Tag Archives: criminal prosecutions

2020 to 2022 Border Town’s Criminal Prosecutions Explode by 5,000%

Migrant crisis continues at US-Mexico border

Important Takeaways:

  • Illegal Immigration Overload: Border Town’s Criminal Prosecutions Explode by 5,000% on Biden’s Watch
  • Kinney County, Texas, one of several American border communities, has seen criminal prosecutions explode as illegal immigration has hit record levels on President Joe Biden’s watch.
  • During a House Budget Committee hearing last week, Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith told lawmakers that in 2020, under former President Donald Trump, the county reported just 134 criminal charges for prosecution.
  • After Biden “issued multiple executive orders, revoking numerous border security policies,” Smith said criminal charges for prosecution skyrocketed in 2021 to nearly 3,000, roughly 6,800 in 2022, and more than 5,800 in 2023.
  • This indicates that from 2020 to 2022, Kinney County saw criminal charges for prosecution increase by almost 5,000 percent, and from 2020 to 2023, increase by more than 4,200 percent.
  • “Kinney County normally operates within a $6 million-dollar annual budget,” Smith told lawmakers:
    • However, the open border policies enacted by the Biden administration has required the county to significantly expand the capacities of our local criminal justice system, costing Texas taxpayers an additional 10.5 million dollars.
  • Kinney County has a population of fewer than 3,200 residents. At the same time, the Del Rio Sector of the southern border, where Kinney County sits, has seen nearly 200,000 migrants cross in the region from October 2023 through March of this year.

Read the original article by clicking here.

U.S. senators call for banning, prosecuting ‘slumlords’ of military housing

By M.B. Pell

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. senators on Tuesday demanded the Defense Department crack down on private landlords who provide substandard housing at military bases with criminal prosecutions or contract cancellations, citing Reuters reports of slum-like living conditions and falsified accounting.

The top civilian and military leaders of the Army, Navy and Air Force appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, in the latest hearing addressing substandard military housing.

On Tuesday, senators were presented with a new report from the Government Accountability Office, a Congressional watchdog conducting a review of the housing program that was launched following the Reuters reports. Among the GAO’s core findings: Housing reports sent to Congress are often misleading, painting a falsely positive picture of housing conditions. The program also suffers from inaccurate landlord maintenance reports and lax military oversight, the GAO reported.

To read the GAO report, click: https://bit.ly/35UzZbC

Some senators asked whether the military’s two-decade-old program of having private landlords provide housing on U.S. military bases has failed.

“Are any of them not acting like slumlords at this point? Are any of them doing a good job?” asked Senator Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican and former U.S. Air Force combat pilot. “This pisses me off.”

For more than a year, Reuters has exposed lead, asbestos, mold and vermin contaminating homes where private landlords house thousands of military families on behalf of the Pentagon. More recently, the news agency disclosed how one major landlord doctored maintenance records at some of its bases to help it collect bonus incentive fees.

To read the coverage, click: https://reut.rs/2r1Bkim

Top Defense Department officials have long touted high occupancy rates and satisfaction scores on military family surveys as evidence the effort is generally successful, despite occasional hiccups. But Elizabeth A. Field, the GAO’s director of defense capabilities and management, told senators: “There’s clearly a problem here.”

Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy defended the privatization effort, saying it allowed the military to tap private borrowing that would otherwise be unavailable.

“That doesn’t mean it’s worked out great,” added Acting Navy Secretary Thomas B. Modly. Some privatized housing is “fantastic,” he said, but other housing is not.

The secretaries cited reform steps already taken, including far-reaching inspections of military housing and a planned tenant bill of rights to empower military families.

Senators pressed the secretaries to do more to hold accountable military leaders and landlords.

Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked Air Force Secretary Barbara M. Barrett why she couldn’t “pull the plug” on Balfour Beatty Communities, one of the military’s largest landlords.

This year, Reuters quoted five former Balfour Beatty employees who said they filed false maintenance records at Air Force bases to help the company collect millions in bonus payments. Balfour Beatty, a unit of British infrastructure giant Balfour Beatty PLC <BALF.L>, has said that it is committed to improving its maintenance, and that it has tapped outside counsel and auditors to investigate.

Air Force Secretary Barrett said the Air Force has lost confidence in the company, but stopped short of committing to removing it from the program.

A company spokesman said Balfour Beatty plans this month to finish a “performance improvement plan” requested by the Air Force.

Democratic senators Richard Blumenthal, from Connecticut, and Mazie Hirono, from Hawaii, urged the military to refer instances of fraud for criminal prosecution.

“We probably need to make an example out of a couple of them,” said Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.

(Reporting by M.B. Pell in New York. Additional reporting by Joshua Schneyer. Editing by Ronnie Greene)