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A potential congressional deal on border security funding could mean that 8,300 criminal illegal aliens are released onto the streets, according to a joint letter from two of the biggest law enforcement groups in America.

According to The Daily Caller, the National Sheriffs’ Association and the Major County Sheriffs of America have come out against a rumored deal that would cap the number of detainees that Immigration and Customs Enforcement can hold at one time at 16,500.

In the letter — sent to Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, the Alabama Republican, and the committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont — both organizations said that there would be a threat to public safety if Congress were to “place an artificial cap on Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement’s (ICE) detention capacity.”

“Capping the number of detention beds utilized by ICE not only jeopardizes the integrity of the immigration system, but would cripple ICE’s ability to detain criminal aliens and other aliens who pose a risk to public safety or are a flight risk,” the letter states.

“Any legislation that reduces ICE’s detention capacity would hinder its ability to perform its national security and public safety missions, but also impact local law enforcement’s ability to protect the communities they serve. In order to meet the cap being tentatively proposed by Congress, ICE would be compelled to release thousands of aliens from custody. To achieve the 16,500 adult average detainee population (ADP) caps for the remaining 7 months of the fiscal year, a net reduction of 9,264 adults by the end of this fiscal year would be required.

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“Over 90 percent of ICE’s arrests are aliens who have a criminal conviction, have been arrested for a criminal, or have been previously removed. Placing a cap on ICE detention beds will undermine the efficacy of the immigration system and reduce the number of aliens who are removed from the United States.”

If 90 percent of the aliens held by ICE have criminal records besides their immigration status, and 9,264 would have to be freed, that means more than 8,300 criminals would be released to potentially prey on innocent Americans, thanks to Democratic demands.

According to Fox News, while no details of the proposed deal have been released, a limit on ICE beds seems to be one of the likely concessions from Republicans.

“Democrats have proposed a cap on the number of available beds in ICE detention centers with the goal of forcing the Trump administration to prioritize arresting and deporting only violent criminals and dangerous offenders,” Fox reported.

Speaking before the deal in principle was reached and at a moment where talks were thought to have broken down, ICE Deputy Director Matt Albence said that the idea of limiting detention capacity would be “extremely damaging to public safety.”

“If we are forced to live with a cap, we will be forced to release criminal aliens in our custody,” Albence said on Monday, according to Fox. “We will be limited in our ability to respond to state and local law enforcement agencies making arrests for these crimes.

“We prioritize our limited resources to the best of our ability, but putting an artificial cap on the ability to detain individuals who pose threats will lead to disastrous results,” Albence added.

Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, also said that such an idea was  “not based on reality” and the Democrats are using “an arbitrary number that a couple of lawmakers pulled out of thin air.”

Limiting ICE’s detention abilities has long been a Democrat agenda item — since they think ICE is evil and so is any sort detention of illegal immigrants.

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Any sort of border security deal needs to do just that: Engender border security.

Limiting ICE’s ability to keep detainees isn’t going to do that, especially when 8,300 individuals are going to be turned out on the street because, if The Associated Press‘ report is accurate, the Republicans will get $1.4 billion for the wall.

This isn’t the best deal for the administration or the American people. It’s time for some serious negotiation.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

The Democrats and the mainstream media may be attacking President Donald Trump as hard as they can, but the numbers don’t lie — and they say that the State of the Union was a hit.

According to the Rasmussen Reports poll for Monday, 52 percent of Americans approve of the job that Trump is doing compared with 47 percent who disapprove.

That’s compared with the beginning of the month, where 43 percent approved and 57 percent who disapproved.

This is even trending upward from last week, where Trump still had a higher disapproval than approval rate in the survey.

“The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 49% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance,” the polling service reported last week.

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“These findings include the first full night of surveying following the president’s State of the Union speech to Congress,” it added.

“The latest figures include 37% who Strongly Approve of the job Trump is doing and 42% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -5.”

Those numbers are now even, with 39 percent both strongly approving and strongly disapproving.

That’s higher than the numbers President Obama had at the same point during his presidency.

According to the Rasmussen polling data from Obama’s presidency, on Feb. 11, 2011, Obama had a similar 50-49 approval rating, just slightly under Trump’s.

However, the data show that Obama’s strongly approve/strongly disapprove numbers were much worse.

Twenty-seven percent of Americans surveyed strongly approved of the job that then-President Obama was doing at the time, compared to 35 percent who strongly disapproved, giving him a presidential approval rating of -8.

And keep in mind, Trump is maintaining this approval in spite of endless attacks from Democrats and the mainstream media, particularly over the potential for another government shutdown.

So, what’s the takeaway here, aside from the fact that we’re not going to hear a lot about the Rasmussen poll from the mainstream media?

First, Trump’s State of the Union speech was a lot bigger of a hit than most people in the media seemed to have thought it was. The general thought was that most people were going to look at the controversial elements of the speech, especially when he talked about the Mueller investigation.

However, viewers seem to have embraced the message Trump had for America, even if he was trashing the very hot philosophy of socialism.

Second, it’s not exactly that much of a stretch to think that Trump is going to have about the same shot at getting re-elected that Barack Obama did. After all, the numbers are incredibly similar and things are trending well for the president.

That’s something a lot of Democratic challengers aren’t going to be too happy with — especially since this is what’s happening when Trump’s dealing with everything that the media can throw at him.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

President Trump visited the Texas border city of El Paso to make a case for his border wall, and press pooh-poohing to the contrary, it was big. Real big. The press fell over itself to downplay claims about the actual crowd size, but 16,000 people, if the numbers were as low as that, are still an amazing numbers, respect-inducing numbers, particularly in a blue city like El Paso. If this trip was Trump’s kickoff to his 2020 presidential re-election run, the Democratic clown car of candidates getting all the press these days has something to worry about, because it looks a lot like 2016, except it’s even bigger.

Here’s what the grizzled old political editor of the Daily Mail had to say about it:

 

Yowza https://t.co/HMeorfiWoH

— David Martosko (@dmartosko) February 12, 2019

 

Here’s the USA Today report:

The Trump rally, held in strongly Democratic El Paso, came a week after the president’s State of the Union address, where he angered many locals by saying El Paso was “once considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities” until a security fence was erected. Trump has asked for $5.7 billion to build a border wall, a key sticking point in a recent government shutdown that dragged for 35 days.

Monday’s rally, Trump’s first political event of 2019, is likely a harbinger of more to come to garner support for the wall and his reelection campaign.

Which is really what it comes down to. The press had been trying to downplay this event even before it happened, and has put out a slew of stories to suggest that everyone in El Paso is against him. 

Apparently, quite a few of them are not. Yes, it’s likely that many have come from outside of El Paso, given that the core of the city is pretty blue, but those people count, too, many of them ranchers whose properties have been despoiled by illegal immigration, the human smuggling trade and cartels transporting illegal drugs. If they had the motivation to drive a hundred miles to come to such a rally, as the USA Today report suggested, what does this say about their voting commitment? We used to call them ‘broken glass’ Republicans.

It goes to show that Trump’s signature issue, the building of a border wall, is powerful with voters and likely to win him re-election in 2020. Nobody expected crowds to be this big, at least in the press, and the fact that a potential Trump rival in 2020, failed Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, held a rival rally right in the heart of the blue city of El Paso, with far smaller numbers, around 7,000, says a lot. It was reported that cheers from the Trump rally actually drowned Beto out.

The press, of course, tried to portray Beto as the winner, but the numbers don’t support it.

Here’s what the Beto rally had to show for itself:

 

PHOTOS: Mexican flags fly at small Beto counter-rally as Trump draws thousands… DoG https://t.co/XK6cAtUipk

— Dog (@u2biker) February 12, 2019

 

Way to win the voters over, Beto. Is he running for president of Mexico?

Nor does the fact that Trump’s poll numbers now sport a 52% approval rating. As his campaign kicks off in El Paso, that figure suggests soaring support. I have always been skeptical of the low numbers in the past, given the revolution that Trump represents, but now the numbers aren’t even borderline enough to manipulate below the 50 line. I suspect the 52% is much higher actually given the low base of previous polls. Polls during campaign 2016 all had Trump below the water line and well, he pulled out an upset victory, stunning the Washington swamp. Now he’s at 52%, signalling that people want that wall. And the reality is, the U.S. is in a crisis at the border, something that actually affects people in their daily lives as illegals and their cartel sponsors lower property values, force tax hikes, and inflict crime on the citizens. Trump’s state of the union speech and his determined stance to erect a border wall is obviously playing well with voters.

This, in addition to his awesome economic record quite unlike any other, with job creation exploding, and his stellar foreign policy record which has overseas nationals begging for a Trump of their own. The Middle East is a success, the South China Sea is a success, the Korean peninsula is a success, and now Venezuela getting set to be a success – with Democrats utterly terrified of losing Florida. How can this not be a sign of the election to come. 

El Paso, which I have some familiarity with, having spent time with one of its very nice moderate Democratic mayors and written about its development, is a pretty interesting city, and there’s a lot of crossed wires about what’s going on there. It’s blue, but it’s a moderate blue, and right now, it has a Republican mayor. It’s also something unique - a border city, and as a border city, it very much resembles border cities around the world, where families are intermingled on both sides of the national line, and they come and go all the time. It’s a very stable situation actually, and that explains why the city is famous for its lack of crime which the press is jumping all over Trump for as it tries to claim that the president, in citing crime as the case for a wall, is lying about. It’s a mangled issue and the president seems to have framed it poorly. El Paso yes indeed is a low crime place. But its peaceful social capital and harmonious border interactions had been disturbed in recent years in a way that would get worse without a wall. Mexico’s internationally connected drug and human smuggling cartels did encroach on the Mexican side, and cartel bullets most certainly did hit El Paso’s city hall and El Paso’s residents from Mexico in the past decade. That spillover from Mexico’s drug war is the result of cartels growing powerful in the absence of a wall, which is why a wall is necessary. 

The wall is a separate issue from one that preoccupies El Paso’s peaceable people – which is the need for a door, and Trump would do well to provide assurances that the wall is only targeted at cartels and their human and drug cargoes, not the natural social arrangements of the border people. Trump should assure the El Pasoans that any wall is going to have a great big easy-to-enter door for the locals to come and go. Trump could win the bluest El Pasoans over with that one, and it’s likely he eventually will.

Bottom line? Democrats have something to worry about with a rally of this city in one of Texas’s bluest cities.

President Trump visited the Texas border city of El Paso to make a case for his border wall, and press pooh-poohing to the contrary, it was big. Real big. The press fell over itself to downplay claims about the actual crowd size, but 16,000 people, if the numbers were as low as that, are still an amazing numbers, respect-inducing numbers, particularly in a blue city like El Paso. If this trip was Trump’s kickoff to his 2020 presidential re-election run, the Democratic clown car of candidates getting all the press these days has something to worry about, because it looks a lot like 2016, except it’s even bigger.

Here’s what the grizzled old political editor of the Daily Mail had to say about it:

 

Yowza https://t.co/HMeorfiWoH

— David Martosko (@dmartosko) February 12, 2019

 

Here’s the USA Today report:

The Trump rally, held in strongly Democratic El Paso, came a week after the president’s State of the Union address, where he angered many locals by saying El Paso was “once considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities” until a security fence was erected. Trump has asked for $5.7 billion to build a border wall, a key sticking point in a recent government shutdown that dragged for 35 days.

Monday’s rally, Trump’s first political event of 2019, is likely a harbinger of more to come to garner support for the wall and his reelection campaign.

Which is really what it comes down to. The press had been trying to downplay this event even before it happened, and has put out a slew of stories to suggest that everyone in El Paso is against him. 

Apparently, quite a few of them are not. Yes, it’s likely that many have come from outside of El Paso, given that the core of the city is pretty blue, but those people count, too, many of them ranchers whose properties have been despoiled by illegal immigration, the human smuggling trade and cartels transporting illegal drugs. If they had the motivation to drive a hundred miles to come to such a rally, as the USA Today report suggested, what does this say about their voting commitment? We used to call them ‘broken glass’ Republicans.

It goes to show that Trump’s signature issue, the building of a border wall, is powerful with voters and likely to win him re-election in 2020. Nobody expected crowds to be this big, at least in the press, and the fact that a potential Trump rival in 2020, failed Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, held a rival rally right in the heart of the blue city of El Paso, with far smaller numbers, around 7,000, says a lot. It was reported that cheers from the Trump rally actually drowned Beto out.

The press, of course, tried to portray Beto as the winner, but the numbers don’t support it.

Here’s what the Beto rally had to show for itself:

 

PHOTOS: Mexican flags fly at small Beto counter-rally as Trump draws thousands… DoG https://t.co/XK6cAtUipk

— Dog (@u2biker) February 12, 2019

 

Way to win the voters over, Beto. Is he running for president of Mexico?

Nor does the fact that Trump’s poll numbers now sport a 52% approval rating. As his campaign kicks off in El Paso, that figure suggests soaring support. I have always been skeptical of the low numbers in the past, given the revolution that Trump represents, but now the numbers aren’t even borderline enough to manipulate below the 50 line. I suspect the 52% is much higher actually given the low base of previous polls. Polls during campaign 2016 all had Trump below the water line and well, he pulled out an upset victory, stunning the Washington swamp. Now he’s at 52%, signalling that people want that wall. And the reality is, the U.S. is in a crisis at the border, something that actually affects people in their daily lives as illegals and their cartel sponsors lower property values, force tax hikes, and inflict crime on the citizens. Trump’s state of the union speech and his determined stance to erect a border wall is obviously playing well with voters.

This, in addition to his awesome economic record quite unlike any other, with job creation exploding, and his stellar foreign policy record which has overseas nationals begging for a Trump of their own. The Middle East is a success, the South China Sea is a success, the Korean peninsula is a success, and now Venezuela getting set to be a success – with Democrats utterly terrified of losing Florida. How can this not be a sign of the election to come. 

El Paso, which I have some familiarity with, having spent time with one of its very nice moderate Democratic mayors and written about its development, is a pretty interesting city, and there’s a lot of crossed wires about what’s going on there. It’s blue, but it’s a moderate blue, and right now, it has a Republican mayor. It’s also something unique - a border city, and as a border city, it very much resembles border cities around the world, where families are intermingled on both sides of the national line, and they come and go all the time. It’s a very stable situation actually, and that explains why the city is famous for its lack of crime which the press is jumping all over Trump for as it tries to claim that the president, in citing crime as the case for a wall, is lying about. It’s a mangled issue and the president seems to have framed it poorly. El Paso yes indeed is a low crime place. But its peaceful social capital and harmonious border interactions had been disturbed in recent years in a way that would get worse without a wall. Mexico’s internationally connected drug and human smuggling cartels did encroach on the Mexican side, and cartel bullets most certainly did hit El Paso’s city hall and El Paso’s residents from Mexico in the past decade. That spillover from Mexico’s drug war is the result of cartels growing powerful in the absence of a wall, which is why a wall is necessary. 

The wall is a separate issue from one that preoccupies El Paso’s peaceable people – which is the need for a door, and Trump would do well to provide assurances that the wall is only targeted at cartels and their human and drug cargoes, not the natural social arrangements of the border people. Trump should assure the El Pasoans that any wall is going to have a great big easy-to-enter door for the locals to come and go. Trump could win the bluest El Pasoans over with that one, and it’s likely he eventually will.

Bottom line? Democrats have something to worry about with a rally of this city in one of Texas’s bluest cities.

Jewish leaders criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on Sunday evening over tweets in which she alleged, falsely, that members of Congress support Israel because they are paid to do so, evoking classic anti-Jewish stereotypes.

Omar was taken to task by left-wing Jewish pundits — who normally share many of her criticisms of Israel — after she tweeted, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” in explaining why American politicians support Israel. She also accused the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobby group, of paying them — though AIPAC does not donate to politicians.

Rather than acknowledge the explanation that Congress tends to support Israel because Americans in general broadly support Israel — with nearly two-thirds favoring Israel over the Palestinians — Omar doubled down throughout the evening against the “Israel lobby.”

In response, Jewish organizations spoke out. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) demanded that she apologize:

.@IlhanMN, Suggesting that a Jewish organization is buying off American politicians is both demonstrably false and stunningly anti-Semitic. American politicians are pro-Israel because Americans are (https://t.co/QMr1oCcnHX). Apologize. pic.twitter.com/VdJh0W8sx1

— AJC (@AJCGlobal) February 11, 2019

The Anti-Defamation League’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, who had covered for Omar last month by accepting her non-apology for an earlier antisemitic tweet, felt compelled to criticize her:

Words matter Rep. @IlhanMN. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the US and abroad. The use of this tired anti-Semitic trope about Jews and money is inappropriate and upsetting. As Americans and Jews, we expect our politicians to condemn bigotry, not fuel it. https://t.co/SHKgVL5PWx

— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) February 11, 2019

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) surprised no one with its criticism:

This seems like something @SpeakerPelosi should be addressing. @HouseDemocrats, care to comment on the outrageous anti-Semitism being spewed by one of your fêted members? pic.twitter.com/2Ci7wInSUq

— RJC (@RJC) February 11, 2019

However, even Jewish Democrats endorsed a description of Omar’s rhetoric as “shameful bigoted hatemongering”:

We agree. https://t.co/HeVPWBnQ4v

— ✡ Jewish Dems (@USJewishDems) February 11, 2019

Retired New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind took his party leaders to task:

The time has come to demand Dem leaders speak out against @ilhanmn for her vile antisemitism. This isn’t going away. Where is @nancypelosi @SenSchumer @RepJerryNadler @RepEliotEngel @RepAdamSchiff @DWStweets and DNC leadership? Have they lost their ears, eyes, or damned minds? pic.twitter.com/mRhtDMJSJC

— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) February 11, 2019

And first-term Rep. Max Rose (D-NY) responded with a statement and a tweet criticizing Omar:

Congresswoman Omar’s statements are deeply hurtful to Jews, including myself. pic.twitter.com/u3f2JHESFA

— Max Rose (@MaxRose4NY) February 11, 2019

In a statement quoted by Politico, AIPAC said: “We are proud that we are engaged in the democratic process to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship. Our bipartisan efforts are reflective of American values and interests. We will not be deterred in any way by ill-informed and illegitimate attacks on this important work.”

Omar also retweeted an attack on Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who actually funds a rival group to AIPAC.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appointed Omar to the House Foreign Affairs Committee last month. She has, thus far, ignored calls to remove Omar from that committee given her views on Israel and other issues.

Earlier Sunday, Omar told CNN that it was “exciting” that her anti-Israel views were stirring debate in Washington. A spokesperson told Politico later Sunday that Omar’s controversial tweets “speak for themselves.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

President Donald Trump reacted Monday to new demands from House Democrats to cap the detention of illegal immigrants in the United States.

“The Democrats do not want us to detain, or send back, criminal aliens!” Trump wrote on Twitter. “This is a brand new demand. Crazy!”

Democrats on the bipartisan compromise border security committee to fund the wall issued a demand for a “cap” on the number of beds used for detained illegal immigrants.

“For far too long, the Trump administration has been tearing communities apart with its cruel immigration policies,” Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) said in a statement. “A cap on ICE detention beds will force the Trump administration to prioritize deportation for criminals and people who pose real security threats, not law-abiding immigrants who are contributing to our country.”

Roybal-Allard is one of the members of the conference committee looking for a compromise solution to Trump’s demand for $5.6 billion in wall funding to secure the border.

Trump also reacted to the new demands on Sunday.

“The Border Committee Democrats are behaving, all of a sudden, irrationally,” he wrote. “Not only are they unwilling to give dollars for the obviously needed Wall (they overrode recommendations of Border Patrol experts), but they don’t even want to take muderers (sic) into custody! What’s going on?”

Trump is expected to rally supporters in El Paso, Texas on Monday ahead of the new February 15 deadline to fund the government.

The Border Committee Democrats are behaving, all of a sudden, irrationally. Not only are they unwilling to give dollars for the obviously needed Wall (they overrode recommendations of Border Patrol experts), but they don’t even want to take muderers into custody! What’s going on?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2019

The Democrats do not want us to detain, or send back, criminal aliens! This is a brand new demand. Crazy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 11, 2019