Free Republic

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced a reduction in DMV and Parks & Recreation services Friday to help the city deal with the influx of migrants after the failure of a bipartisan immigration bill in Congress. "This is a plan for shared sacrifice. This is what good people do in hard situations as you try to manage your way to serve all of your values. Our values are we want to continue to be a city that does not have women and children out on the street in tents in 20 degree weather," Johnston said in a Friday morning news conference....

The number of homeless people in New York City’s shelter system skyrocketed 53% over the past year — driven by the unrelenting surge of migrants, according to Mayor Eric Adams’s preliminary management report released Tuesday. The report compares data and performance of city agencies for the first four months of the fiscal year — July through October of 2023 — with the same period in 2022. “During the first four months of Fiscal 2024, the average number of individuals in shelter per day increased by 53 percent compared to the same period in Fiscal 2023, driven by the unprecedented increase...

The migrant crisis in Denver has plunged the city's main public hospital deep into the red after patients received $136 million in treatment they couldn't pay for. Denver Health lost $2 million in 2022 - but that was substantially-reduced by a $20 million cash injection from the state. In 2022, the hospital system lost $35 million, with bosses warning of 'dire consequences' for the hospital if 2024 is as bad as the previous two. The rise in costs has coincided with the unprecedented number of immigrants who crossed America's border and arrived in Denver. Around 36,000 have arrived so far...

On Thursday’s broadcast of “NBC Nightly News,” NBC News Correspondent Stephanie Gosk reported on homelessness among students in Los Angeles and stated that increases in the cost of living “and a migrant crisis” are two key factors in a spike in homelessness among students. The segment began with a portion of an interview with Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho saying, “We have in excess of 13,000 students who are experiencing homelessness, that number increased by close to 19%.”

Former President Donald Trump is vowing to shift 'massive proportions' of law enforcement to immigration enforcement – and said he will use a Federalist era to remove suspected gang members and drug dealers from the country. Trump, who ran his 2016 campaign on a pledge to build a border wall and a vow to kick out Mexican 'rapists,' touted his latest hardline proposals in an op-ed in the Des Moines Register. Trump has been stepping up his events there in the final weeks before the Iowa Caucuses, while sitting on a polling lead.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) is begging his wealthy neighbors to help foot the bill, the New York Post reported Friday, as costs regarding migrants climb. “This is a moment where it’s an all hands on deck moment,” he said during a Police Athletic League event, according to the Post. Post. The report continued: “The way it goes, New York goes America goes, but I’m going to need you more than ever to support many of these organizations like PAL, Robin Hood Foundation, and others,” the mayor told the crowd, which included Tony Danza, John Catsimatidis and Mitchell...

The cost of providing education, healthcare, law enforcement and other expenditure resulting from millions of extra migrants adds up to as much as $451 billion a year, says the House study. The 49-page report comes as House Republicans push to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for allegedly failing to constrain the record numbers of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border. It includes the cost estimate of $451 billion from the Center for Immigration Studies, According to FAIR, US federal and state governments spend $182 billion annually to provide services and benefits to non-legal aliens and their dependents. That figure...

New Yorkers are unhappy with President Joe Biden (D) for allowing a wave of migrants to flood their communities, a recent poll shows. The New York Post reported Tuesday that a Siena College survey showed 84 percent of voters believe the migrant issue is a serious problem. Two-thirds of New Yorkers blame Biden for migrant crisis: poll https://t.co/FLeUffZtoU pic.twitter.com/ZOegFzKvP1 — New York Post (@nypost) October 24, 2023 In addition, approximately 64 percent of voters “flunked the Biden administration’s handling of the migrant influx, while only 29% approved,” the article read.

Even as criticism continues to reverberate for the Army-Navy game hotel debacle, Gov. Maura Healey has failed to take aggressive steps to stop the flow of migrants into Massachusetts. Healey in fact has called for smoothing the way for migrants to come into the state and work here while spending more than a million dollars a day contracting with hotels in overwhelmed cities and towns to house the migrants. “All of her statements and actions indicate she is supportive of the resettlement of these migrants into Massachusetts,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “She’s not interested...

What a foul betrayal of basic human decency. After years of shamelessly smearing Republicans as racist Neanderthals for daring to suggest that a physical barrier may stem the raging migrant crisis, President Joe Biden is – all of the sudden – building the wall. 'There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers… to prevent unlawful entries into the United States,' his administration announced this week. You don't say.

Chicago residents have expressed fury at the city's government for offering shelter to a massive influx of asylum seekers, as a youth football team is set to be kicked off their home field to make room for a migrant camp. More than 17,000 migrants have arrived in the Windy City since August 2022, with more than 10,000 in shelters and close to 3,200 staying in police stations and the O'Hare International Airport. The city government says it has so far allocated $328 million in aid. An infuriated local called mayor Brandon Johnson and Democrats 'criminals' for their handling of the...

The dramatic increase in migrants crossing the U.S. border from Mexico has pushed the city of El Paso, Texas, to “a breaking point,” with more than 2,000 people per day seeking asylum, exceeding shelter capacity and straining resources, its mayor said on Saturday. “The city of El Paso only has so many resources and we have come to … a breaking point right now,” Mayor Oscar Leeser said at a news conference.

A group of New York Democrats are calling for a tax hike on the wealthy to help pay for New York’s migrant crisis. The group of 20 New York Democrats, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), released a statement on Monday blasting the government’s response to the migrant crisis and pitching a litany of measures that the city, state, and federal government can take to help. Several of the lawmakers self-identify as Democratic socialists. One proposal the group put forth is to increase state taxes on the top 5% of New Yorkers and have that money go towards homeless and migrant...

Mayor Eric Adams appeared to lash out at Vice President Kamala Harris over the city’s $4.2 billion migrant crisis — marking the first time he’s explicitly faulted President Biden’s controversial “border czar.” “There needs to be an individual who is dedicated to do the decompression strategy for the federal government. Someone should be at these entry points: El Paso, Brownsville, Texas, and others, too, to organize a real decompression strategy across the entire country,” Adams said during a City Hall news conference Tuesday. “One person should, we should be looking at — it is often stated that as the role...

Border czar Kamala Harris, whose administration oversaw a fiscal-year record high of 2.4 million border encounters in 2022, on Monday blamed the nation's migrant crisis on Republicans. "Sadly, what we have seen in particular, I am sad to say, from Republicans in Congress is an unwillingness to engage in any meaningful reform that could actually fix a lot of what we are witnessing," Harris, who has made one visit to the southern border despite handling the White House's border portfolio since March 2021, told NPR. The vice president's comments come just weeks after President Joe Biden said there are "more...

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott thinks border states must take action in the face of federal inaction. But is it too little, too late?DEL RIO, Texas — What happens in border states when the federal government refuses to enforce immigration laws amid a record surge of illegal immigration? Are those states, and the elected officials charged with maintaining law and order in them, supposed to stand back and accept the ensuing chaos in their communities? Or do they have a right, even a duty, to take action and fill the void left by the federal government?In Texas, where the border crisis...

Russia has orchestrated the deployment of special operations troops to the northern border of Belarus to see how sudden surges of migrants to the area are straining neighboring NATO countries' ability to respond, a source familiar with local governments' assessments tells U.S. News – the latest development in Moscow's troubling campaign of destabilization against Europe. It was not immediately clear whether the commandos came from Russia or from Belarus, says former U.S. Army Europe Commander Ben Hodges, who says senior officials in Latvia believe the deployments are at least for reconnaissance, if not some other form of nefarious distraction. The...

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who led U.S. Army Europe until 2017, said he believes Russia's actions over the last year, including the troop buildup along the Ukrainian border in March and alleged involvement in fostering a migrant crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border, are strategic in nature."This is part of an ongoing process to undermine Ukrainian government, to present Ukraine to the West as a failed state so that there is no further effort to integrate Ukraine into the West, into the EU ... or NATO," Hodges said.Russia is being further emboldened by the European Union's failure to apply more...

We are often led to believe that it is the Christian thing to do to keep the southern border open. But is that really the case? This question is all the more acute in our nation’s battle against the spread of COVID-19. President Biden is acting as if there were one standard in dealing with COVID for law-abiding American citizens and another standard for those who break the law – as in the example of the illegal aliens streaming through our porous southern border. Gary Bauer in his End of Day Report (7/29/21) notes: “While the CDC is forcing vaccinated...

DEL RIO, Texas — Something strange is happening here in remote Val Verde County, Texas: the whole world is showing up. In recent months, migrants from far-flung places like Haiti, Venezuela, Africa, and even Uzbekistan have appeared on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, and waded across. Their numbers include families with small children, pregnant women, and the elderly.Not all of them make it. Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez says he and his deputies have seen nine drownings in the county since January — already double last year’s total. The first one was on Jan. 17, a 33-year-old woman from...