Tag Archives: illegal migration

FBI Director warns of dangerous threats coming from the border

Biden-Border-Control

Important Takeaways:

  • FBI Director Wray warns of ‘wide array’ of dangerous threats stemming from border
  • FBI Director Christopher Wray testified on Monday about a range of threats that he said were “emanating from” the southern border, which has been plagued by record surges of illegal migration during the Biden administration.
  • “From an FBI perspective, we are seeing a wide array of very dangerous threats that emanate from the border, and that includes everything from the drug trafficking, and the FBI alone sees enough fentanyl in the last two years to kill 270 million people,” Wray said. “That’s just on the fentanyl side. An awful lot of violent crime in the United States is at the hands of gangs who are themselves involved in the distribution of that fentanyl.”
  • “The vast majority of the fentanyl that’s killing Americans is of course coming from Mexico, and the vast majority of the precursors for that fentanyl is coming from China,” Wray said.
  • This fiscal year, officials have so far encountered 58 immigrants at the southern border whose names appeared on a terrorist watchlist, according to federal data. That figure coincides with border officials estimating last year that since President Joe Biden took office, more than 1.7 million immigrants have crossed into the country entirely
  • Cornyn also pointed to border officials encountering tens of thousands of nationals from the U.S.’s top adversary, China, in 2023, noting that the number represented a sharp increase over the previous year.

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Poland declares state of emergency on Belarus border

WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland’s president has declared a state of emergency in parts of two regions bordering Belarus, his spokesman said on Thursday, an unprecedented move in the country’s post-communist history that follows a surge in illegal migration.

The European Union has accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of using migrants from countries like Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a “hybrid war” designed to put pressure on the bloc over sanctions it has imposed on Minsk.

Poland has been trying to improve security along its frontier by building a fence and deploying troops.

“The situation on the border with Belarus is difficult and dangerous,” presidential spokesman Blazej Spychalski told a news conference. “Today, we as Poland, being responsible for our own borders, but also for the borders of the European Union, must take measures to ensure the security of Poland and the (EU).”

The Polish Border Guard said on Wednesday there had been around 3,500 attempts to illegally cross the border in August alone, 2,500 of which it had managed to thwart.

The government has also said it needs to be prepared for “provocations” that could transpire during military exercises organized by the Russian army that will be held on Russian and Belarusian territory near Poland from Sept. 10.

The “West-2021” drills will involve thousands of servicemen, including those from Kazakhstan, a member of the Moscow-led defense bloc, as well as tanks, artillery and aircraft.

“The second reason for bringing in the state of emergency in this area is the military exercises…that will take place on our border,” Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said. “We must be prepared for every scenario.”

The state of emergency, which will restrict the movement of people and ban mass gatherings, is to apply to a 3-km-(1.9-mile)-deep swathe along the border for 30 days.

NGOs have sharply criticized the government’s approach to the issue and have said Warsaw must provide more humanitarian aid to migrants stranded on the border.

“This state of emergency is a nuclear solution that is to move us away from this border, not only us but also the media, and make sure that no one…will document what is happening there,” said Marianna Wartecka of the Ocalenie Foundation refugee charity.

Poland says the migrants are the responsibility of Belarus and it has also accused Minsk of refusing a convoy of humanitarian aid meant for them.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz, Alicja Ptak and Anna Koper; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Belarus tells EU envoy to go, withdraws migration help in sanctions row

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Belarus on Monday told the European Union’s representative in Minsk to return to Brussels for consultations and said it would stop helping the 27-nation bloc combat illegal migration as retaliation against EU sanctions.

The EU last week imposed wide-ranging economic sanctions on Belarus targeting its main export industries and access to finance over its interception of a Ryanair flight last month.

Belarusian authorities intercepted the flight, from Athens to Vilnius, on May 23 and arrested dissident journalist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega who were on board, sparking international outrage.

The Belarusian foreign ministry set out its response to the EU sanctions on Monday and said it was recalling its own permanent representative to Brussels for consultations.

It announced an entry ban on EU officials responsible for the sanctions and said it was working on economic retaliatory measures against the bloc.

“We hope that EU officials and those from its member states are aware of the damage and futility of using a forceful approach in their relations with Belarus,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The ministry added that Belarus was suspending its participation in the EU’s Eastern Partnership, a policy initiative that aims to deepen the EU’s ties with neighboring former communist countries.

Belarus said it would also suspend a readmission agreement with the European Union, which defines the procedures to readmit people who illegally cross the joint border.

“(This will)…negatively affect cooperation with the European Union in the illegal migration and organized crimes spheres,” the statement said.

(Reporting by Anton Kolodyazhnyy and Polina Ivanova; Writing by Alexander Marrow/Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Patriot games: Slovenian paramilitaries face down migrant ‘threat’ on border

Patriot games: Slovenian paramilitaries face down migrant ‘threat’ on border
KOSTEL OB KOLPI, Slovenia (Reuters) – Dressed in camouflage and armed with air rifles, Slovenian paramilitaries moves in formation through woods a stone’s throw from Croatia, patrolling a border zone where the group’s leader says illegal migration is rife.

The more than 50-strong group, some of whom mask their faces with balaclavas and which includes a handful of women, is led by Andrej Sisko, who also heads Gibanje Zedinjena Slovenija, a fringe nationalist party that has so far failed to win seats in parliament.

He believes authorities are failing in their duty to protect Slovenia against what he views as the migrant threat, and founded Stajerska and Krajnska Varda (Stajerska and Krajnska Guard) to fill that gap.

Members of both organistions were participating in the patrol when Reuters TV met them.

“It is a duty of all of us to ensure security in our own country,” he said. “If state bodies who are paid for that cannot or do not want to ensure security we can help ensure it, that is what we do.”

Anti-migrant sentiment in Slovenia and other ex-Communist states has risen sharply since 2015, when eastern Europe bore the initial brunt of a refugee crisis.

Much of the region has since then resisted attempts by EU authorities in Brussels to enforce a continent-wide quota system for new arrivals, which Slovenia has however signed up for.

According to Slovenian police, numbers of migrants crossing illegally from Croatia to Slovenia – where a razor-wire fence has been erected along stretches of the border since 2015 – rose to 11,786 in the first nine months of this year from 6,911 a year earlier.

Sisko this year served time in jail for forming Stajerska Varda and urging the overthrow of state institutions.

He says the group, which generally meets in the border zone at weekends, does not intercept migrants – which he emphasises would be against the law – but advertises their presence to security forces.

Police told Reuters they were monitoring the group’s behaviour and had not detected any recent illegal activities.

(Reporting by Boris Kavic and Marja Novak; editing by John Stonestreet)

U.S. to ramp up rapid deportations with sweeping new rule

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle parks near the border fence between Mexico and U.S. as seen from Tijuana, Mexico July 22, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

By Tom Hals

(Reuters) – The Trump administration said on Monday it will expand and speed up deportations of migrants who enter the United States illegally by stripping away court oversight, enabling officials to remove people in days rather than months or years.

Set to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, the rule will apply “expedited removal” to the majority of those who enter the United States illegally unless they can prove they have been living in the country for at least two years.

Legal experts said it was a dramatic expansion of a program already used along the U.S.-Mexican border that cuts out review by an immigration judge, usually without access to an attorney. Both are available in regular proceedings.

“The Trump administration is moving forward into converting ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) into a ‘show me your papers’ militia,” said Vanita Gupta, the president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, on a call with reporters.

It was likely the policy would be blocked quickly by a court, several experts said. The American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed suit to block numerous Trump immigration policies in court, has vowed to sue.

President Donald Trump has struggled to stem an increase of mostly Central American families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, leading to overcrowded detention facilities and a political battle over a growing humanitarian crisis.

The government said increasing rapid deportations would free up detention space and ease strains on immigration courts, which face a backlog of more than 900,000 cases.

Nearly 300,000 of the approximately 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally could be quickly deported under the new rule, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said 37%, or 20,570, of those encountered by ICE in the year to September, had been in the country less than two years.

People in rapid deportation proceedings are detained for 11.4 days on average, according to DHS. People in regular proceedings are held for 51.5 days and are released into the United States for the months or years it takes to resolve their cases.

Legal experts said the rule shreds basic due process and could create havoc beyond immigrant communities.

“ICE has been detaining and deporting U.S. citizens for decades,” said Jackie Stevens, a political science professor at Northwestern University. That policy came at a great cost to U.S. taxpayers in terms of litigation and compensation, she added.

    ICE in 2003 became a successor agency to Immigration and Naturalization Services.

U.S. citizens account for about 1% of those detained by ICE and about 0.5% of those deported, according to Stevens’ research.

“Expedited removal orders are going to make this much worse,” she said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco in March ruled that those ordered deported in the sped-up process have a right to take their case to a judge.

Previously, only those immigrants caught within 100 miles of the border who had been in the country two weeks or less could be ordered rapidly deported. The policy makes an exception for immigrants who can establish a “credible fear” of persecution in their home country.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Richard Chang and Rosalba O’Brien)

As U.S. shutdown ties record, Trump weighs emergency declaration

President Donald Trump salutes a U.S. Border Patrol helicopter as he stands with U.S. Border Patrol agents as it flies over the Rio Grande River during his visit to the U.S. - Mexico border in Mission, Texas, U.S., January 10, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump, facing the prospect of the longest U.S. government shutdown in history, is considering declaring a national emergency that would likely escalate a policy dispute with Democrats over his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall into a court test of presidential power.

To escape a political trap of his own making, Trump on Thursday suggested that he might declare an emergency so he can bypass Congress to get funding for his wall, which was a central promise of his 2016 election campaign.

As the partial government shutdown entered its 21st day on Friday, Trump reiterated his claim in an early-morning tweet, saying Mexico would indirectly pay for the wall, without offering any evidence. It would become the longest U.S. shutdown on Saturday.

He originally pledged Mexico would pay for the wall, which he says is needed to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs. But the Mexican government has refused. Trump is now demanding that Congress provide $5.7 billion in U.S. taxpayer funding for the wall.

Democrats in Congress call the wall an ineffective, outdated answer to a complex problem. The standoff has left a quarter of the federal government closed down and hundreds of thousands of federal employees staying home on furlough or working without pay set to miss their paychecks.

With no Capitol Hill compromise in sight, Trump publicly ruminated on Thursday during a trip to the Texas border about declaring an emergency.

A close Trump confidant judged the time for such a step had come. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said in a statement: “It is time for President Trump to use emergency powers to fund the construction of a border wall/barrier. I hope it works.”

The Wall Street Journal, NBC and the Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, reported that the White House had asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to look into diverting money from its budget toward the wall and to explore how fast construction could begin under an emergency declaration. Reuters could not immediately verify the accuracy of the reports.

BOXED IN

Critics of the national emergency strategy have said it may be illegal. In any case, it was almost certain to trigger an immediate court challenge from Democrats, including an accusation of trying to circumvent Congress’ power over the national purse strings.

That would push the wall impasse into the courts, allowing the government to be fully reopened while the judges weigh the case, which could take months.

“After the emergency announcement, the path toward construction via executive order may be as unclear as a storm at midnight. But it will at least allow the president to move out of the corner he’s boxed himself into,” said Charles Gabriel, analyst at strategy firm Capital Alpha Partners.

Partial government funding expired on Dec. 22, leaving departments ranging from Justice, Agriculture and Treasury to Commerce and Homeland Security without money to operate programs and pay their workers.

An emergency declaration would come with risks. Even some of Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress have signaled worries about such an action. Given that the Constitution gives Congress the power to set spending priorities and appropriate money, they worry about a tough legal fight and an unwise precedent.

‘CROSSING THE RUBICON’

“If Trump crosses this Rubicon, what would prevent a Democratic president from declaring a ‘national emergency’ on Day 1 of their administration on climate change and/or healthcare?” Chris Krueger, an analyst at strategy firm Cowen Washington Research Group, asked in a commentary note.

Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat who has had good relations with Trump, said declaring a national emergency would be “wrong, but I think that’s his only way out.”

Manchin predicted that if Trump made the declaration, Congress would immediately move to pass bills funding the various agencies, knowing that the president would then be able to sign them into law.

While some Republican senators have begun clamoring for an end to the shutdown, party leaders toeing Trump’s line this week have ignored passage in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives of funding bills for government agencies. The House was expected to pass more such bills on Friday.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Peter Cooney)