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James S. Brady Press Briefing Room 11:02 A.M. EDT ACTING COMMISSIONER MORGAN: Good morning. Thank you all for being here today to discuss CBP’s southwest border enforcement statistics for September. But before I get to the numbers, I’d like to say thank you to the men and women of the Customs and Border Protection for their tireless efforts through Fiscal Year 2019, dealing with this unprecedented crisis. They do a phenomenal job securing our nation’s borders, enforcing our nation’s laws, saving lives, and maintaining the integrity of our system and rule of law — and doing so with humanity and...

Border officials apprehended just over 52,000 migrants at the southern border in September -- another drop in numbers for the fourth consecutive month -- as administration officials said Tuesday the numbers are proof that policies at the border are working. Total encounters, making up those apprehended or turned away, were 52,546 in September, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced. It marks a drop of almost 65 percent from the 144,000 encountered in May, and an 18 percent decline from August, when just over 64,000 were apprehended. "This represents the fourth month in a row of a steady decline in apprehensions,"...

President Donald J. Trump’s Efforts to Combat the Crisis at Our Southern Border Are Delivering Results We have taken very unprecedented action to stop the flow of illegal immigration. President Donald J. Trump  STEMMING THE SURGE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to confront this crisis are delivering results. September saw 52,546 aliens apprehended or deemed inadmissible at the southern border, the lowest numbers for any month in fiscal year (FY) 2019. This marked a decline of more than 60 percent from the peak in May 2019. Border Patrol apprehensions between ports of entry totaled 40,507 in September, a...

Democrat presidential hopeful and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro escorted a group of migrants to the United States-Mexico border, but they were all returned to Mexico.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is putting up an invisible bubble along the southern border to stop drug-smuggling drones mid-flight. The agency signed a nearly $1.2 million contract with Citadel, a company that develops systems to counter unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as drones. The company will provide CBP with six Titan Counter Drone defense systems, according to a CBP spokesperson. The kits include a signal box that deploys a 3-km “bubble” around a protected area and a monitor to identify and alert the user to any drones entering that airspace. Any drones entering the bubble are commandeered by the...

DEL RIO, Texas – Border Patrol agents assigned to the Uvalde Station cared for a smuggled toddler over the course of nearly 24 hours after Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents recovered the child from two unrelated individuals identified as a fraudulent family unit, Sept. 23. “Of all the people that smugglers exploit, children are the most vulnerable,” said Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Raul L. Ortiz. “Thanks to the cooperative efforts between HSI and Border Patrol, this child was removed from a dangerous situation and properly cared for.” Early this week HSI special agents identified a smuggling case...

CBP... has awarded three contracts to construct up to approximately 65 miles of new (ALL NEW) border wall system within U.S. Border Patrol’s (USBP) Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector located in Starr, Hidalgo and Cameron Counties in Texas... (It) will include an 18-30 foot tall steel bollard wall, all-weather roads, lighting, enforcement cameras, and other related technology to create a complete enforcement zone. Construction is anticipated to begin in early 2020, pending availability of real estate, and will take place in locations where no barriers currently exist. (September 29) a contract to construct up to approximately 21 miles of new...

The Trump administration has been whittling away at the policy known as "Catch and Release" for two years. After several initiatives that severely limited the practice, the Department of Homeland Security announced they would be completely ending the policy next week. "Catch and Release" grew out of several court decisions that restricted immigration authorities in the way they handled captured illegals. Limiting the time an illegal alien could spend in detention, which forced officials to affect their release, meant that basically all the government could do was hand the illegal a piece of paper telling them when they had to...

Link only because of USA Today: https://news.yahoo.com/trump-administration-announces-end-catch-025632910.html

Can't post articles or link per FR rules.

Otay Mesa Border Wall Site San Diego, California September 18, 2019 3:11 P.M. PDT THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, why don’t you start, Kevin? And this has been a very exciting project, as you know. It’s — for many years, people have wanted the proper wall and we have a wall that — the likes of which, very few places have ever seen. And I want to thank all of the people. General Semonite from the Army Corps of Engineers — we’re working very closely with them. I want to thank Kevin and all of your staff — ACTING SECRETARY MCALEENAN: Thank...

Join Freepers throughout the world to pray for PRESIDENT TRUMP and VICE-PRESIDENT PENCE and for AMERICA: All Levels of Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, Health Care Systems and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. —1 John 5:14 Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. Please join us in prayer for the borders of our nation.

President Trump on Wednesday will conclude his two-day fundraising trip through California with a stop at the southern border to tour a section of the wall near Otay Mesa. The White House announced Tuesday night that Trump would visit Otay Mesa, which juts up against the U.S.-Mexico border, following two more fundraisers in southern California. The president will likely be briefed by border officials on the status of the project, which has been a cornerstone of his first-term agenda. Trump arrived in California on Tuesday. He held fundraisers at private residences near Mountain View and in Beverley Hills. He will...

The Defense Department is no longer moving forward with three border barrier projects in California and Arizona, according to a court filing Monday. The move is a reversal of an earlier Pentagon authorization for about 20 miles of fencing, lighting and other border infrastructure that would have used $2.5 billion in funds redirected from a counter-drug fund.

The purchase of critical strips of private land has cleared the way, they argue, for a new phase. The plan, officials told reporters at a briefing this week, is to construct upwards of 450-500 miles by the end of next year — a massive undertaking representing nearly eight times what construction teams have erected to date. "It's going up fast and we're putting it where the Border Patrol most wants it," Trump said in a video message Sunday. "We're taking money from all over because, as you know, the Democrats don't want us to build the wall — they're fighting...

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke wants to tear down existing border walls between the United States and Mexico. The candidate responded “yes,” when asked about ripping down the border barriers during an interview with Latino USA’s Maria Hinojosa, which was released on Friday.

“Build the wall" became the unofficial rallying cry of then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Three years later, amid a series of legal and political setbacks that have raised questions about the project's future, the Trump administration is making a renewed effort to show voters the U.S.-Mexico border wall remains a top priority — touting recent construction and vowing to pick up the pace going into 2020. The purchase of critical strips of private land has cleared the way, they argue, for a new phase. The plan, officials told reporters at a briefing this week, is to construct upwards of 450-500...

YUMA, Ariz. (AP) — On a dirt road past rows of date trees, just feet from a dry section of Colorado River, a small construction crew is putting up a towering border wall that the government hopes will reduce — for good — the flow of immigrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.Cicadas buzz and heavy equipment rumbles and beeps before it lowers 30-foot-tall (48-kilometer-tall) sections of fence into the dirt. “Ahí está!” — “There it is!” — a Spanish-speaking member of the crew says as the men straighten the sections into the ground. Nearby, workers pull dates from palm...

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals – long a liberal bastion that has been aggressively reshaped into a more moderate court by the Trump administration – handed the president a major win late Monday, lifting a nationwide injunction on his asylum policy. Earlier in the day, Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in California had reinstated a nationwide halt on the Trump administration's plan to prevent most migrants from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, if they first crossed through another country on the way. But in an administrative order first obtained by Politico, the 9th Circuit rolled Tigar's ruling...

The US Defense Department said Tuesday that it would keep up to 5,500 troops deployed at the Mexican border for the coming year to help combat illegal immigration. A week after announcing it would divert $3.6 billion in funds for the construction of an anti-migrant wall on the frontier, the Pentagon said it had also approved a request from the Department of Homeland Security to maintain a troop presence as well. The Defense Department "will provide up to 5,500 personnel to provide infrastructure support; operational support; detection and monitoring support; and air support," said Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Chris Mitchell....