Hundreds of Potential Tren De Aragua Gang Members Active in U.S., DHS Report Reveals

ICE Arrest

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has identified hundreds of migrants in the United States who may be connected to an international crime syndicate originating from Venezuela, according to NBC News.

DHS officials suspect more than 600 foreign nationals living in the U.S. have ties to Tren de Aragua, according to data obtained by NBC News. Around 100 of the 600 migrants that DHS has identified as “subjects of interest” are confirmed members of the international gang, while others could be witnesses, victims or are members themselves.

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House Chairman Green Demands Answers on DHS, FBI Failure to Vet Alleged Afghan Terror Suspect

Mark Green

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green sent a letter Thursday to the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, following a report from Just the News about the recent arrests of two Afghanistan nationals who were charged with planning an election day terror plot.

One of the suspects, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, was arrested by the FBI on Monday and charged with multiple crimes including conspiring and attempting to provide material support to ISIS, according to the Justice Department announcement.

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25 Governors Demand Answers on How Many Migrants Flown to States

Flights

Twenty-five Republican governors want to know how many illegal foreign nationals have been flown into their states by a Biden-Harris administration plan they argue is burdening their residents and creating an unsafe environment.

Those being flown in have arrived through more than a dozen parole programs created by U.S. Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The governors only inquired about one: the CHNV parole program, created to fast track previously inadmissible citizens of Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela moving into the country.

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Biden Admin to End Parole Program for Hundreds of Thousands of Migrants

Acting Executive Officer of the RGV U.S. Border Patrol Sector Oscar Escamilla, left, fields questions from tour participants as Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas, right, leads a delegation of Congressional representatives on a tour of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Donna Processing Facility in Donna, Texas, May 7, 2021. Secretary Mayorkas updated the delegation on unaccompanied children arriving at our Southern Border as they viewed conditions at the facility. CBP Photo by Michael Battise

The Biden administration will not renew the temporary parole program that has allowed 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Friday.

These individuals were granted a two-year period under the parole scheme to seek humanitarian relief or other immigration benefits and contribute to the U.S. workforce, DHS told the Daily Caller News Foundation. As these two-year grants begin to expire in the coming weeks, those without pending immigration applications or approved benefits will be required to leave the U.S. or face possible deportation.

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U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn Demands Answers after DHS Report Reveals ICE Has Lost Thousands of Unaccompanied Migrant Children

border surge

Tennessee U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) sent a letter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Patrick Lechleitner this week demanding answers after a recent report revealed that ICE has lost track of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children over the last five years.

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Tennessee AG Applauds Texas U.S. District Judge’s Ruling to Halt DHS’ ‘Parole in Place’ Program

TN AG Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti celebrated U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker’s ruling on Monday to halt the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) new program allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who are the spouse or stepchild of a U.S. citizen to “parole in place” from taking effect.

Barker’s ruling comes just three days after 16 state attorneys general and America First Legal filed a 56-page complaint challenging DHS’ “Keeping Families Together” program, which began accepting applications last week.

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Mike Benz Exposes Cynical Censorship Practices at the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

Mike Benz

Mike Benz, a former Trump State Department official and current executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, said the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a component of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is actively censoring conservative Americans under the guise of carrying out unaudited “cybersecurity operations.”

Benz said the practice began in 2018 when CISA was created under the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2018. It was in full swing during the 2020 election under the guise of being a “cyber security and infrastructure security agency,” which, Benz said, is why the program was funded under former President Donald Trump’s watch.

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Inspector General: Vetting of Asylum Seekers Is Inadequate

DHS employee

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security must improve the screening and vetting process of noncitizens claiming asylum who are being released into the country, the department’s inspector general says in a new report.

The Office of the Inspector General evaluated the screening process being implemented by two DHS agencies: U.S. Customs and Border Protection screening foreign nationals arriving at land ports of entry and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) screening asylum seekers. The OIG audited the effectiveness of the technology, procedures, and other processes used to screen and vet asylum seekers. It concluded they “were not fully effective to screen and vet noncitizens applying for admission into the United States or asylum seekers whose asylum applications were pending for an extended period.”

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Border Experts: Biden Plan will Bring Another 2 Million into Country a Year

Illegal Immigrants

Former Border security leaders serving under multiple presidents and whose careers span decades in law enforcement say President Joe Biden’s “border security” announcement Tuesday won’t secure the border but instead will facilitate more illegal immigration, bringing in another two million people into the country illegally a year.

“The border will never be ‘shut down’ under this executive action but rather serve to legalize an unjustified level of open borders that will further perpetuate the chaos and lawlessness we’ve experienced during the entirety of the Biden Administration,” former U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan told The Center Square. “The proposed action will, at a minimum, allow more than one million illegal aliens to be released into the county annually, along with another one million inadmissible aliens being allowed to fly into interior airports within the U.S.,” referring to the CBP One app that allows migrants to apply for entry remotely.

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U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn Leads Tennessee Colleagues in Demanding Answers from DHS After Illegal Alien Assaults Woman at the Nashville Sundae Club

DHS Sec Alejandro Mayorkas, Senator Marsha Blackburn

Tennessee U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) led a letter signed by eight other members of the Tennessee Congressional delegation to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding answers regarding the immigration status of a 23-year old illegal alien who allegedly followed a woman into a bathroom at the Nashville Sundae Club and groped her

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Arizona Local Governments, Charities Receive over $54 Million from Biden Administration to Care for Illegal Immigrants

Illegal Immigrants

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced over $54 million in awards last month for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Shelter and Services program to Arizona entities to offset “costs incurred” due to the influx of illegal immigrants into the country.

According to funding awards posted publicly by FEMA last month, two Arizona-based charitable entities, Pima County and Maricopa County will collectively receive $54,573,093 to support illegal immigrants in the 2024 fiscal year.

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Laken Riley’s Illegal Alien Killer Was Released into U.S. Under Mayorkas’ Power of Parole, According to DHS File

The criminal illegal alien accused of killing Laken Riley was released into the U.S. in September of 2022 because the Department of Homeland Security lacked detention space, according to his immigration file.

Jose Ibarra, the Venezuelan national charged with murdering Riley in February, was released under DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ power of parole, which is only supposed to be used “when there is an urgent humanitarian need or a significant benefit to the public,” the Washington Times reported.

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NO TRIAL: Senate Democrats Quickly Dismiss Impeachment Articles Against Mayorkas

Within 20 minutes of convening to hold an impeachment trial of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Democrats in the Senate steamrolled through motions and voted to dismiss the first article of impeachment brought against him.

Shortly thereafter, they dismissed the second article as well, without ever hearing evidence or conducting a trial.

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Mayorkas to Testify at House Committee Hearing on Homeland Security Budget

Alejandro Mayorkas

The U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security will be holding a hearing next Tuesday to examine the Department of Homeland Security’s fiscal 2025 budget request.

It will hear testimony from DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who is scheduled to testify for the first time since he was impeached in February. The committee’s chairman, U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., led the charge to impeach Mayorkas on two counts, making him the first sitting cabinet member to be impeached in U.S. history.

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Taxpayers to Pay $3 Million for Mayorkas Impeachment Defense

Alejandro Mayorkas

The Department of Homeland Security so far has spent $3 million of taxpayer money to defend embattled Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas against impeachment by the House of Representatives, according to documents obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.

The DHS contract with a law firm was to cover the cost of a failed attempt to stave off a House impeachment, as well as to defend President Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary in a possible Senate trial.

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Tennessee Bill Would Require Enforcement of Immigration Law

ICE Arrest

A bill being debated in the Tennessee General Assembly would require law enforcement agencies to follow the proper protocol of reporting illegal alien arrestees to federal authorities. 

HB 2124 “requires, rather than authorizes, law enforcement agencies to communicate with the appropriate federal official regarding the immigration status of any individual, including reporting knowledge that a particular alien is not lawfully present in the United States or otherwise cooperate with the appropriate federal official in the identification, apprehension, detention, or removal of aliens not lawfully present in the United States.”

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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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House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green Sends Letter to DHS Demanding Information Related to Murder of Georgia Medical Student

Mark Green DHS

Tennessee U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding information to assist the committee in its investigation into the murder of 22-year old nursing student Laken Riley.

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Michael Patrick Leahy and Crom Carmichael Debate Bill That Would Allow State Attorneys General to Sue DHS

Editor-in-Chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star Michael Patrick Leahy and Crom Carmichael, original all-star panelist of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, discussed on Monday a bill recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would give state attorneys general a greater standing to sue the Department of Homeland Security when it fails to enforce existing immigration laws passed by Congress.

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Rep. Ogles Blasts Biden Administration About Illegal Aliens Coming to Tennessee

Andy Ogles

A Tennessee congressman blasted the Biden administration after it was revealed last week that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) knew that nearly 600 illegal aliens planned to travel to Middle Tennessee after they were released from detainment.

“Joe Biden’s efforts to transport illegal aliens into Franklin, Davidson County, and Mt. Juliet are reprehensible,” said Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) on X. “Middle Tennessee deserves answers. That’s why I’ve sent a letter to [DHS Secretary] Mayorkas demanding responses to all my questions regarding this troubling incursion into our community.”

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Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles Previews Upcoming Vote on Mayorkas Impeachment, Senate Border Deal Discussions

Rep. Andy Ogles

U.S. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) joined Monday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss the Senate’s so-called “border deal” and the House of Representatives’ upcoming vote on two articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

On the upcoming impeachment vote against Mayorkas, Ogles said the votes in the House “should be there” to impeach the secretary, adding, “We have an obligation to move forward and hold him accountable and put on the record that you can’t just ignore our laws in this country.”

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Nearly 600 Illegal Aliens May Be Transported to Middle Tennessee, DHS Notice Says

Illegal Border crossers

A notice from last September by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported that a total of 573 “noncitizens” from Guatemala, Venezuela, Honduras, and Mexico intended on traveling to Franklin, Nashville, Davidson County, and Murfreesboro following their release from DHS custody.

The notice, dated as the week ending September 16, 2023, is titled “Intended Destination of Noncitizens Processed at the Southwest Border.”

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Border Patrol Facing Loss of Agents from Retirement, Flat Recruitment as Border Crisis Intensifies

CBP Agent

The nearly 10,000 border patrol agents eligible for retirement by 2028 and static recruitment numbers threaten to undermine future efforts to secure the Southern border, even as the current immigration crisis escalates.

By 2028, a total of 9,828 current border patrol agents will be eligible for retirement, according to numbers provided to Transport Dive by a Customs and Border Protection official. The agency, which has been plagued by a recruitment shortfalls for years, says it is preparing to deal with the fallout if even a fraction of the eligible agents retire on schedule.

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House January 6 Investigator Says White House Foot-Dragging ‘Unacceptable,’ Warns of Subpoenas Ahead

Barry Loudermilk

The House subcommittee chairman leading the Jan. 6 investigation is declaring that the Biden White House’s foot-dragging has been “unacceptable” and he is putting both presidential aides and the Georgia county prosecutor pursuing Donald Trump on notice that Congress is prepared to pursue evidence, up to and including subpoenas and contempt.

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., on Thursday evening gave a sweeping update on his House Administration oversight subcommittee’s efforts to obtain evidence, saying Democrats from the White House and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., were not providing the cooperation needed to give Americans the facts and answers they are missing from the tragedy three years ago in the U.S. Capitol.

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DHS Warned of Integrity of Mail-In Voting in 2020 Election but at the Same Time Censored Questions

Mail In Ballot

The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was aware of the issues with mail-in voting during the 2020 election cycle but censored social media narratives about the risks as alleged disinformation, according to agency documents.

CISA documents were released on Monday by America First Legal, showing the agency’s concerns about mail-in voting while it was also monitoring online opinions about such concerns.

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Border Residents to Congress: ‘Stop Holding Press Conferences, Shut Down the Border’

Illegal Immigrants

As another Republican congressional delegation arrived in Eagle Pass, Texas, Wednesday to hold another news conference and meet local residents, many Texans living at the border say they are fed up and want Congress to shut down the border.

If Congress continues to use taxpayer dollars to fund policies that facilitate the border crisis, they argue, Congress is complicit in creating it and a national security threat.

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Commentary: Government Cannot Become Big Brother

Anyone who lived through 2020 observed that some messages received treatment online that stood in stark contrast to other messages. Conservative voices and messages were censored and banned, while progressive voices and messages flowed freely. If a person spoke against COVID-19 lockdowns—and later vaccines—there was a good chance that a social media platform would take down the post. If one were to suggest that suspicious activities occurred surrounding the 2020 election, the label “misinformation” might appear.

The primary vehicle to censor internet speech is to label disfavored messages as dis-, mis-, or mal-information. While the category of malinformation is seemingly the most offensive – true information that government censors believe lacks sufficient “context” – the other categories can be just as malignant. Mis- and disinformation require someone to determine what is true and what is not.

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Arizona Gov. Hobbs in Touch with DHS but Hasn’t Talked with Mayorkas in Months

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs recently communicated with leadership at the United States Department of Homeland Security, but conversations with Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have been more scant.

The federal government, as well as Arizona officials, have been under scrutiny after U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced the closure of the Lukeville, Arizona, port of entry, which is making access to and from Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, extremely difficult. 

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Federal Censorship Machine Started Years Before COVID, Involved Military Contractors: Whistleblower

Military Person on Computer

The public-private efforts to restrict and suppress purported “mis-, dis- and malinformation” across tech platforms started almost immediately after the surprise election of Donald Trump in 2016, ramped up a year before the COVID-19 pandemic, and included U.S. and U.K. military contractors and plans to cut off financial services to dissenters and sue them.

That’s according to a “highly credible whistleblower” who says they were recruited to participate in the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL) “through monthly cybersecurity meetings hosted by” the Department of Homeland Security, independent journalists who reviewed the Twitter Files at new owner Elon Musk’s invitation said Tuesday.

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Illegal Chinese Pot Grows Are Taking over Maine and Law Enforcement Isn’t Stopping Them

Illegal marijuana grows run by Chinese nationals have sprung up all across the state of Maine, and residents say law enforcement isn’t doing enough to stop their spread.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified 270 suspected Chinese illegal marijuana grow operations in the state that could be making an estimated $4.37 billion in revenue, which are often used for more criminal activities or are sent back to China, the DCNF exclusively reported in August. The DCNF visited dozens of properties identified as suspected Chinese marijuana grows by the DHS memo, as well as other locations reported to be possible Chinese marijuana grows by The Maine Wire.

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U.S. Rep. Mark Green Subpoenas Alejandro Mayorkas in Investigation into Afghan Evacuee Screening, Vetting

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-TN-07) issued a subpoena on Tuesday to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for its failure to provide “satisfactory documents and other materials relevant to the Committee’s May 2023 request for more information on the vetting and screening of Afghan evacuees entering the United States since 2021.”

Following the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the committee sent two letters to the DHS requesting information on the event; however, both letters were met with “insufficient responses” from the Biden administration, according to the committee.

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