Tag: Central America

Laura Loomer Details Trip to the Darién Gap to Document ‘Most Dangerous’ Passageway for Illegal Aliens Crossing into North America

Kaitlin Housler
Laura Loomer

Investigative journalist Laura Loomer is traveling to the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama for a week-long trip to document how illegal aliens and other dangerous groups utilize the only land path connecting Central and South America to get to North America.

The Darién Gap, which consists of more than 60 miles of dense rainforest, steep mountains, and vast swamps, is not only a passageway for migrants from South America, Loomer said, but a hotspot for Hamas and Hezbollah networks, drug cartels, and human trafficking groups.

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Commentary: Biden’s Shameful Border Legacy in Tennessee Is Human Trafficking

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Illegal Immigrants

Every January, law enforcement agencies and advocacy groups mark National Human Trafficking Prevention Month to focus public attention on this horrific crime and its devastating impact on the victims involved. Once again, the Biden Administration is calling attention to the Department of Homeland Security’s broader “Blue Campaign” to combat human trafficking.

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Coyotes: The Lynchpin to Human Smuggling Operations and Purveyors of Misery

The Center Square

by Bethany Blankley   A coyote, a colloquialism for a human smuggler, is critical to Mexican cartel human smuggling operations. Combined, they cover thousands of miles primarily guiding foreign nationals first through Central America into Mexico, then through Mexico and into the U.S. They also operate along the U.S.-Canada border. Like a 4×400 meter track relay race with four athletes racing to pass a baton without dropping it, coyotes cover different parts of a dangerous journey to the U.S. Instead of passing a baton, they smuggle people, including children and babies. Instead of running 100 meters, they can cover several miles. Similar to a relay race where the fastest and strongest runner often runs last to ensure the race is won, the most important coyote is the last one tasked with smuggling people across the finish line, the Rio Grande River, into the U.S. without getting caught. Unlike some athletes who may have financial scholarships or sponsors, coyotes are paid through a global, organized criminal multi-billion-dollar enterprise profiting off of people. Before foreign nationals ever arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border, many are robbed, kidnapped, raped and abused. Those who aren’t kidnapped, and willingly hire coyotes to help them illegally cross…

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Commentary: Biden’s Migrant Policy Worsens Central America’s ‘Root Causes,’ Critics Say

RealClearWire

When Vice President Kamala Harris visited Mexico last year, she cited poverty, crime, and political instability as “root causes” driving millions of migrants to cross the U.S. border. 

But some critics with regional expertise say Biden administration policies, which migrants have interpreted as an invitation to travel north, have severely worsened those root causes, destabilizing large swaths of Central America and Mexico. The torrent of people moving across the region has delivered billions of dollars to the coffers of human smuggling rings and the drug cartels that have taken advantage of America’s overwhelmed border patrol to deliver fentanyl and other deadly substances to the United States.  

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VP Harris to Announce $540 Million Private Investment to Slow Immigration from Central America

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Kamala Harris talking to Administration about immigration policy

Vice President Kamala Harris is set on Monday to announce $540 million in private corporate investments in Central America’s Northern Triangle – a facet of the Biden administration’s plan to slow migration from the region by making it more livable.

The new funding is in addition to the $750 million in private sector dollars the vice president announced in May.

President Biden in the early months of his presidency tasked Harris with helping stem the flow of illegal migration across the U.S. southern border by addressing what the administration refers to as root causes including poverty, corruption, crime and natural disasters, prominent in the Northern Triangle, from which many of the migrants are now coming.

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Commentary: Migration Crisis Is a Battle of Americanists Against Transformationists

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The ongoing mass illegal migration crisis is best understood as an existential conflict between two forces: Americanists vs. Transformationists. These forces, in turn, represent two competing regimes or ways of life. But first, let us review what has been going on at the U.S.-Mexico border since Joe Biden’s inauguration.

The September surge of thousands of illegal Haitian border crossers from Chile and Brazil camped under an international bridge in Del Rio, Texas is simply the latest debacle in the never-ending migration crisis. Month after month, day after day, the border between the United States and Mexico becomes more porous, more chaotic, more lawless, and more violent. Nine months after January 20 there is no end in sight as record numbers of illegal migrants pour into the United States. In early October both NBC News and the Daily Mail reported that, according to the Department of Homeland Security, up to 400,000 illegal migrants could cross the border this month, doubling the 21-year record set in July. 

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Weakened Eta Drenches Central America, at Least 57 Dead

The Associated Press

The rain-heavy remnants of Hurricane Eta flooded homes from Panama to Guatemala Thursday as the death toll across Central America rose to at least 57, and aid organizations warned the flooding and mudslides were creating a slow-moving humanitarian disaster across the region.

The storm that hit Nicaragua as a mighty Category 4 hurricane on Tuesday had become more of a vast tropical rainstorm, but it was advancing so slowly and dumping so much rain that much of Central America remained on high alert. Forecasters said the now-tropical depression was expected to regather and head toward Cuba and possibly the Gulf of Mexico by early next week.

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Commentary: To End Border Crisis, Trump Administration Restricts Central American Asylum Claims

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by Robert Romano   Under current immigration and asylum regulations, it was impossible to enforce the law on the southern border. The hundreds of thousands of Central Americans flooding the border the past several months gamed the system, betting that a compassionate America would let them in. Afterward, the families were released into the U.S. pending hearings, but those that showed up did so only to the extent they might be granted asylum, and upon rejection were never heard from again. It’s mandatory catch-and-release. Because of the way the regulations were written. As a result, the number of family units showing up on the border has been skyrocketing. In all of FY 2018, 161,113 family units were apprehended, and 58,660 unaccompanied children. Now family units are up to 427,881 in FY 2019, an increase of 165 percent and unaccompanied children is up 14 percent to 67,116, with three more months remaining in the fiscal year. Now, to get a handle on the problem and to deter future migrant waves, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice are using their powers under the law to provide for additional restrictions and have issued a new rule telling asylum seekers…

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Commentary: Brutal ‘Coyotes’ Are Slave-Trading Criminals

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by Pedro Gonsalez   Migrant women are so likely to be raped by people smugglers (coyotes) on the way to the U.S.-Mexico border that standard procedure is to ingest birth-control before starting the trek. So common is the brutalization of women by coyotes that in smuggling towns along the way pharmacists are at the ready. In one case a woman with a young daughter was left to die in the desert on the way to the U.S. border by coyotes. The reason? She refused to let them have sex with her daughter. The two of them only survived because Customs and Border Patrol agents found them in time. But there are fates worse than death. It is just as easy for coyotes to sell off their human cargo into what essentially amounts to modern-day slavery. In Ohio, for example, four illegal alien minors were found being forced to work on farms under threat of physical violence and without pay – that is, slavery. They were trafficked illegally into the United States from Guatemala. The victimizers of those Guatemalan children were named as follows: Aroldo Castillo-Serrano, Conrado Salgado Soto, Ana Angelica Pedro, Juan Pablo Duran Jr. Not exactly names common to the Midwest. Elsewhere, a 6-year-old illegal alien…

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Remittances to Countries Sending Many Illegal Immigrants Hit a Record $120 Billion

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by Jason Hopkins   Foreign nationals from three Central American countries that send some of the highest numbers of illegal immigrants into the U.S. are sending back a record amount of money into their home countries. Immigrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras sent back a record $120 billion in remittances this decade, according to an immigration expert who spoke to the Washington Examiner. The numbers are expected to keep rising, with immigrants from these three nations having sent $17 billion in 2018 alone, and Central American bank data indicates that the trend will keeping going. “The sums of money involved are huge, particularly as a share of GDP and personal income in the Central American countries,” Jessica Vaughan, an immigration expert with the Center for Immigration Studies, said to the Examiner. “It offers a big clue as to why these countries are giving only token efforts to stem the tide of migrants to the United States, especially El Salvador and Honduras.” The issue of remittances — money sent to the home countries of immigrants living and working in the U.S. — has remained a hot topic of debate. U.S. lawmakers have, in the past, proposed legislation that would tax…

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Trump Threatens to ‘Entirely’ Close US-Mexico Border Unless Wall Funding is Secured

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President Donald Trump on Friday once again threatened to close the entire U.S.-Mexico border and cut aid to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador if Congress fails to give him money to fund the border wall. In a series of tweets, Trump also asked to change the “ridiculous immigration laws that our country is saddled with.” The comments come as the U.S. government enters the seventh day of a partial shutdown as a budget standoff remains between Trump, who wants $5 billion in wall funding, and Democratic lawmakers, who back a modest increase in overall border security funding but resolutely oppose a wall. Closing the U.S.-Mexican border would mean disrupting a $1.68 billion-a-day trade relationship between the two countries, according to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Immigrant advocates have called the move to seal the border “disgraceful.” Trump has declined to comment on whether he might accept less than $5 billion for wall funding. When asked Wednesday how long he thinks the shutdown will last, Trump told reporters, “Whatever it takes.” Democrats have blamed Trump for “plunging the country into chaos” adding that, weeks ago, Trump said he would be “proud” to “own” a shutdown over border wall funding.…

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Commentary: The Migrant ‘Caravan’ Marching Northbound To Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas, and What The U.S. Constitution Has To Say About It

Gregory Watson

The United States Constitution does contain a few references relative to immigration and naturalization as well as to persons seeking to enter the United States in contravention of its laws — whether violently or non-violently and whether singly or in the form of a human tsunami. In its Article I, Section 8, Clause 4, the Constitution specifically grants Congress the power “To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization….” By expressly allocating this capacity to Congress, the Constitution seeks to prevent the confusion which would inevitably result if an individual state could itself bestow U.S. citizenship upon a person not born within the boundaries of that — or any other — state. Construing Clause 4, the United States Supreme Court, in the 1892 case of Boyd v. Nebraska ex rel. Thayer, defined “naturalization” as “…the act of adopting a foreigner, and clothing him with the privileges of a native [U.S.] citizen.” In Clause 11 of that same Article I, Section 8, the Constitution authorizes Congress “To declare War…and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water….” Interpreting Clause 11, the High Court ruled in the 1795 case of Penhallow v. Doane that the war power of the United States government is…

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New Research Pushes Back the Discovery of Cacao – the Basis of Chocolate – By More Than a Millennium

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New research strengthens the case that people used the chocolate ingredient cacao in South America 5,400 years ago, underscoring the seed’s radical transformation into today’s Twix bars and M&M candies. Tests indicate traces of cacao on artifacts from an archaeological site in Ecuador, according to a study published Monday. That’s about 1,500 years older than cacao’s known domestication in Central America. “It’s the earliest site now with domesticated cacao,” said Cameron McNeil of Lehman College in New York, who was not involved in the research. The ancient South American civilization likely didn’t use cacao to make chocolate since there’s no established history of indigenous populations in the region using it that way, researchers led by the University of British Columbia in Canada said. But the tests indicate the civilization used the cacao seed, not just the fruity pulp. The seeds are the part of the cacao pod used to make chocolate. Indigenous populations in the upper Amazon region today use cacao for fermented drinks and juices, and it’s probably how it was used thousands of years ago as well, researchers said. Scientists mostly agree that cacao was first domesticated in South America instead of Central America as previously believed. The…

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Commentary: Meet Them With Tanks?

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by George Rasley   Conservative social media is awash with advice for President Trump on how to deal with the army of invading Central American aliens who are rapidly approaching our Southern Border. There is a strong current of opinion that says the whole “migrant caravan” is a set-up by Soros and his minions and that Democrats are cynically hoping for some sort of election-changing incident in which some poor Central American is martyred at the hands of the American military that the Left despises anyway. Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018 In the view of the “it’s a set-up” crowd the illegal aliens should be somehow treated “humanely” but not allowed to enter the United States. Who will corral them and where they will be interned is left to imaginary friends in the federal workforce who will be mobilized to the Southern Border. It may indeed be a set-up and…

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Trump: US Will Now Begin Cutting Aid to Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador

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President Donald Trump says the U.S. “will now begin cutting off or substantially reducing” the amount of foreign aid given to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, saying they were “not able to do the job” of stopping migrants from leaving their countries and “coming illegally” to the U.S. His Twitter comments Monday came as a group of several thousand migrants, mostly from Honduras, spent Sunday night in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula as they continued their trek toward the United States and away from what they say is untenable violence and poverty at home. Trump said, “Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military thaI have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergency (sic). Must change laws! Two weeks ahead of nationwide congressional elections in the U.S., the U.S. leader, a Republican, laid the blame for the latest mass migration toward the southern U.S. border on opposition Democrats. “Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country…

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Mexico Says It Will Deport Any Migrant Caravan Members Who Enter Without Papers

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by William Racke   Mexico sent federal police to its southern border Wednesday with a warning that they will detain and deport any members of a highly publicized migrant caravan who try to enter the country without a visa. The police officers arrived in two planes in Tapachula, a border city that is a popular waypoint for migrants coming up through Central America to cross into Mexico. Local media reports showed hundreds of agents deplaning, some carrying riot gear. In a statement released Wednesday evening, the Mexican foreign ministry said any of the caravan migrants entering the country “in an irregular manner” will be arrested and administratively deported if appropriate. Migrants who claim they are fleeing violence and want to petition for asylum must do so at the border, while remaining in a government-run camp for up to 45 days, the statement also said. The caravan, dubbed “March of the Migrant,” formed in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on Friday, numbering about 150 migrants. It has since swelled to more than 2,000 people and has already crossed into neighboring Guatemala en route to the Mexican border. Caravan members say they are fleeing endemic poverty and violence in Honduras. Upon reaching…

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Mexican President-Elect Lopez Obrador Proposes Border Force To Contain Illegal Immigration Into Mexico

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Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador

by Will Racke   Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is planning to create a specialized border force to combat illegal immigration across Mexico’s borders, according to his hand-picked security chief. The new force is aimed at stanching the flow of illegal immigrants and contraband from Central America and will also be deployed to Mexico’s northern border, Alfonso Durazo said, according to Bloomberg. It is part of Lopez Obrador’s broader strategy against regional violence, corruption and poverty. “We’re going to create a border police force that will be highly specialized,” Durazo, who is set to become Mexico’s public security minister when Lopez Obrador takes office in December, told Bloomberg in an interview. “They need to apply the law” against illicit migration and human trafficking, he added. A left-wing populist, Lopez Obrador won the presidency on July 1 on the strength of a campaign against the Mexican political establishment, which he blamed for Mexico’s seemingly intractable cartel violence and public corruption. Though he sparred with President Donald Trump over the U.S. government’s treatment of Mexican migrants, he has promised to contain illegal immigration in his own country by using a combination of tighter enforcement and humanitarian aid. In a meeting of Lopez Obrador’s…

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President Trump Threatens to Pull Out of NAFTA if Mexico Fails to Stop Illegal Immigrants and If the Wall Is Not Built

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President Trump and the Border Wall

by Robert Romano   “Mexico, whose laws on immigration are very tough, must stop people from going through Mexico and into the U.S. We may make this a condition of the new NAFTA Agreement. Our Country cannot accept what is happening! Also, we must get Wall funding fast.” That was President Donald Trump on Twitter on April 23, saying that any new deal on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will be contingent on Mexico getting a handle on illegal immigrants pouring over the southern border. It will also be contingent on Congress getting its act together to build the southern border wall. Once again, Trump is demonstrating that he understands the leverage he possesses absolutely correctly, daring Congress and Mexico to ignore the illegal immigration problem to its own detriment. All but saying, that’s a nice trade agreement you have there, shame if anything were to happen to it. Anyone who still doubts President Trump’s resolve at this stage to get better deals for the American people has not been paying attention. Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and has reaffirmed just last week that it’s for good as he spoke of working on a bilateral trade deal…

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