Category: US Politics

The just-completed impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Senate provided cover for the administration to move forward with plans to implement President Joe Biden’s open border policies.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced plans on Thursday to address the issue of migrants with active asylum claims, previously ordered to remain in Mexico under the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP) program implemented during the Trump administration.

As part of the plan, an estimated 25,000 migrants believed to still be in Mexico under MPP will be allowed to enter through three designated sites across the southern border. According to U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar (D-TX), these sites will be in San Diego, El Paso, and Brownsville.

Daily, up to 300 migrants with active asylum cases pending action by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) will be allowed to enter at each designated site. The program kicks off next week. According to DHS, “This announcement should not be interpreted as an opening for people to migrate irregularly to the United States.”

While the U.S. Senate remained focused on a Presidential impeachment hearing, of a non-sitting President mind you, the security at our southern border was being dismantled step by step under this administration.

The trial did not result in a conviction. However, since its beginning, the trial dominated the national news cycle. The senate thus provided the “sleight-of-hand trick” needed to deflect focus of most national news media from the significance of recent border security policy changes.

DHS plans to address MPP seem simple enough at face value. They are, however, far from simple and the implications are wider than what is generally known about the process of ending it. The impact will severely affect an already stretched thin border security mechanism.

First, who will be responsible for the countless hours of administrative processing to admit and release the 300 migrants at each site per day? The answer to that question is mostly the U.S. Border Patrol.

Ports of entry must keep legitimate trade and travel flowing smoothly. According to CBP, over 6 billion dollars’ worth of imported goods entered the United States each day in 2020. The workforce that inspects and facilitates this trade will likely not be redirected to process asylum claims at the border.

USCIS is responsible for all legal immigration processes to include not only the asylum process but, on an average day, the adjudication of an estimated 30,000 applications for various immigration benefits. This leaves the Border Patrol holding the bag.

To meet the demands of this program, it is likely Border Patrol agents will bear the brunt of the administrative load of releasing MPP asylum applicants into the United States. Border Patrol agents from our nation’s northern border and surrounding southern Border Patrol sectors will likely be dispatched to meet the program goals. The processing procedures require an immigration officer with systems access and expertise to perform. Once in full swing, the odds of seeing more than a few Border Patrol agents patrolling the border will be slim.

Where exactly are the 25,000 migrants who have active cases under MPP? Many are not in the immediate border area. Sources report only 500 to 600 MPP migrants remain in a makeshift encampment in Matamoros, directly across from Brownsville, Texas. Many others have scattered across the city and some moved deeper into Mexico. A smaller number are said to have returned to their home country in Central America. This situation will probably cause a slow start to the program as DHS works the logistics to initiate the program in only a few short days.

Migrants who left the immediate border region will surely travel back to these three program areas — much to the benefit of human smugglers in Mexico. Cartels will not distinguish between the routine flow of migrants they normally extort and those traveling with pending asylum claims at the invitation of DHS.

Drug-smuggling cartels will also benefit from a reduced presence of Border Patrol agents on the border. The illegal drug trade will be a likely beneficiary of further reductions in enforcement activity by the Border Patrol.

The phrase “Catch and Release” will be replaced by “Alternatives to Detention” as the program unfolds.  Both phrases mean the same thing, the latter is more “palatable” and “politically correct.”  The cost of GPS ankle bracelets, most of which will be cut off and discarded during travel into the United States has proven problematic for ICE.  In a visit to a detention facility during my Border Patrol career recently, the devices averaged from 300 to 800 dollars each.  Many migrants would discard the device in a dumpster upon reaching their destination in the U.S.

As far as the program not being an “opening to irregular border traffic,” it is an announcement to the contrary. For tens of thousands of migrants who have been denied asylum, there could be a light at the end of the tunnel.

In one recent executive order signed by President Biden, the Secretary of DHS and the Attorney General must “evaluate whether the United States provides protection for those fleeing domestic or gang violence in a manner consistent with international standards”.

Current policy enacted under the previous administration removed domestic or gang violence from consideration on previous asylum claims. If this review results in the reversal of the current policy, an appeal will be likely for thousands whose asylum claims were denied based on fear related to domestic or gang violence. This would also give hope to thousands of others fleeing gang violence abroad. It will likely overwhelm an already stressed immigration system.

While all eyes were mostly focused on the impeachment trial of a former president, profound changes to our border security posture are largely going unnoticed.

Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol.  Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas Sector.

A police chase that spanned two counties in Kentucky ended as a terrified woman ended up hugging a police officer leading the pursuit and surrendering to law enforcement peacefully.

Watch:

“A great example of keeping your emotions in check at the end of a pursuit,” the Hodgenville Police Department wrote, praising Chief James Richardson.

The pursuit began when the woman, identified as Latrice Curry, was disturbed by a domestic altercation with her husband and fled the residence before the police arrived, the New York Daily News reported.

When a deputy followed her, she sped away, sparking a hot police chase Wednesday involving multiple officers.

The chase came to an end when the 41-year-old woman pulled over in a Hodgenville parking lot to avoid a potential roadblock.

Officers then approach the vehicle with guns drawn, yelling at the woman to get out of her car.

But as Richardson moved closer to the vehicle with his gun drawn, his mood suddenly changed.

“I got to the driver’s side door and told her to unlock the door. She had her hands up; she was shaking like a leaf. I mean the poor girl, when I opened the door it was like a look of sheer terror. She was scared to death,” Richardson told the New York Post.

Richardson then placed his gun back in his holster and told Curry to “calm down.” The police chief had to help her take her seatbelt off because she was shaking so badly.

“I didn’t perceive her as a threat, she didn’t have any weapons. I took control of her hands, she started crying. She reached out and hugged me, and I just kind of hugged her back,” the police chief said.

Curry was arrested without incident and charged with fleeing police, traffic violations, and endangerment.

The Christian Post has denounced the World Council of Churches (WCC) for its historic and current antisemitism, accusing the WCC of “blatant fabrication” in its description of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Christian Post’s hard-hitting essay Saturday was penned by two guest contributors, Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, both of whom occupy leadership roles at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The authors accuse Rev. Frank Chikane, moderator of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA), of calling on Christianity “to revert to its worst medieval Jew-hatred” in a recent Zoom call.

“We need to begin to say to those who support Israel to brutalize Palestinians that the blood of the people of Palestine will be sought from them because they collaborate by allowing this system to continue,” said Chikane, a South African Pentecostal pastor.

“For those who will not work towards delegitimizing the entire system (aka the State of Israel) that facilitates daily ‘brutality’ against Palestinians, he intoned a curse, ‘The blood of the people of Palestine will be upon them,’” the essay states.

“Every day people get killed,” said Chikane, a declaration described as “a blatant fabrication” by the two rabbis, “unless he means those who are stopped in their attempt to thrust knives into Israeli civilians.”

In responding to the controversy, the WCC itself declared that during the Zoom meeting Chikane “was speaking in his own personal capacity, not as a spokesperson for the WCC.”

Nonetheless, in their Christian Post article, the rabbis assert that the WCC’s anti-Israel policy predates Chikane by decades.

The WCC “chose not support the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948, warning instead that its political complexity might invite more global anti-Semitism,” they state.

The WCC also blamed Israel for inspiring the fears of its neighbors Egypt, Syria, and Jordan at the time of the Six Day War in 1967 because of Israel’s “dynamism and possible expansion,” they declare.

In the 70s and 80s, “the WCC’s contempt for Israel continued apace,” they add. “Regularly, it condemned Israel, while failing to criticize Arab terror attacks.”

Moreover, the authors insist, while the WCC was “busy doubling down on Israel, there was little or no criticisms of the truly brutal regimes in Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, China, and Iran.”

“The Soviets used influence to ensure that the WCC did not criticize its invasions of Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia,” they state.

The rabbis’ criticism of the WCC, especially regarding the group’s affinity for communist regimes, dovetails with testimony given by the former head of Communist Romania’s secret police in 2015.

Ion Mihai Pacepa, a 3-star general who defected to the United States in 1978, asserted that the Theology of Liberation was the creation of the KGB, who exported it to Latin America as a way of introducing Marxism into the continent.

“Liberation theology has been generally understood to be a marriage of Marxism and Christianity,” Pacepa said. “What has not been understood is that it was not the product of Christians who pursued Communism, but of Communists who pursued Christians.”

Pacepa said that Liberation Theology was born of a 1960s top-secret “Party-State Dezinformatsiya Program” approved by Aleksandr Shelepin, the chairman of the KGB, and by Politburo member Aleksey Kirichenko, who coordinated the Communist Party’s international policies.

The program mandated that “the KGB take secret control of the World Council of Churches (WCC), based in Geneva, Switzerland, and use it as cover for converting Liberation Theology into a South American revolutionary tool,” Pacepa said.

The Soviets were aware that the WCC was the largest international ecumenical organization after the Vatican, he said, representing some 550 million Christians of various denominations throughout 120 countries.

In a curious coincidence, in 1983, Chikane became the general-secretary of the Institute for Contextual Theology, a Christian think-tank inside the South African Council of Churches that promoted Liberation Theology.