Free Republic

The White House appears poised for a fight over its policy of separating migrant families who cross the border illegally, even as a growing number of lawmakers are voicing concerns about the practice. Democrats and some Republicans have in recent days visited facilities used to house separated family members, leading to new questions about the process and growing calls for the so-called "zero tolerance" policy to end. GOP Sens. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Susan Collins (Maine) wrote to the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services on Saturday asking for clarity on the administration's practice of separating migrant...

At least 12 people were ejected from an SUV carrying illegal immigrants after it crashed following a high-speed chase with U.S. Border Patrol vehicles near the Texas-Mexico border, a sheriff said Sunday, adding that five people were believed dead.

In the wake of the bloody melee, a curfew is in place in Lewiston, a longtime gateway city for Somali migrant resettlement. And increasingly, Lewiston, Maine resembles Manchester, UK or Saint-Denis, France than an American city. Police said Thursday a man who was badly beaten two days earlier in a nighttime brawl near Kennedy Park remains in guarded condition. A clash of two groups occurred on Knox Street after teens in a car reportedly drove past the park and shot pellets and BBs at a group gathered there, according to Sun Journal sources who said they witnessed the events. Several...

. Cardinal Timothy Dolan blasted the Trump administration’s policy of separating kids from their parents on Friday night, calling it “un-American and unbiblical.” The White House got into holy hot water this week when Attorney General Jeff Sessions and press secretary Sander Huckabee Sanders both referenced scripture to claim the administration has the moral authority to forcibly take kids away from parents if they cross the southern border illegally. “I mean, that’s just unjust. That’s un-American and unbiblical,” Dolan, leader of New York City’s 2.8 million Catholics, told CNN on Friday night. Sessions specifically cited the Apostle Paul who in...

Where did the current policy of separating children from the parents during Illegal border crossings originate? All I find when I search are it's all the Trump Administrations fault. Every search engine seems to come up nothing but the Left's viewpoint here. Yet I have read someplace that these policies predate Trump. So any help appreciated on information on this.

The 17,000 individuals named in the NYPD’s gang registry are 99 percent black or Latino, Chief of Detectives Dermot F. Shea revealed this week, according to the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange. Shea, testifying Wednesday before the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety, was talking publicly for the first time about one of the department’s most popular crime-fighting tools. He said the database is 65 percent African Americans, 24 percent non-white Hispanics, and 10 percent black Hispanics. He said the average age of those included is 27 and that 1,460 of those listed are younger than 18.

LAREDO, Tex. — Last spring, as Central American children flooded into Texas in a way he had never seen in his three-decade career, Border Patrol agent Robert Harris decided to experiment. His intelligence analysts estimated that 78 percent of the guides smuggling other migrants were Mexicans younger than 18 — teenagers often hired or conscripted by drug cartels that knew they would not be prosecuted if caught — and he wanted to attack this loophole. “Why don’t we remove these juveniles from the smuggling cycle?” Harris, the outgoing commander of the Laredo sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, recalled...

Rubilia Sanchez knew she had to flee her hometown of Tecun Uman after gangs repeatedly threatened to rape and murder her. So she took her four daughters and made the familiar, dangerous trek out of Guatemala, through Mexico and into the United States, where she requested asylum. After waiting for four years, she finally got a date to plead her case to U.S. officials: July 26. But now, her already hazy future — and that of others fleeing gang violence in Latin America — has been thrust into greater uncertainty. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions ordered immigration judges to stop granting...

As Chancellor Angela Merkel fights to save her government in a heated battle over immigration, an opinion poll Friday showed most Germans support the tougher line of her rebel interior minister. The survey found that 62 percent of respondents were in favor of turning back undocumented migrants at the border, in line with the stance of Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who is openly challenging Merkel. And 86 percent want faster deportations of rejected asylum seekers, a process now often held up by bureaucratic hurdles and legal challenges, according to the Infratest dimap poll. The survey turns up the pressure on...

The Department of Health and Human Services hosted Breitbart News and other media on a tour of a facility in El Cajon, California, on 'Friday' where migrant children are being sheltered. The children are separated from their parents — or, to be precise, from the adults accompanying them, 'who may or may not be their parents' — when their parents cross the southern U.S. border illegally and are caught and detained. The facility at El Cajon, however, is not a “cage.” It is a comfortable facility providing lodging, meals, clothing, medical care, education, recreation, counseling, and other services.

The White House said Friday that President Trump supports House legislation that closely tracks his priorities on border security and limiting legal immigration, walking back comments he made on national television rejecting the GOP bill. The reversal came after hours of confusion on Capitol Hill, where Trump’s words roiled an already fragile internal debate between conservative and moderate House Republicans who have been trying to find an immigration compromise after months of false starts. “The president fully supports both the Goodlatte bill and the House leadership bill,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said, referring to legislation drafted by House Judiciary...

Next week, the House of Representatives will consider two immigration bills, a bill sponsored by Rep. Goodlatte, R-Va., that conservatives are supporting and a more moderate bill with a special pathway to U.S. citizenship for DACA recipients. In an interview on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning, President Donald Trump announced that he will not sign a moderate immigration bill. @realDonaldTrump: "I need a bill that gives this country tremendous boarder security... we have to have the wall, if we don't have the wall there is no bill" Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus have pressured House leadership for months to...

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded Thursday to Jim Acosta's attempts to interrupt by taking a shot at the CNN correspondent's comprehension abilities. Acosta asked during the daily press briefing about comments made the same day by Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the immigration situation at the southern U.S. border. "On these children that are being separated from their families as they come across the border, the attorney general earlier today said that somehow there's a justification for this in the Bible," Acosta started. "Where does it say in the Bible that it's moral to take children away...

We were told that it would be better if illegal immigrants were drawn out of the shadows and documented. Therefore, an American president illegally amnestied many without the consent of the people’s representatives, something that even King George couldn’t do without parliament. Yet one look at new government data provided to Rep. Steve King and shared exclusively with Conservative Review shows that, six years into the illegal amnesty, we still know very little about the amnestied population. What we do know paints a disturbing picture of our government placing the desire for legalization at all costs ahead of its own...

Senior White House officials worked with House Republicans for weeks on a compromise immigration measure, but were careful to avoid saying anything publicly that would sink the measure. That changed Friday morning when President Donald Trump walked out to the White House’s North Lawn. House Republicans reached agreement on a sweeping immigration overhaul measure after conservatives, moderates and leaders negotiated behind closed doors for weeks — with White House legislative affairs director Marc Short also involved. Members said Thursday they had reached a deal to vote on two measures: a measure favored by conservatives and a compromise version in which...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said Sunday that while former President Barack Obama was in office, she was not well enough aware of the mistreatment undocumented immigrants faced, saying she has since learned more about the issue. CNN's Jake Tapper mentioned to Feinstein a recent viral photo of undocumented children in a holding cell that was tweeted out by former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D.). The photo was shared by many who attempted to condemn the Trump administration's actions at the southern U.S. border. The issue with the photo going viral for that reason is it was taken in...

President Trump on Friday said that he would not sign the House GOP’s compromise immigration bill, delivering a major blow to Republican leadership’s plans. “I certainly wouldn’t sign the more moderate one,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends” during an impromptu interview on the White House lawn. “I need a bill that gives this country tremendous border security. I have to have that.” GOP leaders reached an agreement to hold two votes next week on a pair of immigration bills including a compromise immigration bill, which is the product of weeks of negotiations between moderate Republicans and conservatives, and a...

A three-day federal immigration sweep targeting convicted criminals in the U.S. illegally resulted in 162 arrests across Southern California, federal authorities said on Thursday. Almost 90 percent of those arrested in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties had criminal convictions, while the rest were illegal re-entrants or immigration fugitives, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel faced a tense showdown Thursday within her divided conservative camp over the flashpoint issue of immigration that could threaten her political future. Merkel was confronted with an open rebellion by her hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, long a fierce critic of her liberal stance on refugees who wants to toughen border controls. After late-night talks between them failed to resolve the dispute, a parliamentary session Thursday was suspended to allow the rival camps — Merkel’s CDU and its traditional sister party from Bavaria, Seehofer’s CSU — to each huddle for strategy talks. Seehofer has demanded, as...

What an ugly display. On Thursday, Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his much anticipated review on FBI and DOJ actions during the Hillary Clinton email investigation. But rather than discuss the findings from the report that reveal anti-Trump bias and corruption at the highest levels of the Department of Justice and FBI, the liberal White House reporters peppered Sarah Huckabee Sanders with questions on the Obama policy of splitting children of illegal aliens from adults. Liberals are determined to blame Trump for a policy that was on the books during the Obama years. At one point CNN political analyst Brian...