Tag: Border Crossings

Border Wall Construction to Resume Under Trump Administration, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem Announces at Arizona’s Border Wall

Rachel Alexander
DHS Sec. Kristi Noem

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem announced on X in a video taken on Arizona’s border with Mexico that the building of the rest of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico will resume, beginning with seven new miles in the U.S. Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector.

Standing by the border in Nogales on Monday, Noem pointed at the wall and said, “You can see where the border wall ends.” She said the construction was beginning that day on seven new miles. “We’re going to continue to make America safe again,” she concluded.

Read the full story

U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn Joins Colleagues in Demanding Change to Unaccompanied Migrant Children Program from Biden-Harris Administration

Kaitlin Housler
border-crisis_840x480

U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joined 43 other Republicans in the U.S. Senate and House in sending a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris demanding that their administration’s program that resettles unaccompanied alien children into the U.S. be reformed to ensure the safety of children within the program.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) program transfers unaccompanied alien children who crossed the border into the U.S. without a parent or guardian into the hands of unvetted sponsors within the U.S., which the Republicans often warned “continue to exploit and abuse” such children.

Read the full story

Biden Admin Is Deporting Far Fewer Chinese Nationals amid Record Border Crossings

Admin

The Biden administration has removed comparatively low numbers of Chinese nationals in recent years despite record levels of migrants from China crossing the southern border illegally, according to federal data.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recorded 288 removals of Chinese nationals in fiscal year 2023, 127 in fiscal year 2022 and 138 in fiscal year 2021, according to the data. All the while, Border Patrol recorded 24,000 encounters of Chinese migrants crossing the southern border illegally in fiscal year 2023, 1,970 in fiscal year 2022 and 323 in fiscal year 2021, according to CBP data.

Read the full story

More than a Dozen GOP States Sue Biden Admin over Recent Border Policy, Claim It’s ‘Encouraging More Border Crossings’

Admin

Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and more than a dozen other GOP-led states are suing the Biden administration over a recent policy to address an expected surge of illegal migrants at the southern border, according to a statement from his office.

The Biden administration rule Miyares is contesting was implemented to mitigate an expected surge of migrants at the southern border when Title 42, a Trump-era expulsion order, ended on May 11 which made migrants ineligible for asylum if they pass through another safe country before coming to the U.S. Miyares, however, argues that the rule has many exceptions that allow migrants to enter the country, including using a phone app to book entry appointments, claiming they face imminent danger in their home country and having their asylum request denied in another country, the lawsuit argues.

Read the full story

Wisconsin Congressman Glenn Grothman Grills Biden Official on ‘Lost Children’ Caught in Disastrous Border Policies

M.D. Kittle

U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI-06) led a congressional hearing this week seeking answers on how the Biden Administration could lose track of more than 85,000 unaccompanied children it allowed to illegally enter the U.S. 

Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the Offie of Refugee Resettlement, had a hard time answering basic questions, highlighting the administrative nightmare behind President Joe Biden’s disastrous border policies. 

Read the full story

Customs and Border Patrol to Fill Holes in the U.S. Southern Border Wall Near Yuma

Neil Jones

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Thursday that Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (D) gave U.S. Customs and Border Protection the authorization to execute the Yuma Morelos Dam Project and close four gaps along the border wall.

“These projects address operational impacts, as well as immediate life and safety risks, and will be funded with DHS’s Fiscal Year 2021 appropriations,” according to a DHS statement.

Read the full story

Arizona Gov. Ducey: Cartels Using ‘Uber-Like’ System for Human Smuggling

Peter D'Abrosca

After a Wednesday meeting with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Tucson Sector, Gov. Doug Ducey (R) explained to KTAR what he learned. 

“One real eye-opening thing that we learned yesterday is that the cartels are using social media to pick up folks that have been trafficked over the border,” Ducey reportedly said. “They’re actually offering American citizens cash on the spot if they’ll deliver people from border drop-off points, like an illegal Uber into the state.”

Read the full story

Illegal Border Crossings Surge to Highest Rates in Over 10 Years

Admin
Illegal Aliens apprehended by Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents with assistance from agents from Air and Marine Operations, Tucson Air Branch.

After less than 6 months, the number of illegal border crossings into the United States has spiked to a record not seen in well over a decade, according to Axios.

From October 1st, 2020, to May 31st of this year, almost 900,000 illegal aliens were stopped at the border by authorities. In the month of May, there were over 170,000 apprehensions of illegals, following the trends set by the months of March and April, which themselves marked 20-year highs in the number of illegal alien apprehensions.

Despite Joe Biden’s reversals of many of President Donald Trump’s successful immigration policies, the Border Patrol continues to turn away many illegals due to the ongoing threat of the COVID-19 virus. However, as Axios notes, illegals who are turned away for this particular reason often make several attempts to cross the border, with each failure counted as a separate rejection rather than a repeat offense, adding to the overall number.

Read the full story

Illegal Crossings Plummet as Coronavirus Pandemic Shuts Down Border

Admin

Arrests along the U.S.-Mexico border in April dropped to some of their lowest levels in several years after the Trump administration restricted border crossings due to the coronavirus pandemic.

There were a total of 16,789 enforcement actions on the U.S. southern border during April, according to the latest data provided by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). That figure marks a 50% drop in enforcement actions compared to March, and a substantial decline from the more than 109,000 actions taken in April 2019. Enforcement actions are now at their lowest since April 2017.

Read the full story

Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy Is Changing How Immigrants Try to Enter the US

Admin

by Jason Hopkins   The Trump administration’s asylum policy is prompting more migrants to try their luck at crossing illegally rather than seeking out legal ports of entry, Customs and Border Protection data suggest. The proportion of foreign nationals attempting to cross the border illegally rather than reporting to legal ports of entry has risen in the past year, according to the data. Those crossing illegally made up 73 percent of all border crossings from October 2017 to January 2018 and then rose to 83 percent for the same period of time ending on Jan. 31, 2019, NBC News reported Friday. At the same time, the percentage of foreign nationals intentionally reaching out to border enforcement establishments dropped from 27 percent to 17 percent. The new numbers come in the wake of President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. The policy enacted in December 2018 dictates that foreign nationals who seek asylum at the southern border cannot enter the U.S. and must remain in Mexico while their case makes it through the immigration courts — a process that could take months to years. The directive does not apply to children or Mexican asylum seekers. It largely targets the dramatic influx…

Read the full story

Illegal Border Crossings are Down Because Migrants are Applying for Asylum Instead

Admin

by Jason Hopkins   While the number of apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border have gone down, applications for asylum are reaching all-time highs. Around 304,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended at the southwest border during the 2017 fiscal year, a dramatic plunge from the 1.6 million apprehensions recorded in 2000. At the same time, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recored 78,564 requests for asylum in 2017, a major increase from the 13,880 requests made in 2012. These numbers have only increased. During this fiscal year, the USCIS recorded a record-setting 99,035 asylum requests — 62,609 of which included Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans. “We’ve never seen this many people coming to the border to seek asylum,” Faye Hipsman, a former analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, told The Wall Street Journal. The rise in asylum applications come at a time when the White House is working to reform the process. “My administration is finalizing a plan to end the rampant abuse of our asylum system to halt the dangerous influx and to establish control over America’s sovereign borders,” President Donald Trump announced in early November, around the same time a caravan of Central Americans was heading toward the U.S. border.…

Read the full story