Congressman Andy Ogles Among House Republicans Seeking to Prevent the Resettling of Palestinians into the U.S.

Andy Ogles

Tennessee U.S. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) is among a group of House Republicans requesting that a provision be included in the Fiscal Year 2025 spending bill to prohibit Palestinian refugees from being imported and resettled into U.S. communities.

Ogles, along with U.S. Representatives Tom Tiffany (R-WI-07) and Scott Perry (R-PA-10), are specifically seeking a provision in the funding bill that “prohibits expenditures of any funds to issue a visa or grant parole to any alien holding a passport issued by the Palestinian Authority.”

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Virginia Home to More than 650 New Afghan Refugees

Afghanistan People

Virginia has taken in more than 650 refugees from Afghanistan in the past five months as that nation continues to reel after President Joe Biden’s 2021 withdrawal of American troops.

According to a report on refugee resettlement from October 2023 through February, 655 Afghanis now call Virginia home. That is the most of any country of origin for the 1,295 refugees recently resettled in Virginia.

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Congo, Syria, Burma, and Afghanistan Top List of Countries Represented Among Georgia Refugee Intake

Congo Refugees

According to a report on refugee resettlement, more refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo have been resettled in Georgia than from any other country since October of last year, following a trend among other states. 

According to the report, of the 1,469 refugees resettled in Georgia over the past five months, 267 have come from the Central African country that is both war-torn and one of the poorest in the world. 

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Nearly 40 Percent of Ohio’s Refugee Arrivals Are from Congo

Congo People

Nearly 40 percent of the refugees resettled in the state of Ohio by the federal government since October 2023 come from one of the poorest, most war-torn nations on earth.

According to a report on refugee resettlement by state, 645 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo have been resettled in Ohio over the past five months, dwarfing the number of refugees from any other country.

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Biden Admin Spent $20 Billion for Refugee Resettlement in Just Two Years

Refugees

The Biden administration has poured billions of taxpayer dollars into the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) since October 2022, according to a new report from Open the Books.

The Biden administration spent $8.925 billion in fiscal year 2022 and $10.928 billion in fiscal year 2023 on the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at ORR to accommodate, transport, and provide migrants with various other services like medical care and loans, according to the report, which was released Tuesday. In recent months, HHS has faced scrutiny for ORR’s alleged mishandling of cases of unaccompanied migrant children, some of whom have been released to poorly vetted sponsors where they are used for child labor, according to The New York Times.

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Public Health Alerts Issued About Communicable Disease Spread Tied to Migrant Crisis

Entry Line

Federal, state and city health departments have issued public health alerts about increases of communicable diseases as illegal border crossers arrive in their communities.

Earlier this year, the New York City Health Commissioner instructed New York health-care providers to undergo several precautions and tests in light of “an alarming trend” of diseases spreading among illegal foreign nationals in New York City who arrived from the southern border. Dr. Ashwin Vasan expressed alarm about those arriving who hadn’t been vaccinated for polio or chickenpox and were coming from countries with high rates of infectious tuberculosis.

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Biden Admin Granted 34,000 Special Visas to Refugees After Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal

Afghanistan Refugees

The State Department has granted tens of thousands of visas to Afghans who aided the U.S. government following the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, according to a Thursday report from the lead inspector general to the United States Congress.

The Biden administration withdrew all American forces from Afghanistan in 2021, leading to a widespread takeover of the region by the Taliban and the displacement of millions of Afghans, according to the Wilson Center. As part of the U.S. effort to bring in refugees escaping Afghanistan, the State Department has issued approximately 34,000 special immigrant visas (SIV) to Afghans and their immediate family members, according to the Inspector General report released Thursday. 

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World Relief Wisconsin Leader Says Biden Administration Has Decided Refugees Are Coming to Eau Claire

An official with a refugee resettlement organization told The Wisconsin Daily Star that 75 refugees are coming to Wisconsin’s Chippewa Valley beginning in early January, and there’s nothing opponents of the resettlement plan can do about it.

Tami McLaughlin, office director of World Relief Wisconsin-Fox Valley, said the Biden administration has signed off on the plan, and the federal government is the final authority.

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Opposition Rises over Plan to Relocate Potentially Hundreds of Somalis to Wisconsin City Without Approval from Elected Officials

Eau Claire residents are speaking out against a plan to relocate potentially hundreds of Somali refugees to the northwest Wisconsin community without the consent of elected city officials.

One Eau Claire County resident who spoke to The Wisconsin Daily Star said the relocation effort amounts to “taxation without representation.”

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Biden DOJ Sues SpaceX for Preferring American Citizens over Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Its Hiring Practices

On Thursday, the Biden Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against SpaceX, accusing the company of discrimination for preferring American citizens over asylum seekers and refugees in its hiring practices.

In its 13-page complaint, the Justice Dept. alleges that SpaceX “routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).”  The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division seeks to force SpaceX to give “fair compensation” to non-citizens that were not hired.

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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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Commentary: As Refugees Flood into U.S., Chinese Christians Told to Wait

On Christmas Eve, members of Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church, who fled China several years ago, had their celebrations abruptly cut short.

The congregation had initially sought refuge in South Korea, but was denied a haven there after three years of immigration court proceedings. The next port of call was Thailand, which they hoped would be a peaceful, if temporary, home before being granted sanctuary in the United States. But on December 24, the landlord for the apartments where the 64 church members – roughly half adults and half children – were staying suddenly informed them that Thai police had demanded copies of all their passports, IDs, and visas.

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Donated Frequent Flyer Miles Provide 40,000 Flights for Afghan Refugees

Frequent flyer miles donated over a two-month period will provide around 40,000 flights for Afghan refugees, the Associated Press reported.

The Biden administration is considering doubling the number of miles available to refugees, and around 3,200 flights already covered by the donated miles have allowed Afghan refugees to resettle in communities around the U.S. from temporary housing at military bases, according to the AP. Miles4Migrants organized the donations, and the group has provided aid to refugees using donated airline miles and credit card points since 2016.

“Government resources are limited, and we knew that the American people wanted to support Afghans who were arriving and help them find safe homes,” Miles4Migrants Co-Founder Andy Freedman said, the AP reported. “That’s when we turned to the airlines.”

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State Department Partners with Refugee Coalition Groups Supporting Organizations with Alleged Terror Ties

Stephen Heintz and George Soros

The U.S. State Department joined an initiative to welcome Afghan refugees into the country that is sponsored by organizations supporting groups with possible ties to Palestinian terrorist organizations, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found.

Welcome.US is part of the Office of American Possibilities initiative, a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, according to its website. The initiative’s main co-chairs include former President Barack Obama, former First Lady Michelle Obama, former President George W. Bush, former First Lady Laura Bush, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The initiative also formed a coalition composed of nonprofit leaders and organizations, former government officials, corporate leaders and public figures. Businesses, including Starbucks, Uber, Facebook, Microsoft, Walmart and Airbnb, also support the effort.

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Commentary: The Farce of American Despotism

Reflecting on Joe Biden’s disastrous “town hall” with Anderson Cooper on Thursday, The Spectator’s Dominic Green asks a question that has to weigh heavily on the mind of every American adult: “Is it more worrisome that Joe Biden might not be in charge, or that he actually is in charge?” I have long argued that allowing Biden to appear in public is a form of elder abuse, and I have speculated that he really is not in control of his actions but is manipulated, puppet-like, by a shadowy cadre of unnamed string-pullers I have called “The Committee.”

I do not have any proof that such is the case. I infer the existence and machinations of The Committee from Biden’s ostentatious incompetence and apparent senility. Has any president in the history of the Republic overseen such a destructive litany of failures so early in his tenure? Observers around the world caught their breath in August as our botched exit from Afghanistan went from appalling to something much worse and more deadly. What will be its defining image? The desperate Afghans clinging to and then falling from the landing gear of a transport plane as it took off from the Kabul airport? Or will it be the images of the slaughter perpetrated by a suicide (that is, a homicide) bomber outside the airport, an incident that killed some 170 people include more than a dozen U.S. military personnel?

Or maybe it will be the image of the drone strike launched in retaliation for that slaughter, a strike that was supposed to have targeted an ISIS-K operative but in fact killed zero terrorists and instead blew to bits 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children. The United States initially said they had obliterated an ISIS-K operative along with the collateral damage, but eventually they had to admit that, nope, they got no bad guys, just 10 innocent Afghans. 

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Commentary: Biden Moving Refugees Under Cover of Darkness Shows His True Character

When Joe Biden conducted his campaign for president largely in absentia last year, his value proposition to voters went something like this:

I’m Lunch Bucket Joe from Scranton and I’m for the little guy. I’m gonna fix all the mistakes of the last four years and bring transparency, competence, and compassion back to government.

Almost a year into the Biden presidency, that proposition has been exposed as snake oil. If “the little guy” refers to working-class American citizens, Biden has treated them with utter disdain, if not contempt. He clearly prioritizes foreign nationals from impoverished countries, as he is bringing them here in record numbers.

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State Dept. Won’t ‘Provide an Approval’ for Private Evacuation Flights from Afghanistan

The U.S. State Department will not give official approval to any private evacuation flight from Afghanistan seeking to land in third countries, leaked emails obtained by Fox News show.

“No independent charters are allowed to land at [Al Udeid Air Base], the military airbase you mentioned in your communication with Samantha Power,” a State Department official said in a Sept. 1 email to Eric Montalvo, who organized a number of charter flights out of Afghanistan, Fox News reported.

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Afghan Refugees Undergo ‘Biometric and Biographic Vetting’ Before Coming to America

Joe Biden

Afghan refugees are subject to security and health screening performed by Department of Homeland Security officials before they’re evacuated to the U.S. or a third country for additional processing, a Biden administration senior official said.

Afghans must clear biometric and biographic vetting including iris scans, palm and voice prints and photographs before they’re evacuated from the country, CNN reported. The refugees are also tested for COVID-19 and offered vaccinations before they’re released, the senior official said in a background press call on Aug. 24.

“That [security screening] process involves biometric and biographic security screenings conducted by our intelligence, law enforcement, and counterterrorism professionals who are working quite literally around the clock to vet all of these Afghans before they’re allowed into the United States,” the Biden administration senior official said on the call.

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Kari Lake Rally: ‘We Will Elect Arizona’s First Trump-Republican Governor’

Speaking to a packed crowd in Scottsdale Saturday night for her birthday, Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake declared, “We will elect Arizona’s first Trump governor!” Lake planned the huge birthday bash to include a live viewing of former President Trump’s speech at a campaign rally in Alabama. Afterwards, she gave a speech of her own to the well over a thousand who attended the Embassy Suites event.

Lake announced the results of a new poll taken by her campaign that showed her well ahead of the other Republican candidates. She came in at 37.4 percent, followed by Matt Salmon at 11.5 percent, Steve Gaynor with 2.7 percent, and Karrin Taylor Robson at 2.0 percent. She said one of her opponents also conducted a poll that showed her ahead in a “landslide.” She distinguished herself from the others, “I’m running against a bunch of swamp creatures.” 

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Fort Bliss in Texas Becomes Ground Zero for Resettling Afghan Refugees During Chaotic Exit

Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, is best known as home to the Army’s tank division, the revered Old Ironsides military insignia and the country’s largest military-controlled airspace. But the Biden administration’s botched exit from Afghanistan is turning the vast installation into ground zero for the evacuation of Afghans who spent two decades helping the United States fight the war against terror.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn says the fort is preparing to receive 10,000 Afghan refugees, and military officials have hinted that number could reach much higher.

It’s the second major wave of civilian guests to be hosted at the fort, which began this spring helping the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services Departments to house thousands of unaccompanied minor children who were brought across the border.

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Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies Explains Why He’s Called for the Withdrawal from the 1951 Refugee Convention Treaty

1951 Refugee Convention

Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies to the newsmakers line to further outline his recent article at the National Review online which called for the withdrawal from the 1951 Refugee treaty with the UN.

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Nashville Will Extend $4.9 Million COVID Disparities Grant to Refugees, Immigrants for Testing and Vaccinations

Refugees and immigrants will have a share in Metro Nashville’s $4.9 million grant for COVID-19 health disparities in certain racial, ethnic, and rural demographics. Metro Nashville City Council adopted the resolution to accept the funds during its meeting last Tuesday. In its resolution, the council expanded the CDC’s definition of underserved populations to include refugees and immigrants.

“This [grant’s purpose] includes implementation of a collaborative, multilevel, culturally informed approach to expand access to COVID-19 testing and vaccine administration and to reduce disparities among Nashville’s underserved African American, Hispanic, immigrant, and refugee communities,” read the resolution analysis.

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Tennessee Spends Nearly $4M Annually to Educate Unaccompanied Minors

Tennessee has spent nearly $60 million over 15 years educating children who entered the state as unaccompanied minors, according to the state’s Fiscal Review Committee estimates.

Krista Lee Carsner, executive director of the Tennessee General Assembly’s Fiscal Review Committee, presented her cost estimate research to the state’s Study Committee on Refugee Issues, saying 8,800 unaccompanied minors have come to live in the state since fiscal year 2015.

Carsner estimated Tennessee spent an average of $3.9 million annually on education for those minors and the highest estimated year was a cost of $13.9 million. The state also spent nearly $85,000 annually on TennCare health care costs for those minors, Carsner said.

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Petition Urges North Dakota County to Ban Sanctuary Cities, Illegal Immigrants, and Refugees

A petition urging officials in a North Dakota county to ban sanctuary cities, illegal immigrants, and refugees gained around 5,000 signatures as of Tuesday, the Minot Daily News reported.

The Ward County Commission said they would uphold laws prohibiting illegal immigration and those supporting Second Amendment rights, though they asked petitioners to provide more specific language to be considered, according to the Minot Daily News. The petition asked the commission to ban illegal immigration and refugees from the county and to establish the region as a “gun sanctuary.”

Residents in Ward County started the petition “to ban sanctuary cities, illegal immigrants, aliens, refugees in Ward County, North Dakota, and add Ward County, North Dakota, as a Second Amendment gun sanctuary county,” the Minot Daily News reported.

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Under Pressure from Activists, Biden Admin Agrees to Bring in Thousands of Refugees a Month

The Biden administration will admit more than 7,000 migrant refugees into the U.S. monthly as part of negotiations in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union over a Trump-era rule prohibiting migrants from obtaining asylum during the pandemic, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Former President Donald Trump implemented public health order Title 42 which allowed border officials to rapidly expel migrants from the U.S. and prevented them from applying for asylum due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the AP reported. The Biden administration’s concessions would change how border officials rely on Title 42 and potentially allow more migrants to seek asylum in the U.S.

The Biden administration and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) agreed to “a streamlined process for assessing and addressing exemption requests brought by particular vulnerable families and other individuals,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said, according to the AP.

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Biden’s Controversial Executive Order Increasing Refugee Resettlement Could Signal New Battle Between Gov. Bill Lee and County Governments/State Legislators

President Joe Biden’s plan to resettle 125,000 foreign refugees this year, a 960 percent increase from former president Donald J. Trump’s 12,000 per year, could intensify an ongoing battle between first-term Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, and elected Republican officials in the legislature and across the state.

“On Thursday, Biden signed an order that will set the maximum number of refugees resettled in the U.S. at 125,000 for Fiscal Year 2021,” Breitbart reported. “The refugee cap is simply a numerical limit and not a goal for federal officials to reach.”

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Biden Expected to Increase Amount of Refugees Admitted into U.S.

The Biden administration plans to announce on Thursday that it will increase the cap on the number of refugees to more than eight times the level at which the Trump administration left it.

President Joe Biden is expected to announce the move during a visit to the State Department. The Trump administration had drastically reduced the refugee admissions cap to only 15,000 for this fiscal year, the lowest since 1980, CNN reports. 

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Controversial Biden Executive Order on New Refugees Likely to Find Support in Virginia

Based on the past actions and statements from Virginia’s Democrat Governor Ralph Northam, President Joe Biden’s controversial executive order increasing refugee resettlements is likely to find support in Virginia. 

After a 2019 executive order by former president Donald J. Trump giving localities autonomy over refugee resettlement, Northam wrote a letter to then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, saying the state would happily continue accepting refugees. 

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27,000 Children Stranded in Refugee Camps ‘at Risk of Radicalization’ by ISIS, UN Official Says

Around 27,000 children, many with parents who are affiliated with ISIS, remain in a refugee camp in northeastern Syria, the United Nations counterterrorism chief said, the Associated Press reported Saturday.

The thousands of children “remain stranded, abandoned to their fate” where they are exposed to ISIS and are “at risk of radicalization within the camp,” said Vladimir Voronkov, the undersecretary general for counter terrorism at the U.N., during an informal meeting on Friday, the AP reported. He added that there are children from 60 countries at the camps who need to be repatriated.

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Trump to Slash Refugee Admissions to Record Low

The Trump administration said on Wednesday it intends to further slash the number of refugees the U.S accepts to resettle from 18,000 to 15,000 in the 2021 fiscal year, setting another record low in the history of the modern refugee program, ABC News reports.

The notice was sent to Congress late Wednesday, just 34 minutes before a statutory deadline to do so. The state department said the proposal reflected the Trump administration’s prioritizing of the “safety and well-being of Americans, especially in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.”

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Biden’s Plan to Increase Refugees Will ‘Overwhelm’ Cities, Trump Says

President Donald Trump criticized presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s plans to allow 125,000 refugees admittance to the U.S. on an annual basis during a speech in Minnesota on Monday, the Associated Press reported.

“He [Biden] would overwhelm Minnesota with refugees, from terror hotspots, depleting public services, burdening schools, and straining city budgets,” Trump said during a speech on a tarmac in Minnesota, the AP reported.

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Report: Taxpayers Billed up to $133,000 per Refugee Resettled in U.S.

Tennessee Star

Breitbart reports, “American taxpayers are billed up to $133,000 per refugee resettled in the United States over the course of a lifetime, a new study reveals.”

In a recent report on the costs to U.S. citizens for its welcoming immigration and refugee policies, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that each refugee resettled in the U.S. especially those in the United States illegally, and use social welfare programs cost American taxpayers anywhere on average between $60,000 and $133,000 over the course of a lifetime.

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Refugees Get Full Access to U.S. Welfare Programs, Expert Says

  One out of five legal immigrants in this country in recent years has come here as a client of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement — and they arrive with instant access to all welfare programs the United States has to offer. This, according to Don Barnett,  a fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies and a resident of Williamson County. Barnett spoke in Lebanon Monday as part of  The Tennessee Star Wilson County Town Hall on Refugee Resettlement at the Lebanon D.T. McCall and Sons’ location. Barnett delivered an extensive and detailed presentation on the history and costs of the Refugee Admissions Program, which began 40 years ago with the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. More than 3 million refugees have been legally resettled in the United States under that program over four decades, Barnett said. The Office of Refugee Resettlement is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. “In 2016 we had 212,000 individuals with instant access to the welfare system,” Barnett told audience members. In 2016, 85,000 of those 212,000 entered through the federal Refugee Admissions Program, while the remainder came through other programs. “In addition, there’s another category called…

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