Immigration Expert Todd Bensman: Trump Tariff Threat ‘Highly Effective,’ ‘Should Have Been Done for Years’

Todd Bensman, Michael Patrick Leahy

Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariff threat on Mexican imports was a “highly effective” strategy that should have been implemented by prior administrations “for years” as a way to push Mexico to cooperate with border security efforts.

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Commentary: Citizens-First Immigration Reform Is Top of Mind for Americans

President Donald Trump was elected in 2016 – and again in 2024 – on a mandate from the people to put an end to the illegal immigrant crisis and implement citizens-first immigration reform.

The mandate was clear: America is a nation of laws, and illegal immigration violates our laws and presents an array of criminal and economic issues that cannot be ignored.

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Report: 400,000 Anchor Babies Born in the U.S. in 2024

New Born Baby

A report by an immigration-centric think tank reveals that nearly 400,000 illegal births of so-called “anchor babies” occurred in the United States in the year 2024.

As reported by Breitbart, the data from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the total includes 300,000 anchor babies born to illegal aliens, while another 72,000 were born to foreigners in the country as tourists, on worker visas, or on student visas.

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Commentary: The Potential End to the Open Borders and Cheap Foreign Labor Experiment

Farm Workers

It has been six decades since the Immigration Act of 1965 vastly opened up the ability to import cheap foreign labor at the expense of American workers, and it has been four years of the Biden Administration’s disastrous open borders experiment.

With the election of President Donald J. Trump, the American people are fiercely rejecting the destructive open borders mandate and beginning to rethink cheap foreign labor as a viable economic strategy.

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Todd Bensman: President-Elect Trump’s Migrant Deterrence Rhetoric Already Producing Results

CBP arrests

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said President-elect Donald Trump’s Remain in Mexico immigration program, if implemented on day one of the Trump-Vance administration, is expected to immediately reduce the number of illegal border crossings.

Implemented in 2019 during Trump’s first presidential term, Remain in Mexico allowed Border Patrol to expel certain asylum-seeking migrants back to Mexico while their cases moved through the U.S. immigration court system.

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Immigration Expert Todd Bensman: Trump’s Strong Border Security Message Being Heard ‘Loud and Clear’ by Aspiring Illegal Aliens

Migrant caravan

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said president-elect Donald Trump’s strong border security message is being heard around the world and is already having an impact when it comes to deterring migrants from illegally making their way to the U.S. southern border.

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Democrat Governors, City Leaders Pledge to Shield Illegal Immigrants from Trump’s Agenda

Democratic Governors

Democratic governors and other liberal elected officials have lined up to declare that they will fight back against President-elect Donald Trump’s hardline immigration agenda.

Trump, who won the election on Tuesday in an electoral landslide, has promised to conduct mass deportations across the country and withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities, along with a slate of other hawkish enforcement proposals. However, Democratic governors in Massachusetts, California and Illinois — all of whom have been speculated as potential 2028 presidential contenders — and other elected leaders have said they will use their authority to push back against the upcoming administration’s agenda.

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Immigration Expert Todd Bensman: ‘The Tariff Threat is Back’ with President-Elect Trump to Deter 400K Illegal Migrants from Crossing U.S. Southern Border

Todd Bensman

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said he believes former and president-elect Donald Trump’s threat to impose hefty tariffs on Mexico if the country does not work to curb the flow of immigration into the U.S. will pressure the country to break up existing caravans with a goal of reaching the border.

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Biden-Harris DOJ, FBI Silent on Alleged Shooting of Jewish Man by Illegal Immigrant Who Reportedly Shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’

Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi

The Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI did not respond to Friday press inquiries from The Tennessee Star that sought to establish whether the federal government is investigating the Mauritanian illegal immigrant who allegedly shot an orthodox Jewish man in Chicago on October 26.

Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, a 22-year-old illegal immigrant from Mauritania, was arrested by local police and charged by county prosecutors after the shooting, but authorities have yet to reveal a motive for the attack despite reports the shooter allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” in a shootout with police after that happened immediately after he shot the orthodox Jewish man, and after additional hate crime and terrorism charges were announced against Abdallahi by Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx on Thursday.

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Immigration Expert Todd Bensman Details Massive Group of Illegal Migrants Waiting to Cross into U.S. After November 5 Election

Illegal Immigrants

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, returned to the U.S. on Saturday after traveling to Tapachula, Mexico, to document the Mexican government’s holding of approximately 150,000 illegal migrants who are waiting to continue their journey to cross the U.S. southern border.

Tapachula is located in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, near the Guatemalan border and the Pacific Ocean.

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Iranian National Coming Illegally to U.S. Says ‘I Am Not a Terrorist,’ ‘My Childhood Dream’ to Come to America

Iranian National

An English-speaking Iranian national coming illegally to the U.S. through South America said he is “not a terrorist” and it’s his “childhood dream” to come to America.

The Iranian man was interviewed by Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, who is on the ground in Tapachula, Mexico documenting the U.S. border crisis.

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Todd Bensman: Biden-Harris Admin Cut Deal with Mexico to Hold 400k Illegals in ‘Gaza Strip of Immigration’ Near Guatemala Until After Election to Temporarily Lower Border Crossings into U.S.

Illegal Immigrants

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, called into The Michael Patrick Leahy Show while on the ground in southern Mexico as part of his work to document the U.S. border crisis.

Bensman said he is documenting the holding of approximately 300,000-400,000 migrants in the Mexican cities of Tapachula and Villahermosa who collectively have a goal of reaching the U.S. southern border.

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Local ‘Sanctuary’ Policies in Virginia Pose Dangers to National Security

Town of Quantico

Localities with “sanctuary” policies in Virginia have grown, many butting up against vital military or national security instillations, posing potential threats, according to a former Homeland Security and immigration senior official.

Last month, immigration policy think tank the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released an updated map of localities that have adopted sanctuary policies, which showed a surge in the commonwealth totaling 84.

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Immigration Expert Todd Bensman: Biden-Harris Made Deal with Mexico to Stop Illegal Immigrants Leading Up to Presidential Election

Illegal Immigrants

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Biden-Harris administration quietly secured a deal with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador at the beginning of the year to help throttle illegal border crossing numbers leading up to the November 5 general election.

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Election Integrity Expert Says States Need to Stop Non-Citizens Voting: America Doesn’t Know the Extent of the Problem

Vote Here Sign

An election integrity expert told The Tennessee Star this week that states need to start taking steps to prevent non-citizens from voting in their elections.

“I think states need to make it clear in their constitutions that you have to be a citizen to vote in all elections in the state to prevent local school boards, local town councils, and others from legalizing alien voting,” said Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative.

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Expert Details How Biden Administration is ‘Ignoring’ Congressional Statutes in Attempt to Cover Up Illegal Immigration Crisis

Illegal Immigrants

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Biden Administration is desperately trying to escape the press coverage of migrants illegally crossing the southern border by ignoring congressional statutes to allow for the abuse of the parole authority to take place.

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Over Half of Illegal Aliens in U.S. are Unemployed: Report

Illegal aliens

A new report reveals that over half of the population of illegal aliens that have come into the United States under Joe Biden’s watch are unemployed, thus creating an even greater strain on the country.

As reported by Breitbart, the report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released on Monday revealed that only 46 percent of illegals who came to the U.S. “in 2022 or later” were employed at the start of 2024.

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Commentary: Biden Weaponizes the Federal Government for His Own Reelection Campaign

President Joe Biden has taken every part of the federal government and transformed it into his personal reelection machine, creating a hyper-partisan election apparatus out of supposedly neutral federal agencies. And American taxpayers pay for all of it.

Just since the beginning of April, several explosive revelations have surfaced that show the extent to which Joe Biden has weaponized the federal government in election matters. This should come as no surprise, as the administration continues to unfairly weaponize the federal courts against January 6 defendants, and state and federal courts maliciously prosecute Donald Trump, his rival in the presidential election.

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Border Crisis Completely Upends Census Bureau’s Population Stats, Report Says

Illegal Immigrants

Immigration into the U.S. has risen so rapidly that it beat out federal projections by decades, according to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released on Thursday.

The total number of immigrants in the U.S. rose to a record high of 51.4 million as of February 2024, representing 15.5 percent of the total population,according to CIS. The U.S. Census Bureau published projections in November which estimated that the share of foreign-born nationals in the U.S. would not reach 15.5 percent until at least 2039, making the projections “obsolete,” CIS authors Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler wrote.

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Immigration Expert Says the Mainstream Media Refuses to Cover How the Biden Administration Caused Haiti’s Current Chaos

Haitian Refugees

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the mainstream media’s refusal to acknowledge how the Biden administration’s compliance in scuttling Haiti’s elections back in 2021 contributes to the chaos currently unfolding in the Caribbean country stems from the fact that the backstory is a “terrible” look for President Joe Biden.

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Immigration Expert Warns: There Will Be a ‘Marine Mass Migration’ if First Boat of Haitian Migrants are Welcomed with Open Arms

Haiti refugees rescued by US Coast Guard, 1999

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the way the Biden administration handles the first boat of Haitian migrants en route to the Florida Keys amid the Caribbean country’s current state of emergency will determine whether or not another mass migration crisis will rock the U.S. in addition to the one unfolding at the U.S.-Mexico border.

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Biden Administration Using ‘Secretive Flights’ to Import 320,000 Illegal Aliens into U.S.

A new report suggests that the Biden Administration has not only been letting illegal aliens into the country through a porous southern border, but that the administration has even been actively importing illegals with “secretive flights.”

As Breitbart reports, the claims were made by Todd Bensman, Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), who obtained internal records from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

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Todd Bensman with the Center for Immigration Studies: ‘The Biden Administration has Industrialized Parole Authority’

Illegal Immigrants

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Biden administration has “industrialized parole authority” through its program that has flown 320,000 inadmissible aliens into 43 American airports over the past year.

“[The migrants] are coming in on an authority called parole. That’s supposed to be for two or three immigrants a year on a case by case basis, like an emergency medical treatment or, they need somebody to testify in an important case, and then they turn them right back,” Bensman explained on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show. “The Biden administration has industrialized parole authority. Now they’re just letting hundreds of thousands in all at once instead of two or three as the law says on a case by case basis.”

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Immigration Experts Say Both Legal and Illegal Immigration Must Be Reduced to Balance U.S. ‘Social Experiment’ Migration Crisis

CBP Illegal Immigrants

Executive Director Mark Krikorian, Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman, and Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan with the Center for Immigration Studies explained how immigration – both legal and illegal – into the U.S. must be reduced in order to balance out the nation’s rapidly rising foreign-born population.

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Immigration Expert: ‘There Is Mass Immigration Asylum Fraud Underway Here’

Illegal Immigrants

Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman with the Center for Immigration Studies warned there is “mass immigration asylum fraud” taking place in the U.S.

Bensman, who has interviewed thousands of migrants over the years, explained on Thursday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy how migrants, specifically from Venezuela and Haiti, often live in other more stable countries – including Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador – for years before making their way to the United States to work and live a prosperous life.

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Center for Immigration Studies Senior Fellow Todd Bensman Says the ‘Entire World’ Knows of the Biden Administration’s Catch and Release Policy

Illegal Immigrants

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the U.S. is on track to encounter more than 600,000 illegal aliens that have traveled through the Darién Gap, which is the only land path connecting Central America and South America, to get to the U.S.-Mexico border this year.

The Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama consists of more than 60 miles of dense rainforest, steep mountains, and vast swamps. Illegal immigrants from South America and other parts of the world use the land path as a passageway to get to North America.

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Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian: There’s Very Little Screening of Incoming Illegal Aliens for Health Problems or Criminal Behavior

Illegal Immigrants

Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said migrants who are crossing illegally into the U.S. are not being thoroughly screened for illnesses or criminal backgrounds.

“They often screen them before they go to detention, but they’re not being detained,” Krikorian explained on Thursday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy. “As far as criminal behavior, they do run their names through some databases before they let them go, but that only works if we have records of them having committed crimes in the United States. The problem always with vetting is garbage in, garbage out. Do you think that the Somalia DMV or the medical records office or whatever in Venezuela is going to tell us anything about people? Of course not. So, yes, there is some kind of pro forma screening but it doesn’t really screen very much.”

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Report: Sixty Percent of Illegal Alien Households are Supported by Taxpayer-Funded Welfare

Illegal Immigrants

A new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reveals that almost 60% of all illegal aliens households in the United States are benefiting from at least one form of taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.

Breitbart reports that the study, written by CIS’ Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler, found that illegal aliens households, as well as legal immigrants, use “significantly more” welfare than actual American citizens. Of illegal aliens currently occupying land in the U.S., 59% are on welfare that is funded by legal American citizens; 52% of legal immigrants are also using welfare. Meanwhile, less than 40% of American citizens use welfare.

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Report: Arizona Taxpayers on the Hook for $3.2 Billion in Illegal Immigration Costs

Dr. Robert Trenschel, chief executive officer of Yuma Regional Medical Center l told the House Committee on Homeland Security in February that the influx of illegal immigrants seeking medical services has skyrocketed over the past two years.

Guess who’s picking up the tab for the uninsured patients, many of who arrive suffering from major illnesses or ailments?

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Lawsuit: Biden’s DHS Withholding Information on Terror Suspects Caught Crossing the Border

An immigration think tank has filed a lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), alleging that the agency has been deliberately withholding crucial information on terror suspects who have crossed the southern border.

As reported by Breitbart, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) sued the DHS after the agency refused to respond to the group’s prior Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, demanding access to  “records reflecting the nationalities and group affiliations of the record-breaking 270 illegal border-crossers who have flagged on the FBI terrorism watch since 2021.”

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Report from the Southern Border: Interview with Todd Bensman

Working as a reporter and now as a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, you have done a lot of “shoe leather” reporting at the U.S. southern border — covering the Mexican drug wars and, in the last years, immigration. Unlike so many immigration reporters who rely on second hand reports, you have personally interviewed at least 1,000 immigrants. Why do you do this and how does what you learn differ from the prevailing narrative?

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Pennsylvania House Democrats Want to Ban Law Enforcement from Pursuing Illegal Immigrants

Pennsylvania House Democrats this week proposed a measure called the “Police and Community Safety Act” whose sole purpose is barring police and campus-security agencies from enforcing immigration laws. 

Spearheaded by Philadelphia Democrats Jose Giral and Chris Rabb, the bill resembles legislation the latter introduced unsuccessfully in 2017.

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Pennsylvania Lawmaker Proposes Notifying ICE of Illegals Trying to Buy Guns

A Pennsylvania state lawmaker is urging colleagues to back emerging legislation ensuring illegal aliens who try to get firearms are reported to federal and state authorities. 

State Representative Ryan Mackenzie’s (R-Macungie) measure would direct the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) to inform the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) and the Pennsylvania Attorney General of all such purchase attempts. 

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Biden Blamed by Own Ex-Border Chief for Soaring Asylum Cases, Record Immigration Court Backlog

The Biden administration is to blame for soaring asylum cases that have created a record years-long backlog in U.S. immigration courts, according to President Joe Biden’s own former Border Patrol chief.

“Several factors have contributed to this backlog, but the massive increase that we’re seeing today can be directly attributed to the Biden administration’s border and immigration policies,” said Rodney Scott, who headed the Border Patrol in both the Trump and Biden administrations.

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Large Number of Criminal Juveniles Entering U.S. Through DACA: Report

Democrats and immigration activists have long claimed that amnesty for illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children wouldn’t include young people with a criminal history, but many of the juvenile beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) were affiliated with gangs and had arrest records when granted the program’s benefits, according to a new report.

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House Democrats from Philadelphia Tout ‘Sanctuary City’ Status as Illegals’ Bus Arrives

Democrats in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives’ Philadelphia Delegation on Thursday took the arrival of 28 illegal immigrants into their municipality as occasion to celebrate Philadelphia declaring itself a “sanctuary city.” 

State Representative Morgan Cephus (D-Philadelphia), chair of the delegation, also disputed the notion that the migrants bussed in from Texas should be deemed unlawful entrants, despite the fact that they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. He noted that they secured “temporary protective status” by U.S. border agencies. 

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Arizona Attorney General Brnovich Leads Coalition of States Suing Biden Administration over New Rule to Speed Up Asylum When Title 42 Is Rescinded

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has filed another lawsuit against the Biden administration over its lack of defending the southern border. Leading a coalition of 14 states, the lawsuit challenges a new asylum rule that switches much of the authority over granting asylum away from federal immigration judges, giving it to asylum officers with the Department of Homeland Security.

“This is nothing more than a radical attempt to set up a system that encourages illegal immigration and undermines the rule of law,” said Brnovich in a statement. “President Biden may not care about the American people, but I do. I will continue to push back against his unlawful policies and imperial edicts.”

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Connecticut Attorney General Joins Brief Against ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy

William Tong and Kwame Raoul

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong (D) joined 17other state attorneys general in signing onto an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to end the federal “remain in Mexico” immigration policy.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul (D) has spearheaded the effort among liberal state prosecutors to persuade the high court to reverse the Trump-era policy, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). The policy stipulates that asylum seekers generally must await their U.S. asylum hearings in Mexico. The Biden White House has criticized the protocols but the courts have prevented him from reversing it.

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Exclusive: Wisconsin U.S. Congressman Tiffany Blames Biden for Thousands of Dead Migrants

The freshman Wisconsin Republican congressman who traveled to witness the mass migration through Panama’s Darien Gap told The Wisconsin Star President Joseph R. Biden Jr., is responsible for thousands of deaths and other abuses suffered by migrants he invited to the United States.

“What’s very clear is that every state is how a border state and people are being resettled across America—it doesn’t matter if they are coming from across the Southern Border, part of the Afghanistan evacuation—these migrations are going to affect every community,” said Rep. Timothy P. Tiffany, who sits on the Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.

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‘Private’ Church Group Funded by Government Resettling Refugees in Tennessee

This week, 35 Afghan refugees were resettled in Knoxville with the help of two nonprofits whose sole focus is bringing refugees to America. 

Bridge Refugee Services Inc. is a Tennessee nonprofit whose mission is “to help refugees, those people who are fleeing because of persecution based on race, religion, political opinion, a pertinence to social group or escaping wars and violence, to be self sufficient as soon as possible,” according to its Executive Director Drocella Mugorewera. 

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