. Warns It’s Not Just Illegals at the Border, It’s Cartel Drones—With Over 1,000 Encounters a Month
  • That’s the disturbing takeaway from Air Force General Gregory M. Guillot, who testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday and answered questions from Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC). Guillot took over as Commander of the United States Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command in February.
  • And he’s concerned about what he’s seeing in his new position:
    • “The number of incursions was something that was alarming to me as I took command last month,” Guillot told the senator. “I don’t know the actual number – I don’t think anybody does – but it’s in the thousands…”
    • Budd pressed for what time frame Guillot was referencing in regard to the “thousands” of drone incursions.
    • Guillot responded, “I would say in probably over a month we could probably have over 1,000 a month.”
  • What are these drones, and who’s controlling them? It doesn’t take a brain scientist to conclude that they are likely mostly operated by the human and drug trafficking Mexican cartels, who presumably are scouting the U.S. response to the border invasion and looking for the best ways to counter it. The unmanned aircraft could themselves be used to transport narcotics:
  • But drones and illegal immigrants from South and Central America aren’t the only problems…
    • “The number of Chinese that are coming across the border is a big concern of mine. In fact, in the short period of time that I’ve been in command, I’ve gone down to the southern border to talk to the agents and leadership about that. And then I’ve also spoken with the acting commissioner of the CBP on this subject,” Guillot said.
    • Guillot continued, “What concerns me most about specifically the Chinese migrants is – one, that they’re so centralized in one location on the border. And two, is while many may be political refugees, other explanations, the ability for counterintelligence to hide in plain sight in those numbers.”

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Supreme Court moves against Texas’s ability to protect its borders

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Important Takeaways:

  • Supreme Court Allows Federal Agents to Cut Razor Wire Texas Installed on US-Mexico Border
  • The justices, by a 5-4 vote, granted an emergency appeal from the Biden administration, which has been in an escalating standoff at the border with Texas and had objected to an appellate ruling in favor of the state.
  • The concertina wire along roughly 30 miles (48 kilometers) of the Rio Grande near the border city of Eagle Pass is part of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s broader fight with the administration over immigration enforcement.
  • Abbott also has authorized installing floating barriers in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass and allowed troopers to arrest and jail thousands of migrants on trespassing charges. The administration also is challenging those actions in federal court.
  • In court papers, the administration said the wire impedes Border Patrol agents from reaching migrants as they cross the river and that, in any case, federal immigration law trumps Texas’ own efforts to stem the flow of migrants into the country.
  • Texas officials have argued that federal agents cut the wire to help groups crossing illegally through the river before taking them in for processing.
  • Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor sided with the administration. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas voted with Texas.
  • No one provided any explanation for their vote.

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Speaker of the House visits Border: “It’s an unmitigated disaster, it’s a disaster of the president’s own design”

Migrants-cross-near-Chief-Bernals-Boat

Important Takeaways:

  • “Last month alone, we saw the most illegal border crossings in recorded history,” Speaker Johnson said after touring the border region, visiting a Border Patrol processing facility nearby, and receiving a security briefing. “It’s an unmitigated disaster, it’s a disaster of the president’s own design.”
  • Johnson says one Texas Sheriff who formerly worked for the Border Patrol told him it took less than six months for the Biden administration to dismantle what took 100 years for the Border Patrol to achieve.
  • In December, more than 70,000 migrants made landfall in the Del Rio Sector. Most entries centered around Eagle Pass and the outdoor staging site near the Camino Real International Bridge. The record-breaking influx of migrants prompted U.S. Customs and Border Protection to shut down cross-border rail operations at Eagle Pass, the second busiest rail port of entry in the state of Texas.
  • Although the rail line has since re-opened, one of two official ports of entry into Mexico from Eagle Pass remains shut.
  • The Biden administration continues to shatter Border Patrol records dating back to the Clinton administration during Fiscal Year 2000.

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Border Crisis continues with 151K apprehended in December; past 12 months hits 2,132,000

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Important Takeaways:

  • 151K Migrants Apprehended Last Month in 2 Border Sectors — Shatters Prior Records
  • Border Patrol agents in the Tucson and Del Rio Sectors apprehended approximately 151,000 migrants who illegally crossed the border between ports of entry during the month of December, according to unofficial reports reviewed by Breitbart Texas. The reported apprehensions shatter prior records for both sectors.
  • Agents in the Tucson Sector broke a record going back to the Clinton administration with the apprehension of approximately 80,000 migrants in December. Del Rio Sector agents also obliterated a record set just over a year ago with the apprehension of approximately 71,000 migrants.
  • The prior record for migrant apprehensions in the Tucson Sector was set in March 2000 when agents encountered 76,245 migrants, according to U.S. Border Patrol Encounter Reports. The December report of approximately 80,000 migrants beats that record by nearly five percent.
  • During the first three months of Fiscal Year 2024, which began on October 1, Border Patrol agents in the nine southwest sectors apprehended 673,000 migrants who illegally crossed the border between ports of entry.
  • During the past 12 months, Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 2,132,000 migrants. Since President Joe Biden’s first full month in office (February 2021) agents apprehended nearly 6.4 million migrants. These numbers do not include known or unknown got-aways.

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Southwest US Border sees 2 million apprehended for the second straight year

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Important Takeaways:

  • Two Million Migrants Apprehended at Southwest Border for 2nd Straight Year
  • In September, the last month of the fiscal year, Border Patrol agents apprehended just over 218,000 migrants, unofficial reports revealed. This brought the total for the year to approximately 2,045,000 migrant apprehensions. In addition, Border Patrol officials classified an additional 664,000 migrants as known got-aways.
  • In contrast, during President Donald Trump’s last full fiscal year in office, agents apprehended only 400,651. During the last two months alone, agents apprehended 399,000 migrants.
  • The two million migrant apprehensions do not include migrants who entered the country through the CBP One app and other immigration blanket parole programs not authorized by Congress.
  • Following the end of Title 42 on May 11, the Biden administration relished in a brief decline in migrant apprehensions along the border. In June, agents apprehended 99,543 migrants.
  • Since the low point in June, apprehensions jumped approximately 119 percent to September’s 218,000.
  • The El Paso Sector finished the year in first place with the apprehension of more than 426,000 migrants. Del Rio finished the year in second place with the arrest of nearly 400,000 migrants. The Tucson, Rio Grande Valley, and San Diego Sectors rounded out the top five with 374,000, 338,000, and 230,000 respectively.

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What a partial US government shutdown, just four days away, looks like

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Important Takeaways:

  • Washington is closer to its fourth partial shutdown of the U.S. government in a decade with just four days to go
  • That would lead to the furlough of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and the suspension of a wide range of government services
  • The Senate plan, which advanced on a wide bipartisan margin on Tuesday, would fund the government through Nov. 17, giving lawmakers more time to agree on funding levels for the full fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
  • House Republicans want much tougher legislation that would stop the flow of immigrants at the U.S. southern border with Mexico and deeper spending cuts than were enacted in June.
  • Executive branch agencies were already making preparations for determining which federal workers would remain on the job — without pay until the government is funded — and which ones will be furloughed.
  • “The Border Patrol and ICE agencies have to continue to work for nothing” during a shutdown
  • The standoff comes four months after Washington flirted with defaulting on the nation’s more than $31 trillion in debt, a move that would have rocked financial markets worldwide.
  • Another downgrade of the U.S. credit rating could push borrowing costs – and the nation’s debt – even higher.

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Border Patrol Chief to retire just months after Title 42 comes to an end

Deuteronomy 28:43-53 43 “Foreigners who live in your land will gain more and more power, while you gradually lose yours. 44 They will have money to lend you, but you will have none to lend them. In the end they will be your rulers. 45 “All these disasters will come on you, and they will be with you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and keep all the laws that he gave you. 46 They will be the evidence of God’s judgment on you and your descendants forever. 47 The Lord blessed you in every way, but you would not serve him with glad and joyful hearts. 48 So then, you will serve the enemies that the Lord is going to send against you. You will be hungry, thirsty, and naked – in need of everything. The Lord will oppress you harshly until you are destroyed. 49 The Lord will bring against you a nation from the ends of the earth, a nation whose language you do not know. They will swoop down on you like an eagle. 50 They will be ruthless and show no mercy to anyone, young or old. 51 They will eat your livestock and your crops, and you will starve to death. They will not leave you any grain, wine, olive oil, cattle, or sheep; and you will die. 52 They will attack every town in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and the high, fortified walls in which you trust will fall. 53 “When your enemies are besieging your towns, you will become so desperate for food that you will even eat the children that the Lord your God has given you.

Important Takeaways:

  • Border Patrol Chief to Retire After Two Record-Shattering Years of Migrant Crossings
  • Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz announced his intention to retire from the post as head of the United States Border Patrol effective June 30. Ortiz notified the nearly 20,000 active Border Patrol agents of his intentions in an agency-wide email earlier this week. Ortiz led the agency during the two busiest years for migrant encounters along the southwest border in the Border Patrol’s entire 99-year history.
  • Currently, the Border Patrol is reporting more than 1.4 million migrant encounters along the southwest border since the current fiscal year began in October 2022. The pace of migrant apprehensions in 2023 indicates the annual total for this fiscal year will likely equal or exceed that of FY22. Ortiz will depart the agency less than two months after the transition moving from the Trump-era Title 42 CDC COVID-19 migrant expulsion authority to the traditional Title 8 immigration authority.

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In Genesis, God separated the nations and confused the language; the Great Reset does away with borders, wants global citizens. Nationality is a hindrance to that goal

US Border Patrol

Deuteronomy 28:43-53 43 “Foreigners who live in your land will gain more and more power, while you gradually lose yours. 44 They will have money to lend you, but you will have none to lend them. In the end they will be your rulers. 45 “All these disasters will come on you, and they will be with you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and keep all the laws that he gave you. 46 They will be the evidence of God’s judgment on you and your descendants forever. 47 The Lord blessed you in every way, but you would not serve him with glad and joyful hearts. 48 So then, you will serve the enemies that the Lord is going to send against you. You will be hungry, thirsty, and naked – in need of everything. The Lord will oppress you harshly until you are destroyed. 49 The Lord will bring against you a nation from the ends of the earth, a nation whose language you do not know. They will swoop down on you like an eagle. 50 They will be ruthless and show no mercy to anyone, young or old. 51 They will eat your livestock and your crops, and you will starve to death. They will not leave you any grain, wine, olive oil, cattle, or sheep; and you will die. 52 They will attack every town in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and the high, fortified walls in which you trust will fall. 53 “When your enemies are besieging your towns, you will become so desperate for food that you will even eat the children that the Lord your God has given you.

Important Takeaways:

  • Immigration Crisis And Open Borders: One More Piece Of The Global Agenda Falling Into Place
  • Long lines of migrants are amassed at our border right now. The Biden administration is sending 1500 troops to assist with the migrant surge. It’s expected to go from about 7500 per day to about 12,000 per day. Experts are saying the dam’s about to break, and it’s been called the greatest border crisis in world history.
  • In 2022, about 3 million migrants crossed the border into the United States. It was about 2.8 million which broke the previous record of the year before by 1 million. Now 2023 is smashing that record. Things in our country have reached a breaking point.
  • …in New York City, which is a sanctuary city where many migrants have been bused from Texas and other places, it’s costing $8 million a day just for migrant housing. Billions in education and social services are having to be poured into this from our national treasury and our coffers.
  • Personal Implications — What Does The Bible Say?
    • God charged the people of Israel to care for strangers and sojourners who came among them. In fact, in Exodus 23:9 it says, “thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” God appealed to their own history.
    • In God’s providence, if he’s allowing people to come here, we should use this as an opportunity to share the Gospel.
  • Prophetic Implications — A More Sinister Global Agenda?
    • Let me move now to the prophetic implications. The Bible tells us in Genesis 10-11 that there was worldwide unity at one point in time. They were all gathered together at the Tower of Babel and were dispersed by God, by having their languages confounded. God scattered, established nations, and established boundaries for those nations.
    • God scattered people and set the boundaries of their dwelling, so they would seek after God. The problem is that global elites want to reverse this and go back to battle. They want open borders, and they want global citizens.
    • Sadly the current administration in the United States deliberately refuses to enforce laws on our borders and even threatens States that attempt to enforce them. Why is that? Because ultimately, there’s an agenda that’s energized by Satan. It’s a globalist agenda that’s preparing the world for the Antichrist and his global governance. Of course, this is prophesied often in Scripture, Revelation 13 being the main chapter.

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At border, U.S. vice president Harris shakes off Republican critics

By Nandita Bose

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) -Vice President Kamala Harris visited a border patrol facility near the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday, aiming to counter claims from Republicans she has been slow to visit the region as part of her role addressing the root causes of immigration.

The trip, her first to the border since becoming vice president five months ago, was announced on Wednesday and appeared to have been hastily put together days before a border visit by former President Donald Trump.

A White House official said Harris’s schedule was not dictated by what the Republican Trump does. “I can assure you we don’t take our cues from the former president,” the official said.

“I said back in March I was going to come to the border, so this is not a new plan,” Harris told reporters after landing in Texas. “Coming to the border … is about looking at the effects of what we have seen happening in Central America.”

Republicans have criticized President Joe Biden, her fellow Democrat, for rolling back restrictive Trump-era immigration policies even as migrant detentions at the U.S.-Mexico border have reached 20-year highs in recent months.

Immigration remains a hot-button issue for both parties. Democrats and pro-immigrant activists have pressed Biden to further scale back enforcement and ensure humane treatment of migrant children and families arriving at the border.

White House officials have for months said Harris’s efforts to stem immigration from Central America are focused on diplomacy and are distinct from the security issues at the border.

“The vice president’s trip to Guatemala and Mexico earlier this year was about the root causes, and this border visit is about the effects,” her spokesperson Symone Sanders, told reporters on Thursday. “Both trips will inform the administration’s root causes strategy.”

Harris, who visited the border as a senator and attorney general from California, was assailed by Republicans when she visited Mexico and Guatemala this month as part of her efforts to lower migration from the region into the United States.

During that trip, Harris said she would visit the border in the near future but was focused on “tangible results” and “opposed to grand gestures.”

Nonetheless, Republicans criticized Harris for choosing El Paso rather than the area they point to as a hot spot for increased border crossings.

“While it’s certainly positive that she is taking this step, I am disappointed that she is not going to the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) – the very epicenter of this crisis,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf under Trump said in a statement.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank, said many Republicans have embraced Trump’s hardline immigration policies as they gear up for U.S. congressional elections in 2022.

As such, they are unlikely to stop their criticism of Biden’s policies, even if Harris visits the border.

“They believe that is something that can win them seats in 2022, so of course they’re going to play it up,” she said. “They’re going to try to make it an issue.”

Harris was accompanied in El Paso by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin and Democratic Representative from Texas Veronica Escobar, who called the El Paso area the new “Ellis Island,” a reference to the famed area in New York Harbor that processed millions of immigrants as they entered the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Ted Hesson, additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Kieran Murray and Alistair Bell)

‘U.S. Welcome Patrol’: how some border agents are struggling with Biden’s policy shift

By Ted Hesson, Kristina Cooke and Mica Rosenberg

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Some U.S. border patrol agents are so frustrated with President Joe Biden’s more liberal border policies that they are considering early retirement, while other disgruntled colleagues are buying unofficial coins that say ‘U.S. Welcome Patrol.’

Interviews with a dozen current and former agents highlight growing dissatisfaction among some rank and file members of the agency over Biden’s swift reversal of some of former President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies. Since Biden took office, border apprehensions have risen sharply.

Some of that frustration is coalescing into opposition to Biden’s pick to lead the border patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The nominee is Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus, who still needs to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The discontent was partly reflected in an unusual memo from the acting Border Patrol chief last month, who objected to a new directive to stop using the term ‘alien’ when referring to migrants, saying it would hurt agents’ morale.

The interviews provide an anecdotal snapshot of the mood within border patrol and, as such, do not represent the views of all agents. One agent who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity said “there are always going to be changes” between presidential administrations and that agents are “used to it.”

But any internal strife could complicate plans Magnus may have to implement and reshape border and asylum policy. Criticism from even a small number of agents could also bolster Republican efforts to use concerns over illegal immigration to rally supporters ahead of the 2022 congressional elections.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the labor union that represents three-quarters of the roughly 20,000 border patrol agents, sharply criticized Biden in a news conference with Republican senators on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. The union endorsed Trump in the 2020 election and still supports his restrictionist policies.

“I can confidently say that President Biden owns this crisis,” Judd said, referring to the recent spike in border crossers. “It is his fault.”

The 97-year-old border patrol agency has been whipsawed by policy changes under Republican and Democratic administrations that have required them to frequently modify their approach to migrants they encounter at the border.

But a number of the agents interviewed said they had never experienced such a dramatic pendulum swing.

Discontent in the ranks has already led some agents to consider early retirement, six of them said. Voluntary retirements within border patrol are set to outpace last year if they continue at the current rate, according to agency data.

Rosemarie Pepperdine, a border patrol agent working in Casa Grande, Arizona, is one of those who said she was considering taking early retirement.

“We have so many people coming across, and then we’re out there killing ourselves to catch them, rescue them or whatever it is, and then they’re being released,” she said. “Why even bother?”

Asked about the agents’ frustration, a Biden administration official said the president’s approach was rooted in solutions and effective management.

HOSPITAL ESCAPE

The opposition to Magnus from within the agency derives in part from an incident in 2017, when a Honduran migrant escaped from a Tucson hospital while a border agent was looking at his phone.

Magnus’ police department dispatched search teams and helicopters, police records show. After they determined the migrant had likely left the area, they called off the manhunt, according to Tucson’s assistant police chief, Kevin Hall.

The border patrol wanted to use a police station to set up a command post to aid the search. But that was rejected by police, who according to Hall felt that was unnecessary because the border patrol had their own facilities. He said police also wanted to avoid attracting pro-immigrant protesters who were congregating at the hospital.

Border patrol union officials were outraged, writing on Facebook at the time that Magnus’ police department “put politics over rule of law and oath of office.”

Magnus “refused to work with the agency that he’s going to be overseeing,” Judd, the union president, said in an interview with Reuters. “That alone, in my opinion, should be disqualification.”

Hall said he felt the police department had done everything they could to find the man. “We were all a bit surprised,” Hall said of the union’s outrage about the 2017 incident, “because the facts as we saw them were not exactly aligning with the facts as they saw them.”

Magnus declined to comment for this story.

The son of an immigrant father from Norway, Magnus, 60, has not publicly spoken about what his plan would be for CBP.

His backers in police and policy circles say he is a strong supporter of his employees and is open to a wide range of views.

Claudia Jasso, chief development officer at the Tucson-based nonprofit Amistades, said one of the first things Magnus did as head of the city’s police department was to meet with the Latino community to listen to their concerns. “He was humble and asked a lot of questions,” she said.

Gil Kerlikowske, who was CBP commissioner for three years under former President Barack Obama, said there are people within the agency who disagree with the politically outspoken union but who may not speak out.

If Magnus is confirmed to head CBP, Kerlikowske said, “empathy and compassion will be a standard.”

Many immigration advocates have been deeply critical of border patrol and say it is time for reform.

In 2019, the agency came under fire when the nonprofit news site ProPublica revealed a private Facebook group in which border patrol agents aired racist and misogynistic views. Then-acting CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said at the time that the posts did not reflect the views of the agency’s employees.

‘U.S. WELCOME PATROL’

Border apprehensions have been rising since Biden took office in January, reaching about 173,000 in April – the highest monthly level in more than 20 years.

The Biden administration initially struggled to process the border crossers fast enough, resulting in thousands of children being stuck in overcrowded border stations and forcing some agents to take on caretaker roles instead of patrolling for drugs and smugglers.

While the administration made changes that helped empty out the crowded stations, agents said they and their colleagues remain frustrated that many families are being released into the United States to pursue asylum cases, even as a Trump-era policy of quick expulsions at the border during the pandemic is still in place.

In at least one part of the southern border, some agents have started calling Biden ‘Let ‘Em Go Joe,’ according to a border patrol agent who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Gil Maza, a former agent who retired in March, runs a website selling an unofficial coin that refashions the U.S. Border Patrol logo to read ‘U.S. Welcome Patrol.’ Maza said he had sold 78 of the coins in four days to current and former agents.

“It sheds a little humor on the situation,” he said of the coins. “And it’s something that helps us, I guess, mentally and emotionally cope with the situation because especially right now, the situation is pretty dire out there.”

Some agents echoed a grievance aired by Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott in an April 16 memo seen by Reuters that criticized the Biden administration’s directive to use the terms ‘undocumented non-citizen’ or ‘migrant’ and stop using the phrase ‘illegal alien.’

“Over the years many outside forces on both extremes of the political spectrum have intentionally, or unintentionally, politicized our agency and our mission,” Scott wrote in the memo to acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller.

The memo was first leaked to the right-wing news site Breitbart.

The Biden administration official defended the new terminology, saying that choice of words mattered and that those in custody deserved to be treated with dignity.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington, Kristina Cooke in San Francisco and Mica Rosenberg in New York, editing by Ross Colvin and Rosalba O’Brien)