Florida Sheriff Blasts Border Policies After 21 Charged in Sex Trafficking Ring

Grady Judd

An undercover human trafficking operation in Florida found that 21 illegal foreign nationals were using papers given to them by the Department of Homeland Security to fly to major cities in the United States for free to engage in sex trafficking, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.

“Federal policy drives illegal immigrant crime and victimization,” Judd said when announcing the results of a multi-agency undercover operation that led to the arrest of 228 people. Among them, 21 people arrested were in the country illegally, citizens of Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.

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Heinous Crimes Committed by Illegal Migrants Under Scrutiny Ahead of 2024 Election

Recent heinous crimes — from rape to murder — committed by illegal aliens are under scrutiny as more migrants enter the United States, making it a hot topic ahead of the 2024 election.

“We need borders. We have to stop the invasion of people into our country. And you know who’s coming in? Prisoners, people from mental institutions, terrorists are coming into our country and millions and millions and millions of people,” former President Donald Trump said Saturday at a rally in Pennsylvania.

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China Has Operated Spy Facilities in Cuba Since at Least 2019, White House Says

The White House clarified Saturday that China has operated a spy base in Cuba since at least 2019, according to The Wall Street Journal, following reporting that Beijing reached a tentative agreement to set up a new operation somewhere on the island country.

The White House on Friday had characterized as “inaccurate” the WSJ’s first report of a planned Chinese surveillance outpost in Cuba focused on intercepting electronic communications, including emails and radio transmissions, in the southeast U.S. However, White House officials told the outlet Saturday that the Biden administration has worked to tamp down on China’s repeated attempts to spy on the U.S. since Biden took office, and said China has had a surveillance operation in Cuba since at least 2019.

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DeSantis Signs Bill Blocking Chinese Property Ownership Near Military Installations

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law Monday a bill that would block Chinese ownership of agricultural land and property near military installations, the latest state to crack down on Communist Party control of U.S. sites.

The law prohibits anyone from China and other totalitarian regimes, including Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba and North Korea, from having a stake in any property within 10 miles of Department of Defense installations or critical infrastructure. A separate bill, also signed into law Monday, creates additional hurdles for foreign ownership of private schools after federal lawmakers raised red flags over Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ties to a private Florida high school operating a military pre-enlistment program.

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Commentary: The Experts Were the Crisis in 2020

The quote from Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a useful way to begin addressing the Washington Post editorial board’s confident assertion that “’A collective national incompetence in government’” was at the root of the U.S.’s alleged failure vis-à-vis the coronavirus in 2020. According to the Post quoting from a recently released report (“Lessons from the Covid War”), “The United States started out ‘with more capabilities than any other country in the world,’ but “it ended up with 1 million dead.” Were he still around, one guesses Tolstoy would mock the conceit of the Post’s editorialists.

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Thousands Stage Protest March Across Mexico, Head for U.S. Border

On Sunday, a group of over 3,000 illegal aliens began a protest march that started in southern Mexico and will march to the north to end at the border between Mexico and the United States.

According to Politico, the march is in protest against the use of illegal alien detention centers, one of which caught fire last month in an incident that led to the deaths of approximately 40 illegals. The mob of illegals, which started its march in Tapachula along the Guatemalan border, will head for Mexico City, to demand that the government put an end to the use of such facilities.

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Former Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton Team Up with American Express and ‘Welcome.US’ to Fly Migrants into the U.S.

American Express Global Business Travel and Welcome.US have reportedly teamed up with former Presidents Obama, Clinton, and George W. Bush’s nongovernmental organization (NGO) called Miles4Migrants to fly migrants to communities across the U.S.

Welcome.US is an NGO that was initially launched to work with President Joe Biden’s administration to facilitate some of the 85,000 Afghans who came into the U.S. in 2021 and 2022 after the debacle created when the U.S. evacuated from Afghanistan, according to Breitbart.

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Illegal Immigrants Turn to Hang Gliders Unlawful Entry to the U.S.

As more foreign nationals are caught attempting to illegally enter Florida and are repatriated to their country or port of origin, a new method to bypass law enforcement efforts by sea is underway by air: hang gliders.

On Saturday, two Cuban nationals landed at the Key West International Airport using a powered hang glider. They were taken into custody by Monroe County Sheriff’s Office deputies, who then turned them over to U.S. Border Patrol. No injuries were reported, the sheriff’s office said.

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More Than 200 People Arrested in Human Sex Trafficking Ring in Florida

A multiagency operation led to the arrest of more than 200 people allegedly engaging in human trafficking in Polk County, Florida. More than half of the victims were smuggled into the U.S. illegally through the southern border, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.

Of the 24 victims identified as being trafficked, “14 of these females are illegally in this country,” Judd said. “Did you hear that? Did you hear clearly what I said?

“Fourteen of them are here illegally in the country. To me the bombshell is 13 of them are Cuban, one is Mexican, all of them came to us through the southern border.”

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Regimes in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua Among the Most Undemocratic in the World, According to The Economist

Cuban Flag on Pole

The British magazine The Economist released the  2022 Democracy Index on Thursday, in which Cuba appears in 139th place, among 165 independent states. Once again the government of the country was described as an “authoritarian regime” and in this edition it scored zero in the indicator of electoral processes and pluralism.

The Havana regime also appears among the worst in the categories civil liberties (2.94 out of 10), political participation (3.33), government functioning (3.21) and political culture (3.75).

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Human Rights Group Warns FBI: Cuban Regime Members Are Masquerading as Asylum Seekers

A project from the Florida-based Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba that works with activists and victims of political persecution in Cuba recently reported the presence of an alleged repressor of the Cuban communist regime in the United States. Cuban Repressors, a program of the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FDHC), filed a formal complaint with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Jan. 4, against 55-year old Cuban citizen Iran Septiem Suarez, accusing him of “advising and participating in the repressive political persecution of Cuban activists on the island,” according to former political prisoner and Florida Cuban Repressors Director Rolando Cartaya told ADN Cuba.

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Venezuela, Cuba, and Argentina Have the Highest Inflation in Latin America

Venezuela, Cuba and Argentina registered the highest inflation in 2022 compared to other Latin American countries, according to figures from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and BCC reports .

The report covers the period between October 2021 and October 2022, where the highest growth of the index is led by the Caribbean country, which accumulates an increase in inflation of 146%, exceeding that of Argentina by more than 50 percentage points (87 8%), the second on the list, and Cuba, which ranked third with 34.2%.

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Cuba Announces That It Will Receive Deported Cubans and Blames the ‘Blockade’ for the Mass Exodus

Johana Tablada, deputy director general for the United States of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in an interview for OnCuba that the United States will begin the deportation of the Cubans it has detained and who have not passed the credible fear interview, whom she calls “inadmissible.”

These deportations come after an unprecedented wave of Cuban immigrants in history, in which hundreds of thousands of Cubans have left the island and made long and dangerous journeys from South and Central America to reach the United States through the border with Mexico.

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Miami Sector Border Patrol Reported a 500 Percent Increase in Apprehensions in Fiscal 2022

Border Patrol agents in the Miami Sector have reported a 500% increase in apprehensions in fiscal year 2022.

From September 1, 2021, to October 31, 2022, agents apprehended 2,350 foreign nationals attempting to illegally enter Florida by sea. The majority were Cubans.

They also interdicted 131 maritime smuggling events, a 330% increase from fiscal 2921, Chief Patrol Agent Walter Slosar said.

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Border Patrol Apprehend Record Number of Cubans Attempting to Illegally Enter Florida

Nearly every day, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, working with multiple law enforcement partners, apprehend Cubans attempting to enter Florida illegally. They’re also apprehending other foreign nationals, including sex offenders.

They’re doing so as U.S. Coast Guard crews continue to apprehend a record number of Cubans. In fiscal year 2022, they apprehended a record high 6,182 Cubans at sea compared to 49 in fiscal 2020.

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Biden Admin Weighing Plan to House Migrants in Guantanamo: Report

The Biden administration is weighing a plan to house migrants at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, according to NBC News.

The White House National Security Council asked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the number of Haitian migrants apprehended at sea that would require them to designate a third country for them to stay while they await processing to enter the U.S., NBC reported, citing two U.S. officials and an internal document. If there is an overwhelming number of Haitian migrants for a third country, the Biden administration is considering Guantanamo Bay as a holding center.

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‘Conquering Latin America with a Smile’: Chinese Influence Met with Inadequate U.S. Resistance

China’s campaign to grow its presence in Latin America has brought the country’s influence dangerously close to the U.S., but experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that America’s efforts to combat it fall short.

The communist goliath has become the number one trading partner for several countries in the region, with Cuba becoming the latest country to sign onto Xi Jinping’s Belt And Road Initiative (BRI), a massive global project launched in 2013, in October.

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Commentary: Educating Students About the Victims of Communism

Olbram Zoubek Communism Victims Memorial

Many Americans today assume that the threat of Communism subsided with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But “We continue to see Communist and socialist regimes pop up and spread not only in Latin America – for example, in Venezuela and Nicaragua – but around the world,” says Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC). “These regimes regularly kill their own citizens and have a devastating effect on human rights and their national economies.” In fact, over 1.5 billion people – including those living in Laos, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and, of course, China – currently live under oppressive Communist and socialist governments.

Founded in 1993 by a bipartisan, unanimous Act of Congress, VOC is “devoted to commemorating the more than 100 million victims of communism around the world and to pursuing the freedom of those still living under totalitarian regimes.”

Before coming to VOC, Bremberg served as the Trump administration’s Representative of the United States to the Office of the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva. During his time there, which he describes as a “profound and life changing experience,” he “became aware of the challenge of China,” which was “far worse” than he had realized. He notes that the U.N. International Human Rights Council made investigating the United States’ record on racism during the summer of 2020 its highest priority – putting it above China’s appalling human rights violations against Uyghurs, among other ethnic groups within its borders.

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Nikole Hannah-Jones Hails Cuba as Among the ‘Most Equal’ Countries

2021 Cuban protests in the street

In a resurfaced 2019 podcast hosted by Ezra Klein of Vox and the New York Post, Howard University professor and 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones praised Cuba’s socialist economy, deeming it one of the “most equal” countries in the west. 

“If you want to see the most equal, multiracial democ … it’s not a democracy – the most equal, multiracial country in our hemisphere it would be Cuba,” Hannah-Jones said, the NY Post reported.

She then praised Cuba’s socialist economy, claiming it has led to “the least inequality”. 

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Tennessee’s U.S. Congress Members Harshbarger, Burchett, Rose, Green, and Kustoff Urge Democracies to Support Free Cuba

TN Cuba Freedom Support

Five members of Tennessee’s congressional delegation co-signed a letter from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA-23) this week urging the world’s democracies to support freedom in Cuba.

Representatives Diana Harshbarger (R-TN-1), Tim Burchett (R-TN-2), John Rose (R-TN-6), Mark Green (R-TN-7) and David Kustoff (R-TN-8) joined the Republican leader and other colleagues in exhorting democratic nations to back a number of steps toward effectuating Cuban democracy.

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Commentary: The Cuban Revolution Won’t Be Televised

Cuban Flag on Pole

Citizens charged their government with repression. The rebuttal came via a truncheon. Some people miss their own irony.

The Cuban government killed one protester, roughed up cameramen for the Associated Press, abducted citizens from their homes, and shut down the internet in response to demonstrations that erupted last weekend. “The order to fight has been given,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel announced. “Into the street, revolutionaries!”

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Black Lives Matter Issues Statement of Support for Cuba’s Communist Regime

Miguel Diaz-Canel

The official Black Lives Matter organization is facing widespread criticism after releasing a statement in support of the Communist dictatorship in Cuba, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation issued its statement earlier this week, amidst the sudden grassroots protests that broke out in Cuba against the incumbent regime. In it, the organization claims, with no evidence, that “the U.S. government has only instigated suffering for the country’s 11 million, of which 4 million are black or brown.”

BLM further claims that the ongoing American embargo on Cuba, which has been in effect since the Cold War, is “at the heart of the crisis,” and went on to praise Cuba’s “strong medical care.” The far-left group’s rhetoric closely matches that of Cuba’s current dictator, Miguel Diaz-Canel, who explicitly blamed the United States for the protests.

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Commentary: The Fight for Freedom in Cuba

2021 Cuban government protest in Naples Florida

Thousands of demonstrators in more than 40 cities and towns throughout Cuba have taken to the streets to protest 62 years of oppression.  In a communist country that suppresses dissent, the recent wave of protests is the most significant grassroots stand against the dictatorship in more than three decades. 

Since the end of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the Cuban people have lived under the oppressive rule of the Castro dictatorship.  Upon Raúl Castro’s recent retirement, his handpicked successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel seized control of the Communist Party, Cuba’s only legal political party, and the presidency, in an election that was neither competitive, free, nor fair.

As the communist regime attempts to deflect blame for the state of unrest, basic goods and services are in short supply. The fact is Cuba is suffering from a severe economic crisis.  Food is scarce, the health care system is overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and electricity outages are a regular occurrence.

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DeSantis Backs Cuban Protestors, Media and Democrats Blame COVID

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

Sunday on Twitter, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) extended his support to the Cuban protestors voicing their opposition to the communist regime who seized control of the government when the Cuban Revolution ended in 1958.

“Florida supports the people of Cuba as they take to the streets against the tyrannical regime in Havana,” DeSantis said. “The Cuban dictatorship has repressed the people of Cuba for decades & is now trying to silence those who have the courage to speak out against its disastrous policies”

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Cuba Erupts in Anti-Communist Protest; Biden Official Suggests ‘Rising COVID Cases’ the Cause of Unrest

Massive protests broke out in Cuba on Sunday, with citizens shouting “freedom!” as they demonstrated against the corrupt and incompetent Communist regime. Cubans trapped in dire economic conditions took to the streets in over 32 Cuban cities, according to the Washington Times.

“Down with the dictatorship,” “We want liberty!” protesters reportedly chanted.

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Representative Green Urges President Biden to Hold Cuba Accountable for Human Rights Abuses

U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) and two other members of Congress on Friday sent President Joe Biden a letter urging him to implement a Cuba policy that holds the regime accountable for its human rights abuses and support for authoritarian regimes in the region. 

Joining Green in sending the letter were U.S. Representatives August Pfluger (R-TX-11) and Maria Salazar (R-FL-27), according to a statement issued by Green, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. Pfluger and Salazar are members of the subcommittee as well.

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Commentary: So, About That Che T-Shirt…

Let’s say that all you knew about Adolf Hitler was that he painted scenic pictures, postcards, and houses in Vienna, loved dogs and named his adorable German Shepard “Blondie,” and frequently expressed solidarity with “the people.” You might sport a T-shirt adorned with his image if you thought such a charismatic chap was also good-looking in a beret. But your education would be widely regarded as incomplete.

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US Eliminates Coveted 5-year Tourist Visa for Cubans

The U.S. State Department said Friday that it is eliminating a coveted five-year tourist visa for Cubans, dealing a heavy blow to entrepreneurs and Cuban members of divided families, who used the visas to see relatives in the United States and buy precious supplies for their businesses on the island. The elimination of the visa cuts a vital link between the U.S. and Cuba by forcing Cubans to make a costly and complicated trip to a third country like Mexico or Panama every single time they want to visit the U.S. That’s because the U.S. withdrew most of its non-essential diplomatic staff from Havana in September 2017 and stopped issuing visas of almost any type in Cuba. “This affects every Cuban but especially entrepreneurs who have to travel to get products that don’t exist here,” said Niuris Higueras, who brings salt, hand towels, candles and other products from the U.S. for her restaurant Atelier, one of Havana’s most successful private eateries. Change announced on Facebook Until now, Cubans who saved the money and mastered the complexities of successfully applying for a visa in a third country would receive a visa eliminating the need to apply again for another five years.…

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In Cuba, Healthcare Is a Right and Their Doctors are Rebelling: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

by Joseph Sunde   “You are trained in Cuba and our education is free. Health care is free, but at what price? You wind up paying for it your whole life.” –Dr. Yaili Jiménez Gutierrez In 2013, the World Health Organization brokered a deal through which Cuba would export doctors to Brazil to serve in its poorest and most remote areas. Yet as Brazil began to reap the benefits of improved care and decreased mortality rates, the Cuban doctors began to see their home’s regime in a new light. “When you leave Cuba for the first time, you discover many things that you had been blind to,” says Yaili Jiménez Gutierrez, one of the program’s doctors, in a New York Times profile. “There comes a time when you get tired of being a slave.” The Cuban doctors began noticing the disparity in their government’s “take” from the Brazilian government — nearly four times their own salary — as well as the higher wages and greater freedoms enjoyed by their fellow “export doctors” from other participating countries. “We began to see that the conditions for the other doctors were totally different,” Jiménez explains. “They could be with their family, bring their kids. The salaries were…

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Mexico Begins Its Own Road to Perdition with the Election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador

ALMO

by Victor Mata   All Latin-Americans at some point ask themselves: Why is no Latin American country as well-developed as the United States? The answer is probably not related to our weather or a lesser disposition to work, as many have tried to claim. The answer is probably simpler: A socialist culture and a strong attachment to the left. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina are all countries that suffered or are suffering devastating economic, political, and social crises. They are all examples of countries that built their own road to the hell through socialism. This past Sunday was a chance for Mexico to change that trend. Mexico is a country where many people don’t have access to school, where the public health system is extremely deficient, and where it is not safe to walk in the street after 10 p.m. because drug cartels have taken control of some cities. It seems that their citizens took the worst option available to change that reality; they decided to have as a president for the next six years a socialist with damaging populist appeal. His name is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and is known as AMLO. He is usually described as a nationalist and revolutionary linked with the Party…

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Another American Confirmed Hurt by Mystery Attack in Cuba

US Embassy - Havana, Cuba

One more U.S. Embassy employee in Havana has been affected by mysterious health incidents, the State Department said. State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the second of two Americans recently evacuated from Cuba was “medically confirmed” Thursday to have experienced effects “similar to those reported by other members of the U.S. Havana diplomatic community.” The other evacuee was confirmed to have experienced similar symptoms a week ago. The latest case brings to 26 the number of Americans affected by the mystery ailment in Cuba. The United States has said that the Cuba incidents started in late 2016. The State Department calls them “specific attacks” but has not said what caused them or who was behind them. Cuba has adamantly denied involvement or knowledge. Initial speculation centered on some type of sonic attack owing to strange sounds heard by those affected, but an interim FBI report in January found no evidence that sound waves could have caused the damage, The Associated Press reported. The new confirmation comes less than a month after the U.S. renewed demands on Cuba to determine the source of the “attacks” on U.S. diplomats. Cuba responded by once again denying any involvement or knowledge of any such…

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Latinos For Tennessee Praises Trump’s Reversal Of Obama’s Cuba Policy

Latinos For Tennessee is praising President Trump for reinstating travel and trade limitations on Cuba on Friday, overturning significant parts of former President Obama’s policy. Obama had lifted restrictions last year. Trump’s reversal will restrict tourism and ensure that U.S. dollars do not support the military conglomerate that monopolizes many sectors of the Cuban economy, according to a press release issued by Latinos For Tennessee. Raul Lopez, the executive director of the conservative group, fled Cuba as a young boy along with other members of his family as political refugees. “Today is a great day for the people of Cuba who yearn to be free,” Lopez said in a statement. “By reversing President Obama’s misguided policies, we will no longer be empowering the oppressive Castro regime. “Rather than benefiting the regime and its cronies, American involvement in Cuba should benefit the Cuban people, and pave the way for democracy, and greater economic and religious freedom on the island,” Lopez continued, adding, “The ball is in the Castro regime’s court. If they want better engagement from the United States, they have to support human rights, hold free and fair elections, and release political prisoners.” Latinos For Tennessee promotes faith, family, freedom and…

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President Trump Plans to Roll Back Obama Policies Toward Cuba

President Donald Trump is preparing to announce new policies toward Cuba that most likely will roll back parts of former President Barack Obama’s efforts to normalize relations with the island nation, according to a senior administration official and other sources. The official said presidential aides were finalizing their review of U.S.-Cuba relations and were expected to…

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