Free Republic

Ted Cruz has slammed Republican rival Donald Trump for supporting eminent domain – but it appears the Texas senator was once in favor of it, too. In his run for the U.S. Senate in July 2012, Cruz was asked during a debate about his stance on eminent domain when it comes to securing the U.S.-Mexico border. "Let me ask you about a constitutional issue: liberty," the moderator asked Cruz. "What about the liberty of the hundreds, if not thousands, of private landowners in Texas whose land would be seized by the government for what even some in your own party...

A federal government contractor is issuing smartphones to immigrant families released from two massive Texas detention centers as a way to ensure that they are able to contact case managers and reach their U.S. destinations. Officials described the phones as part of a less-restrictive alternative to detention programs designed to make sure that low-risk immigrant families with pending cases show up for court. The phones, they said, are not used to track or monitor immigrants but rather as a safety net. Yaneth Guevara Leyva, who has a pending asylum case, said she received a Galaxy 4 smartphone complete with voice...

It is no secret that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — the very early GOP presidential favorite — has struggled to catch any traction on the road to the White House. Glenn Beck, though, shared Monday a new “really honorable” theory about why Bush might still be in the running. According to Beck’s theory, Bush knows there is no path to the nomination but is convinced that someone has to stop his biggest rival and No. 1 critic, fellow Republican hopeful Donald Trump. “This would make Jeb one of the most honorable men you could ever imagine. He’s going through...

The cost of providing full Medi-Cal benefits to immigrant children who are in California unlawfully could be significantly more than the state's health care agency has projected, according to experts and advocates. That's because state officials may have underestimated the number of kids who will be eligible for the program - though it's hard to know precisely by how much. The Department of Health Care Services has said about 170,000 such children will be eligible for full Medi-Cal beginning in May, when the expansion takes effect' and that covering them will cost the state $142.8 million in fiscal year 2016-2017....

President Obama's latest budget predicts some 75,000 unaccompanied illegal immigrant children will sneak into the U.S. and have to be captured and cared for next year, suggesting the surge that began in 2014 will outlast this administration. Mr. Obama included $319 million in his 2017 blueprint to handle the children and warned that Homeland Security may request additional money if the surge is larger than predicted.

Rev. Fred Morris is familiar with violence in Latin America. Morris, currently leading North Hills United Methodist Church, survived detention and torture at the hands of Brazil's military dictatorship in 1974. That's one reason Morris said he's ready to defy Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and offer his place of worship as a refuge for Central Americans facing imminent deportation to a region with escalating violence. "We are willing to fight this tooth and nail," said Morris, 82. "If ICE wants to come get them, they're going to have to break down the church door." Morris' congregation is one of...

Subtitle: Two days with 10 men who left Central America in early November to embark on an exhausting journey, made riskier by the Mexican authorities' crackdown on migrants. ARRIAGA, Mexico - The police truck appeared suddenly, a glint of metal and glass. The migrants broke into a sprint, tripping over cracked pavement as an older woman sweeping her stoop urged them to hurry. The 10 men rounded the corner and hid behind a row of low-slung trees. Four days into their journey from Central America, the new reality on Mexico's southern border was setting in: Under pressure from the United...

Judith Benitez had gone most of her adult life without knowing how to drive. The 35-year-old woman from Mexico who is in the U.S. illegally would ask family members for rides to pick up her children from school. Trips to the grocery store or the doctor's office were complicated. That changed last year when Assembly Bill 60 was implemented, granting people in the country illegally the right to obtain driver's licenses in California. "Truthfully, it was an extremely emotional time because having a [driver's] license isn't just any little thing," she said. "We feel a little more protected."

The Syrian army advanced toward the Turkish border on Monday in a major offensive backed by Russia and Iran that rebels say now threatens the future of their nearly five-year-old insurrection against President Bashar al-Assad. "Our whole existence is now threatened, not just losing more ground," said Abdul Rahim al-Najdawi from Liwa al-Tawheed, an insurgent group. "They are advancing and we are pulling back because in the face of such heavy aerial bombing we must minimize our losses." The Syrian military and its allies were almost five km (3 miles) from the rebel-held town of Tal Rafaat, which has brought...

A group of 184 Cubans, who had traveled through Guatemala to reach Mexican territory at Ciudad Hidalgo in the southern state of Chiapas, received from Mexican authorities a provisional visitor's document which, for humanitarian reasons, allows them to travel the length of this country to the United States. The 39 families, which include a number of pregnant women, left Costa Rica last Thursday on a flight to El Salvador, from where they traveled in four buses through Guatemala to the Mexican border. The National Migration Institute, or INM, provided the 184 Cubans with a provisional visitor's document granting them up...

ATLANTA — A Channel 2 Action News investigation discovered a leaked secret document showing a spike in people from terrorist nations illegally crossing our country’s Southern border. Investigative Reporter Aaron Diamant traveled to Texas, where public safety leaders are scrambling to close the gaps. “Any of this infrastructure can be exploited by anyone,” a former Border Patrol sector chief said. The dramatic pictures from our days-long trip have everyone from Border Patrol agents to lawmakers sounding the alarm, Monday at 5 on Channel 2 Action News.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is planning to cut 50 percent of the budget for aerial surveillance along the U.S.-Mexico border, agents revealed at a congressional hearing Thursday. In an effort to understand why DHS is cutting funding, Texas's Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, wrote a bi-partisan letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. "Any decrease in aerial observation is not only imprudent, but contradicts the very mission of border security enforcement," the letter states. The lawmakers' letter also asks for detailed information about the reduction aerial-based border security, also known as Operation Phalanx. Abbott and...

In a shocking reversal of policy, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are being told to release illegal immigrants and no longer order them to appear at deportation hearings, essentially a license to stay in the United States, a key agent testified Thursday. What's more, the stand down order includes a requirement that the whereabouts of illegals released are not to be tracked. "We might as well abolish our immigration laws altogether," suggested agent Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. Report: MS-13 foot soldiers use 'surge' to cross border, 'colonize new criminal territory' By Paul Bedard• February...

Why even have a Border Patrol at all? Or a border, for that matter. President Obama promised transformational change and he has delivered on that promise. In fact, with less than a year left to his presidency, Obama will likely be pulling out all the stops he can. Now, in an abrupt reversal of policy, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are being instructed to release illegal immigrants captured at the border and not force other illegal immigrants to appear at deportations hearings. The Washington Examiner reports that the stand-down order also includes a requirement that "the whereabouts of illegals...

Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat, pressed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Monday to explain why the agency plans to reduce its aerial surveillance on the Texas-Mexico border. In a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, the lawmakers said the cut to a requested 3,850 hours of aerial detection and monitoring in 2016 amounts to 50 percent less coverage than recent years. “Given the recent surge of migrants from Central America and Cuba along the southern border, we believe DHS should request more surveillance and security resources, not fewer,” Abbott and Cuellar wrote...

The recent raids by immigration agents could be keeping undocumented immigrants in Flint, Michigan from opening their doors to government workers who have been going from home to home to give out bottled water and distribute crucial information. A series of immigration raids on Jan. 2 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, targeted Central Americans who had outstanding deportation orders. Though only 121 mothers and children were targeted in the raids, it caused widespread panic in Latino communities for weeks afterward. Immigration advocacy groups advised people without legal documents not to open their doors to prevent agents from entering...

At least 7,000 Cuban refugees are expected to come to the border in the next coming days. The activity at the Hidalgo International Bridge continues. For 40 years, Jose Angel Rodriguez has made his living driving a cab. He said he's seeing more Cubans crossing the port of entry. "They get here every night, in the morning, and at night they get here. They go to Laredo, too," Rodriguez said. Rodriguez remembered taking a few to a hotel or store. It gets busier each week that passes by. Down the road from the bridge were a handful of 15-passenger vans....

Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee said President Obama has already successfully secured the U.S. border, and objected to the tone of a House border security bill she said militarizes the country. "The president has spent $108 billion on border security, and we have been successful," Jackson Lee said in a Homeland Security committee markup Wednesday. "Oh we've had our moments, but we have been successful."

Germany should completely close its borders to refugees if it is to solve to migrant crisis, a former President of Bavaria has said. Edmund Stoiber -- an elder statesmen in the Christian Social Union (CSU), Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian sister party -- said Germany had to change direction fast, and gave the Chancellor just two months to solve the problem. "Angela Merkel must now change her position, otherwise there will be disastrous consequences for Germany and Europe," Mr Stoiber said in an interview with Suddeutsche Zeitung. In what appeared to be an ultimatum, he added that if Mrs Merkel does...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is planning to expand a program to let would-be migrants from Central America apply for refugee status before they attempt to come to the U.S., Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday. The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees will now conduct initial screenings to see whether migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala may qualify as refugees eligible to come to the United States legally. "I am pleased to announce plans to expand the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to help vulnerable families and individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and...