White House officials along with members of Congress are traveling to the southern border Wednesday to visit a facility being used to house migrant children amid the current surge at the US-Mexico border. They are touring a facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, as the Biden administration grapples with the massive influx of migrants at the…

‘Flat-out just doesn’t care’.

Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said Wednesday that Vice President Kamala Harris is “the worst possible choice” to oversee security at the border.

“She’s about the worst possible choice that one could make,” Ducey said during a speech at the University of Arizona. “In no point in her career has she given any indication that she considers the border a problem or a serious threat.” . .

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border and work with Central American nations to address root causes of the problem.

Biden made the announcement as he and Harris met at the White House on Wednesday with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandra Mayorkas and other immigration advisers to discuss the increase in migrants, including many unaccompanied minors, arriving at the border in recent weeks.

In delegating the matter to Harris, Biden is seeking to replicate a dynamic that played out when he served as President Barack Obama’s vice president. Obama turned to Biden in his first term to lead the White House effort to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq and oversee implementation of stimulus in response to the Great Recession.

“When she speaks, she speaks for me,” Biden said, noting her past work as California’s attorney general makes her specially equipped to lead the administration’s response.

Biden, who has faced stiff criticism from Republicans over the increased flow of migrants, is hoping to show Americans he’s taking the situation at the border seriously. He also wants to prevent the growing humanitarian and political challenge from overshadowing his administration’s ambitious legislative agenda.

But the high-profile assignment for Harris, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and is expected to run for the White House again in the future, could be politically fraught.

“Needless to say, the work will not be easy,” Harris said. “But it is important work.”

Harris is tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts to deal with issues spurring migration in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as pressing them to strengthen enforcement on their own borders, administration officials said. She’s also tasked with developing and implementing a long-term strategy that gets at the root causes of migration from those countries.

Biden suggested President Donald Trump’s decision to cut $450 million funding in 2019 to the region was partly to blame for the situation.

Among the other reasons for the current increase: the thousands of Central American migrants already stuck at the border for months and the persistent scourge of gang violence afflicting the Northern Triangle countries.

Still, the numbers of both unaccompanied minors and families encountered at the border are lower than they were at various points during the Trump administration, including in spring 2019.

For Harris, the assignment gives her the first big opportunity to step to the front of the stage on a matter of enormous consequence for the administration. As the first Black woman elected vice president, Harris arrived on the job as a trailblazer. It has remained opaque how Biden would utilize her.

The move echoes not only Obama’s decision to deputize Biden but also Trump naming Vice President Mike Pence to lead his coronavirus task force and President Bill Clinton handing Vice President Al Gore environmental and technology portfolios early in his presidency.

It’s been a mixed bag for vice presidents in recent history who have been made the point person on delicate matters, said Joel Goldstein, the author of “The White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden.”

Pence’s efforts on the coronavirus were stymied by Trump’s hijacking of the task force’s daily briefings early in the pandemic. Dick Cheney, who had been charged with leading George W. Bush’s search for a vice president only to take the spot himself, carved out what was seen by many critics as a shadow presidency in which he had an outsized influence on shaping Bush’s national security policies.

And Gore faced headwinds from Republicans in Congress who were reluctant to give him a win ahead of his unsuccessful 2000 run for the White House.

“Some of the risk versus reward depends to some extent on the vice president’s relationship with the president,” Goldstein said. “Whether or not the president had their back. Whether the president’s going to allow you to be in a position to accomplish things and be perceived to accomplish things.”

Biden made the announcement as a delegation of White House officials and members of Congress was traveled to the southern border on Wednesday to tour a facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, where more than 750 migrant teenagers are being held.

The Biden administration has in recent weeks moved to open more than 10,000 new beds across the Southwest in convention centers and former oilfield camps. It notified Congress on Wednesday that it will open a new 3,000-person facility in San Antonio and a 1,400-person site at the San Diego convention center. HHS is also opening a second site in Carrizo Springs and received approval from the Defense Department Wednesday to begin housing teenagers at military bases in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas.

While acknowledging a “big problem” with the rising numbers of migrants, Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif., one of five lawmakers to tour the facility Wednesday, credited the Biden administration with treating young migrants far more humanely than the Trump administration.

In an interview after the tour, Torres described children accommodated four to a room, and said she saw no signs of overcrowding. The young people attend school, have access to health care and are given weekly COVID-19 tests. Lawmakers were told 1 in 10 children are testing positive for the virus, but none at the facility had been hospitalized, she said.

“When I look at those kids, I see myself,” said Torres, an immigrant from Guatemala who arrived in the U.S. with her family as a child.

The White House faced criticism for limiting media access to Wednesday’s tour, keeping it to just one TV crew. It has still not allowed media to enter Border Patrol facilities where large numbers of children are detained or HHS sites that it rapidly opened under pressure. The Carrizo Springs facility was established in 2019 during the Trump administration and re-opened in February.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who is leading a separate delegation of GOP senators to the border later this week, decried the lack of press access as a “muzzling” of the media by the Democratic administration.

“Joe Biden doesn’t want you to see,” Cruz told reporters at the Capitol.

Merchant reported from Houston and Lemire from New York. Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

Hundreds of migrant families, including babies and pregnant women, were detained under the Anzalduas International Bridge, sleeping in the dirt, without much food or medical care, people who were released said.

The family-unit holding cells smell like urine and vomit. Fights break out in the unaccompanied-minor cells. Scabies, lice, the flu, and COVID-19 run rampant. Up to 80 individuals are squeezed into each 24- by 30-foot cell, and there aren’t enough mattresses for everyone. Sheets of plastic divide the rooms. “Any diseases that are in there, […]

The post Border Agent Gives Inside Account of Overcrowded Facilities appeared first on NTD.

The border crisis continues to get worse in California as even the San Diego Convention Center is being used to house illegal immigrants.

by Kaylee Greenlee

The Biden administration ignored career immigration officials’ warnings of an impending surge in the number of migrants arriving at the southern border, The Washington Post reported.

The administration has repeatedly refused to refer to the situation as a crisis, despite a seeming inability to curb the increasing flow of migrants, the Post reported. The administration’s mixed messaging, which often appeals to liberal activists, has hampered efforts to halt the influx of migrants at the southern border, according to the Post.

Senior Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials briefed the Biden transition team during the transition period on the potential risks of lifting former President Donald Trump’s policies and said it could lead to a surge in unaccompanied migrant minors, one current and two former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials told the Post.

The president’s transition team understood the potential risks and acknowledged multiple issues that could emerge as a result of repealing Trump-era policies, DHS officials told the Post.

Chad Wolf, former acting DHS secretary, said he talked to the Biden transition team about potential risks related to migrants and confirmed that career CBP officials warned of a looming crisis, the Post reported. However, Biden repealed several of Trump’s policies including border wall construction and paused deportations for 100 days within his first week of taking office.

A federal judge blocked President Joe Biden’s moratorium on deportations in January, according to the Associated Press.

“It’s one thing to hear it from political appointees, but career folks were telling them the same thing. They should have been better prepared,” Wolf said, the Post reported. “And I know they were briefed in detail by CBP.”

CBP encountered over 100,000 migrants at the southern border in February alone, including more than 9,000 unaccompanied minors, according to the agency. The Biden administration decided to allow unaccompanied minors to enter the country and remain in custody until they are matched with a sponsor in the U.S., according to the Post.

The Department of Health and Human Services currently has over 10,000 unaccompanied minors in its custody, according to the Post. An additional 5,000 unaccompanied minors are estimated to be in CBP facilities.

“When you create a system that incentivizes people to come across, and they are released, that immediately sends a message to Central America that if you come across you can stay,” Democratic Texas Rep. Vicente Gonzalez told the Post.

“It incentivizes droves of people to come, and the only way to slow it down is by changing policy at our doorstep. If they don’t change the policy, the flow of continued migration traffic isn’t going to stop or slow down,” Gonzalez added.

The Biden administration has continued expelling single migrant adults and some family units to Mexico under Trump’s Title 42 public health order. However, the Mexican government said in January it would stop accepting some families, forcing the U.S. to admit parents with children under 7 years old, according to the Post.

– – –

Kaylee Greenlee is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.

The post Biden Team Ignored Warnings from Career Immigration Officials That Their Actions Could Cause a Border Crisis appeared first on The Georgia Star News.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that he and a delegation of 17 Republican senators will visit the temporary migrant overflow facility in Donna, Texas, as part of their upcoming tour of the U.S. southern border on Friday. Cruz had previously announced that he would lead the delegation of lawmakers to visit the U.S.-Mexico border amid an influx of illegal border crossing, particularly by unaccompanied minors. The overflow facility in Donna made headlines this week after photos of children at the facility sleeping in crowded conditions, either on floor mats or on the floor, were released to the media. “Tomorrow night, 18 senators are going to be traveling down to the Southern border, traveling down to Texas, to see first-hand the crisis that is unfolding, to see firsthand the over 100,000 illegal immigrants who were detained last month, to see the over 15,000 children that are in [the] custody of the Biden …

Greenwald has shown his independence from the mainstream liberal orthodoxy, and he believes they want to silence him.

A new holding center for unaccompanied kids and migrants is being built “as fast as they can” in the Rio Grande Valley as US Customs and Border Protection officials struggle to manage a flood of immigrants that’s left existing facilities well beyond capacity, The Post has learned.

Mexican drug cartels are taking advantage of the Biden administration’s border policies to use children as decoys to smuggle their members into the United States, according to a sheriff from Texas. Hidalgo County Sheriff J.E. Guerra, who is on the front line of the ongoing surge in illegal crossings on the U.S.-Mexico border, told The New York Post that cartels are profiting more from trafficking humans than running drugs. Guerra described the cartels’ tactics to the NY Post, saying that they split up families seeking to illegally cross the border, and use the children as decoys so that criminal thugs, posing as their relatives, can come over with the children and get admitted into the United States. “Well, the cartels say, ‘You can cross with one child, we’re going to take two children. And we’re going to use those two children to smuggle two others and pretend that those are family units,'” …

Customs and Border Protection has held at least 800 unaccompanied migrant minors in custody for over 10 days, Axios reported

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can legally hold unaccompanied minors for 72 hours, though over 3,300 were in custody over the limit as of Saturday, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by Axios. Over 2,200 unaccompanied minors were held for more than five days and around 820 were in custody for over 10 days.

The number of unaccompanied minors in CBP custody for over 10 days has quadrupled in the last week, Axios reported. Only around 180 unaccompanied minors were in CBP custody for over 10 days as of last Monday.

Minors are required to be transferred from Border Patrol facilities within three days of arrival, however, the recent increase in encounters has overwhelmed processing capabilities.

NEW: Exclusive photos from inside a CBP temporary overflow facility taken over the weekend in Donna, Texas reveal the crowded, makeshift conditions at the border as the government’s longer term child shelters and family detention centers fill uphttps://t.co/uxdWO7cV7N

— Stef Kight (@StefWKight) March 22, 2021

CBP is legally required to hold unaccompanied minors until the Department of Health and Human Services is able to place them in a shelter.

The Biden administration’s immigration policy combined with natural disasters and other factors in Central America have contributed to an increase in migrants arriving at the southern border, Axios reported.

The Biden administration has reopened other temporary facilities including hotel rooms as temporary sites to hold unaccompanied migrant children and family units, Axios reported.

CBP did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

– – –

Kaylee Greenlee is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.

The post Border Patrol Holding Thousands of Migrant Children Past The Legal Limit, Some Detained Longer Than 10 Days appeared first on The Georgia Star News.

A temporary processing facility in Donna, Texas, as seen in a photo released by Customs and Border Protection, on March 23, 2021. (CBP)

The post New Border Photos Show Children Sleeping Shoulder-to-Shoulder in Transparent Pen appeared first on NTD.

There are now over 15,000 unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody as the number of people seeking asylum at the southern border shows no sign of slowing down. The Biden administration has sharpened its rhetoric in recent weeks, insisting that the “border is closed” and pushing Mexico and Guatemala to stem the flow of migrants. The Biden administration has also maintained one of the most controversial Trump policies, which allows the U.S. to deny almost all asylum seekers on public health grounds. “What is happening at the southern border is shameful,” says Luz Lopez, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center focused on immigration. “We as a country should remain vigilant and hold any administration accountable, regardless of political party, with respect to our treatment of children seeking refuge, who are fleeing countries that are in turmoil, largely because of our geopolitical policies over the past several decades.”

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The federal government is converting another convention center into a shelter for illegal immigrants amid a border surge that has shown no sign of slowing.

The post Biden Administration to Use San Diego Convention Center as Immigration Shelter Amid Surge appeared first on NTD.

For over a decade, Monsanto has been engaged in building and maintapining “hit lists” of journalists, lawmakers and regulators to be taken out if they opposed the evil agenda of GMOs and toxic glyphosate weed killer chemicals that now inundate the world food supply. Any influential person who opposed the Monsanto agenda was subjected to one or more of the following:

• Attempted bribery
• Death threats and intimidation
• Character assassination through well-funded “negative P.R.” campaigns
• Defamation via coordinated Wikipedia attacks, run by Monsanto operatives
• Career destruction, such as getting scientists blacklisted from science journals
• Being doxxed, having their home addresses publicized and their families and co-workers threatened

Saudi Arabia started naval exercises in the Persian Gulf to improve its ability to foil “terrorist attacks” on oil facilities, underscoring the kingdom’s concern about a rise in drone and missile strikes claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The Pentagon and intelligence agencies were in December given a 180-day deadline to produce a report into UFO sightings, meaning it will be released by June 1.

Politicians from both sides of the Australian parliament have criticised China for “serious and systemic” breaches of human rights in Xinjiang. Liberal Kevin Andrews and Labor’s Chris Hayes are putting forward a resolution sharply critical of the Chinese regime’s treatment of Uyghur, or Uighur, people. The government has allowed debate on the bipartisan motion to condemn the Chinese government for its abuse of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Andrews told the parliament on Monday, “There is overwhelming evidence of the cruel, inhumane, and brutal practises of the Chinese communist regime.” The United States, Canada, and The Netherlands have all officially recognised the situation in Xinjiang as a genocide, Andrews added. “This is a time when this parliament should speak with one voice. I cannot think of any member or senator who would vote against this motion,” he said of the resolution. Bahtiyar Bora from the Australian Uighur Association encouraged parliamentarians to show …

Americans have been targeted for their Asian ancestry more often in recent years but the incidents remain rare. There were 158 anti-Asian hate crimes reported in 2019 by police agencies to the FBI, up from 148 the year before. The FBI won’t release its 2020 data until the fall but in 16 of the country’s […]

The post Asians Rarely, Though Increasingly Face Hate Crimes appeared first on NTD.

When I left my children five years ago, I did it in a rush. I didn’t have time to grab any memento, any toys. All I took was a family photo.

At the time, my husband and I felt we had no choice. The Chinese authorities were harassing us constantly and demanding that we give up our passports. There would be “consequences” if we didn’t. There was also a strict birth control policy. They wanted to do a “body check” on me to see if I was pregnant, and I was.

We had managed to get visas to go to Italy, but we feared there would be questions at the border if we left with all our children at once. So we decided to take my then youngest son, who was still breastfeeding, and leave the four others with their grandparents until they could join us later on. They were aged between seven and 11 at the time.

If we hadn’t left China then, I don’t know if we ever could have. But still we did not imagine how much worse things would get in Xinjiang.

After we made it to Italy, the authorities started to target our family. My mother was taken to an internment camp, and my father was interrogated for several days before being taken to hospital. He was 80 years old.

Meanwhile, the children had no one. According to the Chinese government, they were the children of “betrayers”. Our other relatives could not take care of them because they were afraid that they would be sent to camps too.

The school soon noticed that no parents or guardians were present at meetings, so they asked the government to handle these “orphaned” children. They were sent to a prison-like school with 24-hour surveillance. They call these places “orphan camps”.

My children are called “orphans”, but I am still alive.

In November 2019, my father passed away. But that was also the month we received some good news, when the Italian government issued a permit to bring my children to Italy.

Informing our children was a risk due to the surveillance of their communications, but we managed to do it in March 2020 in a video call.

To obtain their visas they would need to travel to the Italian consulate in Shanghai, 5,000km away. They were too young to take such a journey alone, but we couldn’t find anyone to accompany them to Shanghai due to the risks.

One night in May 2020, the Chinese police interrogated my children for two hours. They asked why they kept in contact with their parents. They said this was dangerous, and threatened to take them to an internment camp at the end of the school term.

The children were scared. My son was calling us every day, pleading to be rescued. He said he was on a list of people going to an internment camp. With the Italian visa set to expire in August, we had to let the children go to Shanghai by themselves.

We gave them instructions and, with the help of strangers and contacts, they made it to Shanghai. But when they got there, they were refused entry to the Italian consulate. Two days later the police caught them, and they were sent back to the orphan camp.

Until then, I had never given up hope that we would see our children again. But now our situation is desperate. China has detained my children, and if they want to harm them, they can.

It is a risk for Uyghurs to speak out about the human rights violations we are suffering, but we told our story to Amnesty International in the hope that someone will help us.

In the five years since I left my children, I have not stopped thinking about them even for a minute. Nobody can truly understand what I feel unless they experience this.

I do not know what my children are doing now. I have seen footage of orphan camps posted online, so I know they watch Chinese “red” propaganda films and sing “red” songs in the school. Whenever I watch these videos, I think of my children and the way they’re educated. How they’re restricted in a small classroom, learning things they don’t want to, separated from their parents, and how they must miss us.

My baby was born in Italy, and we have another that was born here. Sometimes we hold them in our arms and tell them about their brothers and sisters in Xinjiang, and we cry. They ask when they will meet their siblings, and I do not know the answer. At night I wake from nightmares, and I pray to Allah to bring the children back to us. In those times, the only thing that comforts me is the photo of them I grabbed as I rushed out of the door five years ago.

 The article was originally published by The Guardian

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