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illegal immigration

US can stop border-crossing terrorists with – Obama administration policies?

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Uzbek “special interest aliens” in Tapachula, Mexico after crossing from Guatemala on their way to the U.S. Southwest Border. January 2022 photo by Todd Bensman

By Todd Bensman as published June 12, 2024 by The New York Post

Near-misses from the worst mass migration border crisis in American history keep coming at us like machine-gun fire.

This month, FBI counterterrorism agents arrested six Tajikistani nationals on terrorism charges after they illegally crossed the southwest border from Mexico, apparently foiling a terror plot linked to the ISIS-K terror group in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The arrests came soon after a Russian who illegally crossed the border was convicted and sentenced in California on terrorism charges for buying weaponry for an al Qaeda group in Syria, as the FBI said he would have gone kinetic had he not been charged.

In May, a Jordanian national who illegally crossed the border from Mexico staged a vehicle ramming attack on Marine Corps Base Quantico that all involved federal agencies refuse to publicly rule out as a terror incident.

This year, Border Patrol agents overrun by the mass migration crisis have accidentally released at least seven immigrants  who were on the FBI’s terrorism watch list when they illegally crossed the southern border, according to multiple reports, sparking frantic manhunts to capture them.

That’s just a fractional few of many disturbing cases.

For years prior to the historic mass migration crisis that President Biden kicked off on his inauguration day in 2021, the US media laughed off the threat of terrorist border infiltration as the stuff of baseless right-wing fear-mongering — such as when then-President Donald Trump said in 2018 that Middle Easterners were moving with US-bound caravans through Central America and Mexico.

Much good company has joined the once-ridiculed Paul Reveres, including FBI Director Christopher Wray and the apparently spooked authors of a surprisingly anxious Foreign Affairs magazine essay published this week.

But while many are sounding border infiltration alarms, few have offered solutions.

Perhaps Republican border hawks should turn to an unexpected ally: Democratic Party stalwart Jeh Johnson, President Barack Obama’s secretary of homeland security.

In 2016, during his final months in office, Johnson became a true believer in the threat posed by “special interest aliens,” or SIAs: border-crossing migrants from 35 to 40 nations where Islamic terrorist groups are active.

After 9/11, one of the most important counterterrorism protocols implemented on the border required agents to detain all SIAs until they could undergo face-to-face interviews to determine if these total strangers harbored potential terror connections or intent.

In June 2016, Johnson was so fearful about SIA border crossers that he sent a memorandum to his top deputies demanding their “immediate attention” to “the increased global movement of SIAs.”

He ordered the formation of a “multi-DHS Component SIA Joint Action Group” that would assess the entire program and create a tightly coordinated international action plan to “counter the threats posed by the smuggling of SIAs.”

“I want to ensure we are bringing the full resources of the Department to bear in a coordinated manner on the issue of SIAs,” he wrote, to build on existing counter-SIA programs.

Johnson’s completely prudent plan to intensify the vetting of SIAs at the border and to take down terrorist smugglers in other countries got lost in the chaos of the transition to Donald Trump’s presidency.

His intended revamp never happened — and the catastrophic Biden-engineered mass migration crisis vaporized whatever was left of it.

While SIA traffic over the border had previously amounted to 3,000 to 4,000 individuals annually, SIA traffic since 2021 has reached an unimaginable 70,000 to 80,000 per year.

Federal intelligence and law enforcement officials could no longer interview even a smidgeon of those SIAs, who are mostly waved into the country with no interviews.

“Due to massive numbers of illegal aliens overwhelming CBP, in-depth face-to-face interviews are nonexistent,” former Chief Border Patrol Agent Rodney Scott testified before the House Judiciary Committee last September on the subject of terrorist border infiltration.

The first fix is, of course, almost too obvious to mention: Reduce the total numbers of illegal aliens pouring over the southwest border.

But the far less obvious fix is this one, regardless of how many are crossing: We must resurrect Johnson’s 2016 initiative to interview SIAs before they are released on asylum, and target their smugglers for prosecution and prison.

As importantly, we must adequately fund and equip this massive effort — no matter how many SIAs arrive.

If Johnson’s 2016 plan was nonpartisan enough for the Obama administration, it should be good enough for the Biden DHS, or a Trump one. And, we can hope, not too late to stop the next terrorism attempt within the United States.

Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, is the author of “America’s Covert Border War” (2021).

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illegal immigration

Trump to declare national emergency on border, issue executive orders

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From The Center Square

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After being sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, President Donald Trump said he will sign “a series of historic executive orders … to begin the complete restoration of America and the ‘Revolution of Common Sense.’”

The first action he will take will be to declare a national emergency at the U.S. southern border, he said. Trump did not mention the northern border, which saw an unprecedented number of illegal crossings, record number of terrorists entering the U.S., and increased national security threats under the Biden administration, The Center Square reported.

“All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said. “We will reinstate my ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy. I will end the practice of catch and release. I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.”

Trump said he will designate Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The designation will also apply to violent transnational criminal organizations including the violent Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, which is now operating in at least 22 states, The Center Square reported.

By invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, Trump will direct the federal government “to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil, including our cities and inner cities,” he said.

The act will be used to remove all cartel and gang members in the country illegally.

“As Commander in Chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions and that is exactly what I am going to do. We will do it at a level that nobody’s ever seen before,” he said.

Trump is expected to issue 10 executive orders Monday to implement border security measures. They include ending the Obama-era catch-and-release policy Trump ended in his first term, which former President Joe Biden reinstated. The policy led to more than 14 million foreign nationals illegally entering the country, including more than two million who evaded capture known as gotaways under the Biden administration, The Center Square exclusively reported.

Trump will reinstate a policy he created in his first term, Remain in Mexico, or “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP). It requires asylum seekers to wait outside the U.S. while their claims are processed. After the Biden administration sought to end it, Texas and Missouri sued. A federal judge ruled that ending the MPP was unlawful, The Center Square reported.

Trump will also direct federal agencies to finish building the border wall along the southwest border, completing a project he began in his first term. Biden halted border wall construction on his first day in office. Texas and Missouri again sued and won that lawsuit as well, The Center Square reported.policy

Another executive order will end parole programs for illegal border crossers created by former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who was impeached in part for creating them. Multiple attorneys general sued to stop them, arguing they were illegal.

The parole programs, including using a phone app, facilitated illegal entry into the U.S. for millions, including those with criminal records. Many released through the parole programs were later found to commit violent crimes against Americans, The Center Square reported.

Another will direct federal efforts to “crack down on criminal sanctuaries,” referring to so-called sanctuary jurisdictions. More than 200 were identified and already given notice to comply with federal law or face prosecution. Sanctuary cities expected to be targeted first include Boston, Chicago, Miami and New York.

Trump’s massive deportation efforts will be led by his Border Czar Tom Homan, who has said the priority is to find and locate the most violent criminals to process for removal.

Another executive order will suspend the federal so-called refugee resettlement program through which local communities nationwide “were forced to house large and unsustainable populations of migrants, straining community safety and resources,” Trump’s transition team said.

Trump will also direct members of the U.S. military, including the National Guard, to engage in border security operations, deploying them to the border to assist existing law enforcement personnel. According to a poll ahead of the election last year, the majority of Americans support U.S. troops being sent to the border, The Center Squarereported.

Another order will direct the Department of Justice to seek the death penalty for illegal border crossers who kill U.S. citizens, including law enforcement officers.

Last year, criminal illegal border crossers made international headlines after brutally assaulting and murdering American women and girls, The Center Square reported. Their mothers and family members endorsed Trump for president.

Another order will direct the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to enhance vetting and screening processes after national security concerns were raised about the Biden administration flying illegal border crossers into the country who weren’t vetted, The Center Square reported.

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Daily Caller

Sweeping Deportations to Begin in Chicago Day After Inauguration

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Hopkins

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to launch his promised large-scale deportation operation the day after he is sworn into office, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The incoming Trump administration will immediately begin mass deportation efforts in major sanctuary cities across the United States, with Chicago predicted to be first on the docket, according to The Wall Street Journal. The raid in Chicago is anticipated to begin Tuesday morning and last the entire week, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deploy 100 to 200 agents to execute the operation.

Incoming border czar Tom Homan — who led ICE during the first Trump administration — previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the White House will focus on the “worst first,” prioritizing illegal migrants who have criminal histories and orders of removal. However, Homan also made clear that any illegal migrant in the U.S is fair game.

“Like the first Trump administration, we’re going to prioritize public safety threats, national security threats and fugitives,” Homan stated to the DCNF, adding that gang members and other criminals would be their main focus. “Those that had due process at great taxpayer expense, were given orders of deportation, never left and became a fugitive – them too, they’re a priority.”

“The ones who pose the biggest threat to the country – they come first. The worst first,” Homan went on. “But let’s be clear, if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table.”

The Chicago City Council recently slapped down an attempt by two moderate aldermen to scale back the sanctuary city laws currently in place.

Aldermen Raymond Lopez and Silvana Tabares, both Democrats, proposed amending Chicago’s Welcoming City ordinance to allow for ICE cooperation when an illegal migrant has been arrested of certain criminal activities, arguing that such a policy would be a net benefit for the city’s immigrant community as it would allow deportation officers to better focus on criminals instead of making enforcement actions in the city at large. However, their proposal was quickly shot down by the council on Wednesday.

Other sanctuary cities in the U.S. have also expressed steep opposition to Trump’s enforcement agenda. Los Angeles passed its sanctuary law shortly after Trump emerged victorious in the presidential election, San Diego County doubled down on its existing law and Boston reaffirmed its sanctuary status in December.

Homan has said that city officials refusing to cooperate with ICE will not deter their agenda, and he added that those who knowingly harbor illegal migrants from law enforcement will be recommended for prosecution.

Along with large-scale deportation operations, Trump has also vowed to end birthright citizenship for those born on U.S. soil by illegal migrant parents, resume construction on the U.S.-Mexico border wall, bring back the Remain in Mexico program and implement other hawkish policies.

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