Free Republic

With binoculars in hand, an assault rifle slung over his chest and a Glock pistol on his hip, a man named Will scans the banks of the Rio Grande looking for anyone trying to cross from Mexico into Texas. Will is a member of the Patriots, a group of heavily armed private citizens who use displays of force to intimidate people attempting to cross the border illegally. Since early summer the Patriots have patrolled an area near Brownsville, Texas. "If you spot them and shine your light on them, that lets them know that you're there," said the 25-year-old construction...

Federal officials are due to open a huge family detention centre in southern Texas that will house immigrant adults with children while they await deportation. The Texas Observer reports that federal officials are preparing to open the nation’s largest family detention centre, a 2,400-bed facility that will nearly double the current capacity to house immigrant families awaiting deportation. The centre will be developed on a sprawling 50-acre property near the town of Dilley, 70 miles south-west of San Antonio, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials told the monthly magazine. :snip: Earlier this year, federal officials opened family detention centres in...

Hispanic lawmakers and immigration advocates harshly criticized President Barack Obama's decision to delay executive action on immigration and vowed to keep pressuring him to make bold changes. Democratic Representatives Luis Gutierrez and Tony Cardenas on Sunday accused Obama of playing politics the day after the president said he would wait until after November's congressional elections to change policy on immigration. The announcement marked a reversal for Obama, who publicly promised to act by the end of summer. "Playing it safe might win an election," Gutierrez said on ABC's "This Week" program. "But it almost never leads to fairness, to justice...

The school year is at its beginning. We have millions of United States children needing school supplies, school clothes, book bags, school lunches, and accommodations If you thought the cost of educating our own children was expensive, just wait until you get a load of the “back to school” price tag that has even the stanchest advocate of Amnesty gasping. For months, we have been reporting on the army of illegals, mainly 15 to 17 year old boys paying drug cartels $3500 to get here, flooding over our Southern Border. We even know that our own federal government paid for...

A Texas catering business will pay the United States $26,400 for engaging in “citizenship-discrimination,” as part of a settlement with the Justice Department announced Tuesday. Culinaire International unlawfully discriminated against employees based on their citizenship status, the Justice Department claimed, because it required non-citizen employees to provide extra proof of their right to work in the United States. Culinaire has agreed to pay the United States $20,460 in civil penalties, receive training in anti-discrimination rules of the Immigration and Nationality Act, revise its work eligibility verification process, and create a $40,000 back pay fund for “potential economic victims.”

When I was commander serving in combat, I always looked for indicators, warnings and trends, and one of the things I always wanted our unit leaders and Soldiers to pay attention to was enemy dry runs. Did we just see a “dry run” this past week in San Diego?

many unaccompanied alien children (UAC) were set free in various counties across the country. More were released in Texas' Harris County--in which Houston is located--than any other county in the nation. ... Dallas County received the second most UAC in Texas ... Educating the foreign minors will not be cheap; David Anderson, the Texas Education Agency General Counsel, recently pointed out that due to cultural differences and language barriers, it will be more costly to education immigrant children than it is to educate students who are U.S. citizens. In Texas, more than $45 million will be spent educating the UAC...

Under pressure from nervous Democratic Senate candidates in tight races, President Obama is rethinking the timing of his pledge to act on his own to reshape the nation’s immigration system by summer’s end, and could instead delay some or all of his most controversial proposals until after the midterm elections in November, according to people familiar with White House deliberations. Inside the White House, the timing of an announcement has become the subject of a fierce debate. Some of Mr. Obama’s advisers are urging him to postpone it, fearful of the political ramifications of a sweeping action to protect millions...

Sen. Marco Rubio says that if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid brought the immigration reform bill that Rubio sponsored last year to the floor for a vote now, he would vote against it. Rubio explained that passing his immigration bill wouldn’t be productive, and thus the vote would only be for show. But if “unproductive” and “show votes” automatically deserved a “no,” our solons would rarely vote “yes.” If his bill was meritorious last year, as Rubio believed, it is meritorious now, and should be treated accordingly. Rubio also claims that he doesn’t regret his support for his immigration reform...

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that during the last 6 months, 99% of illegal alien minors who snuck across the border have been released. How can this be? Our president, who never tells a lie, said many times that the illegal kids couldn't stay, that they would be sent home. Instead, it appears that the president misspoke. Or was misunderstood. Or Republicans have twisted his words. Washington Examiner: The Obama administration has released a huge majority of illegal immigrant children who poured over the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this year into dozens of tony counties without notifying the...

Thursday on MSNBC's "José Díaz-Balart," Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said President Barack Obama should use an executive order and grant amnesty to an estimated 5 million illegal immigrants already living in the United States because it will "quell some of the unrest" caused by "racial overtones" of anti immigration rhetoric. He said, "Latinos that are fourth, fifth generation -- they see this as a civil rights issue." Grijalva said Obama's amnesty, "Will quell some of the unrest that we are seeing in our communities and the racial overtones that continue to build around this issue." He explained, "The issue of...

Suit charges that both federal and state law prohibit UC system from using tax dollars to provide discounted in-state tuition benefits and financial aid to illegal aliens (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on August 26 2014, it filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court for the State of California, Los Angeles County, seeking an end to an estimated annual $19.6 million in non-resident tuition waivers currently being given to illegal alien students by the University of California (UC) Regents (Earl De Vries v. Regents of the University of California (No. 555614)). The suit also seeks an end...

On Monday evening, California Governor Jerry Brown said all Mexicans, including illegal immigrants, are welcome in California. According to the Los Angeles Times, while introducing Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who said America is "the other Mexico," Brown "spoke about the interwoven histories of Mexico and California." He "nodded to the immigrants in the room, saying it didn't matter if they had permission to be in the United States." "You're all welcome in California," Brown reportedly said. Brown has made California a sanctuary state by signing the Trust Act, giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. He has also expanded financial...

California: Democratic State Representative and candidate for U.S. representative Pat Murphy said Tuesday that if the underage migrants who have come to the U.S. from Central America aren’t given a “pathway for citizenship” they could become terrorists. [snip]

Need some help remembering: where Mike Huckabee has demonstrated his establishment thinking and his lack of understanding of conservative issues (outside of the social issues)- and where he has bought into big government solutions. I'm on a panel tomorrow about Huckabee in 2016 (I did not choose the topic) - and I need some memory jogging.

Whether or not St. Louis will play host to migrant children who are part of the Central American border surge is still unclear. In the meantime, community members are praying. Nearly 70 people gathered at Tower Grove Park for a prayer vigil for migrant children. The vigil was hosted by a coalition of organizations that, along with St. Louis and St. Louis County, applied for federal grants to help house undocumented youth from Central America. Javier Orozco is the executive director for intercultural and interreligious affairs at the Archdiocese of St. Louis, which co-hosted the event. He says several St....

President Barack Obama is considering key changes in the nation's immigration system requested by tech, industry and powerful interest groups, in a move that could blunt Republicans' election-year criticism of the president's go-it-alone approach to immigration. Administration officials and advocates said the steps would go beyond the expected relief from deportations for some immigrants in the U.S. illegally that Obama signaled he'd adopt after immigration efforts in Congress collapsed. Following a bevy of recent White House meetings, top officials have compiled specific recommendations from business groups and other advocates whose support could undercut GOP claims that Obama is exceeding his...

State Attorney General Kamala Harris is asking private law firms to provide free legal help to the wave of Central American children pouring into the state. Harris has called for a sit-down Wednesday in her San Francisco office with attorneys from a dozen firms, as well as with representatives of nonprofits, legal-aid groups and charities. The attorney general's office itself is legally barred from representing the youngsters, so Harris is using her "convening power" to pull together private help. The exact number of unaccompanied children showing up at the California border is hard to come by, but we're told that...

In addition to reviewing the deportation system of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, the Obama administration is weighing executive actions to change the legal immigration system in ways that could benefit businesses, the Wall Street Journal reports. [Snip] Mr. Obama is reportedly weighing unilateral steps he could take to defer deportations for anywhere from 550,000 to 4.4 million immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, as well as providing some with work permits. The move is sure to draw harsh criticism from Republicans, who argued that they could not pass immigration reform in 2014 because the president cannot be trusted...

The flood of migrant children that sparked a humanitarian crisis this summer was mostly a near-shore affair. Almost all of those children — 98 percent — caught and processed by U.S. Border Patrol this fiscal year came from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador or Mexico. But kids coming from Central America aren't the only ones trying to slip across the border. According to data obtained by Fusion from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, border agents have caught unaccompanied children arriving from as far away as China, India, Albania and Morocco. More than two-thirds of these kids caught and processed by U.S....