illegal immigration
Biden And Red States Are On Immigration Collision Course Heading For Supreme Court
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The Biden administration is currently waging a legal campaign against Republican-led states, arguing their laws that effectively restrict illegal immigration are unconstitutional.
The Department of Justice has so far filed lawsuits against three different states for enacting laws that largely empower police to enforce immigration rules. However, these state leaders, in the backdrop of an unprecedented border crisis, say they have no choice but to take up the issue themselves because the Biden administration won’t — and other Republican states may soon follow suit.
Texas, Iowa, and Oklahoma have all signed similar bills into law in recent months that make it a state crime to be an illegal immigrant. Texas Senate Bill 4, Iowa Senate File 2340, and Oklahoma House Bill 4156 empower their law enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants and bestow various penalties for unlawful presence in the country.
“Due to the abdication of this administration’s duty to enforce the law, states are trying to protect themselves,” Matt Crapo, a senior attorney with the Immigration Reform Law Institute, explained to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “They are trying to do so by mirroring federal law, enforcing the same type of laws if this administration was enforcing the law.”
The Biden administration, however, argues these laws are unconstitutional as they intrude on the federal government’s sole authority to enforce immigration law.
Whether or not these states can enforce their laws will likely depend on the Supreme Court. The law passed in Texas, the first of the three to take up this approach, will likely end up back into the nation’s highest court.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute, a legal organization that supports stricter immigration enforcement, filed an amicus brief in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Texas SB4. Crapo said his organization plans to file similar briefs supporting the Iowa and Oklahoma bills once those states file in opposition to preliminary injunctions imposed by federal courts.
IRLI argued in its Texas brief that, while SB4 “parallels” similar federal immigration offenses, the law does not interfere with the federal government’s power to decide which classes of aliens are admissible or removable.
However, not all legal experts agree the Texas law adheres to the Constitution.
“SB4 is cruel, inhumane, and clearly unconstitutional,” Kate Melloy Goettel, senior legal director at the American Immigration Council, said in March statement. “All these bills could result in significant civil rights abuses, leading to widespread arrests and deportations by state actors without key federal protections.”
“Our hope is that SB4 is ultimately blocked in court; otherwise, this sets a disastrous precedent,” Goettel continued.
Immigration experts aren’t sure how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule.
“It’s sort of an open question as to whether the Supreme Court is going to allow Texas to criminalize illegal entry into Texas,” Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies said to the DCNF, noting how this case is fundamentally different than the lawsuit against a 2010 Arizona law that criminalized illegal immigration status, but was largely struck down. “Texas’ argument is ‘look, the federal government doesn’t completely occupy the field with respect to this crime because trespassing is an essential state crime and this is basically a trespassing offense.’”
Arthur noted that the Texas legislation is fundamentally different to the Iowa and Oklahoma laws, meaning potentially very different outcomes in their court challenges. Unlike Oklahoma and Iowa, Texas borders Mexico and has more standing to enforce trespassing.
“The Supreme Court’s decision in SB4 will give us a lot of idea of how much vitality these other laws have, but these other laws are distinguishable from SB4,” he said. “For that reason, if the states are serious about this, they will have to litigate it all the way up to the Supreme Court.”
Similar to what sponsors of this legislation have argued, Arthur said that the passages of these state laws are not “political stunts,” but cries for help and assertions that the Biden administration has abandoned immigration enforcement.
Federal immigration data show that illegal immigration is at historic levels.
Border Patrol agents have had more than 1,171,000 encounters with illegal immigrants this fiscal year, according to the latest data by Customs and Border Protection. Well over six million such encounters have been made since the beginning of President Joe Biden’s White House tenure.
The massive influx of illegal immigrants has been followed by high-profile crimes, such as the killing of a Georgia nursing student allegedly at the hands of a Venezuelan illegal immigrant and the attempted breach of the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia allegedly by two Jordanian nationals living unlawfully in the country. A report by a New Jersey lawmaker found that his state is shelling out over $7 billion annually to cover the costs of illegal immigrants.
For these reasons, Republican state leaders say they have no choice but to address the crisis themselves — even if the Biden administration threatens to sue them for it.
“The Biden administration refuses to do their job, so we need to do it,” Louisiana state senator Valarie Hodges said to the DCNF. Hodges is the sponsor of a bill that, if signed into law, will also make illegal immigration a state crime.
Her legislation, Senate Bill 388, makes illegal entry punishable by up to one year in prison and a $4,000 fine for the first offense, and up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine for a second offense. The bill has already passed both chambers in the state legislature, and needs procedural approval from the state senate before heading to the governor’s desk.
Much like the governors and attorneys general of the states already sued by the Department of Justice, the state senator appeared unfazed at the prospect of a court challenge.
“When the federal government won’t do their job, what course do we have?” Hodges asked. “We’re going to collapse if we don’t do something. I believe we are within our constitutional boundaries to do this.”
“Maybe we should sue them for not doing their job,” she added.
The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
Great Reset
A One-Stop Shop for Illegal Migration Reveals Ongoing Plans for Illegal Immigration
From the Center for Immigration Studies
By Todd Bensman
UN/NGO ‘mall’ under construction in southern Mexico shows they expect continued illegal flow to the U.S.
A 75,000-square-foot mega-mall, built to enable industrial-scale illegal immigration to the U.S. southern border, is almost online here in this key entry city in southern Mexico just across the border from Guatemala.
Scheduled to open in December, the mall suggests that powerful global agencies, the United Nations key among them, are bullish on a long-term future of continued heavy U.S.-bound illegal migrant traffic through Mexico – no matter the outcome of the November 5 American presidential election.
Those bullish investors are the dozens of migration-oriented UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have already plowed hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money into constructing a permanent network of way stations for thousands of miles along the migration routes from South America to the U.S. border during the four years of the Biden-Harris administration.
The record hundreds of millions of dollars in aid is distributed at the way station network in the form of cash cards, cash in envelopes, food, vouchers for onward travel and lodging, medical treatment, pharmaceuticals, legal counseling, and much more. (See: “UN Budgets Millions for U.S.-Bound Migrants in 2024”.) This aid has without doubt helped the UN and its growing constellation of NGOs keep the masses moving north through Tapachula in record numbers toward irresistible Biden border policies that have welcomed across arrivals in historic millions. (See: “Biden Admin. Sends Millions to Religious Nonprofits Facilitating Mass Illegal Migration”.)
The UN and NGOs are betting on a busy future in Mexico. Going forward, the purpose of this one strategically located facility is to “respond comprehensively to the needs of people who arrive in Mexico … migrant refugees who travel together from all continents, and arrive in Tapachula in need of a response or attention”, Giovanni Lepri, the Mexico representative for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters when Mexico’s foreign ministry announced it in April 2024.
But the Tapachula mall represents a far more expansive billion-dollar migration-route safety net constructed during the Biden-Harris years using record-breaking U.S. taxpayer contributions.
It plugs into two other big one-stop-migration malls erected in the northern Mexico cities of Monterrey and Tijuana. These gleaming new Mexican facilities, and plenty of other UN and NGO substations in Mexican towns and cities, form the final terminus of the trails to the United States lined with pots of U.S. taxpayer money. And they are representative of what’s happening throughout Latin America.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which received $1.9 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds in 2024 and $2.1 billion in 2023 (compared to $377 million in 2019) for migration assistance throughout Latin America, started building the Tapachula facility on land donated by Chiapas State as part of the deal with Mexico to run it.
The UNHCR, UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), UNICEF, and dozens of private, often religion-based, NGOs scattered around Tapachula will work alongside one another under one massive roof here — evidently planning a years-long collaboration.
None of the UN/NGO pots of gold are exactly a secret but are relatively hard to find for the uninitiated. And harder to grasp as connected to domestic American policies or as a legitimate point of political debate.
The UN’s 2024 update to the “Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan” (RMRP for short), a UNHCR and IOM planning and budget document, lays out in detail that it planned to hand out nearly $1.6 billion in 17 Latin America countries using its network of 248 different NGOs. (For the complete list of involved groups, see p. 268, here, and explore their activities further with this interactive tool).
That was on top of the 2023-2024 RMRP plan, which called for 228 NGOs (all listed on p. 268 of the list of involved groups) to spend $1.72 billion on trailside assistance to mass migration that all know will illegally pass through many countries and, finally, breach the U.S. border.
Hundreds of millions of dollars for all of this comes straight from U.S. taxpayers in the form of sharply increased US State Department bequeathals, USAID grants, and flexible spending contributions to the UNHCR and IOM.
Too Far for Average Americans to See
For an idea of how U.S. tax money is spent to flood the American border, the far northwest Colombian town of Necocli provides a window. This is a major staging town for migrants preparing to boat across the Gulf of Uraba for smuggler-guided backpack trips through the so-called “Darien Gap” jungle passage that leads into Panama and eventually Mexico.
In Necocli, the UN and NGO agencies have arrayed themselves in something like an outdoor swap meet of NGO booths and an IOM mobile bus office on a few acres next to the gulf beach, the Center for Immigration Studies observed during an August 2024 research trip to the region. The Jewish NGO Cadena was set up in a booth next to the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA).
NGO and UN workers there said they provide a variety of trail advice — and plenty of supplies to the immigrants, to include socks, underwear, backpacks, bug repellant, water filters, sunscreen, and Vaseline.
And food.
“Like things easy to carry so they can eat and be done with it,” a Cadena worker said.
ADRA provides children’s classes thrice weekly on how to avoid sexual predators among the strange men traveling the Darien Gap.
On this day, a Cadena worker said she’d given out thousands of food items such as packaged soup to more than 3,000 migrants during the previous few months, showing the last of it: a box with a handful of granola bars she hoped to hand out soon so she could go home.
What about critics who say NGOs like Cadena are helping migrants break the laws of many countries?
“As an organization,” the Cadena worker responded. “We’re not here to judge. We’re just here to provide a service.”
”But aren’t you helping them migrate?”
“Only by giving them the things that I mentioned, not money or fare, just certain resources for the trip,” she explained.
UNHCR workers carrying iPads interacted with groups of migrants sitting in chairs under open-air shelters, surveying them and their needs for the trail ahead. The IOM workers hand out hygiene kits to women, but had run out of the kits some days earlier.
Across the Uraba Gulf in the staging town of Acandi, the Clan del Gulfo paramilitary controls the human smuggling operations into the Darien Gap. The cartel runs two migrant camps where the migrants are brought for final journey preparations.
The center gained permission to access one of the camps, “Camp 1”. Inside, the Center found NGOs providing medical services, legal counseling, and food.
Furthermore, Colombian banks also have been allowed to set up a money-wiring service so that migrants could pay their foot guides.
All involved could not possibly be unaware that the people they are assisting intend to break the immigration laws of a half dozen countries up trail, including, ultimately, illegally breaching the American border.
A Bright Future for Mass Migration?
The UN and NGO’s migration advocacy industrial complex is now preparing its 2025-2026 plan for the trails of Latin America.
A request for input from its NGO partners suggests an ambitious coming year of providing “cash and voucher assistance”, “food security”, “humanitarian transportation”, “shelter”, and most other basic human needs.
Who will be the recipients?
Refugees and migrants in-transit (of all nationalities) who cross an international border.
illegal immigration
Over 150,000 migrants marching in Mexico, await the outcome of the US Election
From The Center for Immigration Studies
By Todd Bensman
Washington, D.C. (October 24, 2023) – Recent Center for Immigration Studies field work reveals a growing crisis in the Mexican southern state of Chiapas.
Why are thousands of migrants bottled up in this area near the Guatemala-Mexico border, and why are caravans forming but only moving within Chiapas?
On-the-ground reporting by Todd Bensman, the Center’s national security fellow, highlights the impact of the Biden-Harris administration’s December 2023 deal with Mexico and the potential consequences leading up to and following the U.S. election.
Key findings:
Biden-Harris Agreement: In December 2023, the U.S. and Mexico reached a secretive deal to keep migrants in southern Mexico to reduce the appearance of a border crisis in the U.S. The deal has resulted in the Mexican military setting up roadblocks in the region, particularly around the border town of Tapachula, to slow the flow of migrants.
Migrants Bottled Up: Bensman visited Tapachula, where an estimated 150,000 migrants are stranded, with 500 to 1,500 more arriving daily. The city is overwhelmed, with high poverty levels and unrest.
Caravans and Military Escorts: Migrant caravans are forming, but they are not headed to the U.S. Instead, the Mexican military is escorting them to other cities within Chiapas to ease pressure on Tapachula. Bribes and mafias enable wealthier migrants to escape the blockade, but poorer migrants remain trapped.
CBP One App: The U.S. extended access to the CBP One app, previously only usable in northern Mexico, to allow migrants in southern Mexico to schedule appointments for processing into the U.S. However, delays and limited access make it difficult for most to advance quickly.
Upcoming Election Tension: Many migrants feel an urgency to reach the U.S. before a potential change in leadership. Those interviewed fear that a Trump win would mean a closed border and no benefits, while they believe a Harris win would maintain the status quo and provide access to benefits.
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