Free Republic

Migrants, and more important, the people who traffic and profit from migrants, are like the stock market: They're forward-looking. They make decisions now based on what they see coming down the pike.So surprise, surprise, the media's crowning of Joe Biden president, along with many world leaders congratulating him and conducting their affairs of state with him, even as legal challenges are going on, has sent a message to Central America's gangs and Mexico's cartels, who control migrant smuggling routes to the U.S. It's time to profit. It's time to go. A new border surge has begun, in anticipation of a...

President Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are headed to a final showdown over his signature border wall, setting the stage for a rematch of a fight two years ago that shuttered the government for 35 days. The White House is requesting a $2 billion installment to continue building the wall, while Pelosi and House Democrats have countered with no new money for construction. Democrats have also proposed rescinding earlier wall funding, according to a House Democratic aide. And to guard against Trump’s workaround to the previous standoff, the House spending bill prohibits the administration from shifting funds from other...

The current 700 miles plus Border Fences Upgrade Project is now over 400 miles completed, and the majority of the remaining miles are now currently under construction instead of being pre construction.

The U.S. government collected its first fine as part of a new bilateral deal that forces Mexico to prosecute anyone who damages the fence along one part of the southern border and send penalties collected to the United States. American and Mexican leaders reached a deal a year ago this week to start arresting, prosecuting, and seeking damages from anyone caught attempting to destroy border barrier in southeastern California, where Border Patrol made $396,000 worth of repairs at 1,300 cuts in its fence in fiscal 2019.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Wednesday told lawmakers that it was a “mistake” to censor the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) over a tweet about the wall at the southern border -- as the company faces accusations of political bias.

402 miles completed, 249 miles under construction, 87 miles under pre-construction (738 Total).

A proposed 2021 budget released by the U.S. Senate gives almost $2 billion toward the construction of the Trump administration’s border wall. The move has angered environmental groups that are already entangled in legal battles against current wall spending. Paulo Lopes, public lands policy specialist for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the amount proposed for 2021 is larger than wall budgets agreed upon in the past. "Twenty-eighteen, 2019 and 2020 they’ve passed into law about $1.3, $1.4 billion. So this is definitely more than what Congress has agreed to in the past," he said... The Trump administration marked the...

The preserve... is located just feet from the Rio Grande and about 9 miles outside of the town of Roma, Texas... “The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, along with the Department of Justice, have acquired a tract of land owned by the Valley Land Trust Fund (VLTF) on behalf of U.S. Customs and Border Protection for enforcement zone. The Offer to Sell was signed voluntarily by the VLTF on November 3, 2020, for a total of approximately 2.5 acres,” the statement read.

Mexico never paid for any of it. It’s less than half finished. And on Jan. 20 or soon thereafter, construction will come to an abrupt halt on the “big beautiful wall” that President Donald Trump promised to build along the U.S.-Mexico border. The project has cost $15 billion so far, most of it diverted from the military budget after Congress refused to provide full funding. President-elect Joe Biden vowed during the campaign to kill the project, but leave in place whatever the Trump administration leaves behind. At the moment, that’s about 400 miles worth of levee wall and 30-foot-tall bollard...

Border wall construction continued at full tilt Tuesday (10 Nov) in South Texas... Officials with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees billions of dollars worth of government border wall contracts along the Southwest, confirmed to Border Report in an emailed statement that construction of the border wall infrastructure system will continue on projects that are already funded. “CBP continues with the construction of new border wall system with funding that has been received through Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. The majority of contracts have been awarded and construction is well under way for the approximately 738 miles funded to date......

The federal government has been granted the right of entry for more than 90% of the riverfront property they have sought access to for determining where the border wall will go in Webb County, and they are approaching 90% completion in the design of the project, according to Laredo Sector Border Patrol Chief Matthew M. Hudak. They remain on track to begin construction in January 2021. Hudak could not say exactly where this will begin but noted that they will work in segments, beginning within the City of Laredo.

The United States could see an “invasion” of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border if Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden dismantles President Trump’s enforcement priorities, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Chief Mark Morgan says. In a statement this week, Morgan suggested that an overturning of Trump’s policies — which have greatly slowed illegal immigration — by a Biden administration would invite a flood of migrants to the southern border. “If the current network of tools and policies we have, which ended catch and release, are stopped — we won’t just have another illegal immigration crisis — we’ll have an invasion,”...

I’m old enough to remember when Jack Dorsey was dragged before Congress and declared that Twitter had to do better in terms of suppressing free speech. Apparently, the people running his shadowbanning and blockage operations didn’t get the memo because they’re still up to their old tricks. With barely 48 hours to go before the election, Twitter blocked the account of the interim head of Customs and Border Protection, Mark Morgan. And what was the dire sin on Morgan’s part that put him on the No Tweets for You list? He tweeted about the purpose and benefits of a wall...

Twitter suspended U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan for a post celebrating the success of the U.S. southern border wall keeping violent criminals from reaching American communities. According to screenshots shared exclusively with The Federalist, Twitter locked Morgan’s account Wednesday afternoon for apparently violating platform rules governing “hateful conduct” after the commissioner attempted to tweet about the wall’s benefits.

Twitter locked the account of CPB Commissioner Mark Morgan over a post that touted the progress and effectiveness of the wall on the southern border. The tweet claimed that “walls work” and that “every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators and drugs from entering our country,” according to a screenshot provided to The Federalist. Twitter said Morgan violated the company’s rules against “hateful conduct.” “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease,” Twitter’s message...

Twitter suspended U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan for a post celebrating the success of the U.S. southern border wall keeping violent criminals from reaching American communities.

A ProPublica/Texas Tribune review of federal spending data shows more than 200 contract modifications, at times awarded within just weeks or months after the original contracts, have increased the cost of the border wall project by billions of dollars since late 2017. This is particularly true this year, in the run-up to next week’s election. The cost of supplemental agreements and change orders alone — at least $2.9 billion — represents about a quarter of all the money awarded and more than what Congress originally appropriated for wall construction in each of the last three years.

The acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to visit McAllen on Thursday to "celebrate the historic completion of 400 miles of new border wall system under the Trump Administration," according to a news release from Border Patrol. Acting Secretary Chad F. Wolf plans to hold a news conference with Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Rodney Scott, the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol; and Brian Hastings, the chief patrol agent for the Rio Grande Valley Sector. The news conference will take place at 10 a.m. Thursday (29 Oct).

YUMA — Dozens of construction workers labor like a bustling colony of ants — only this colony is located along a 126-mile-long portion of the United States's southern border with Mexico. Standing 100 feet from one of these construction sites, watching workers install the concrete-filled steel beams into the ground feels painfully slow, but driving along the banks of the river and canal, the workers' years of labor is overwhelmingly evident and compelling. The wall is up, everywhere. Workers decked in orange vests operate the yellow construction machines in a robotic fashion as they drop the maroon pieces of steel...

Jose Garcia Hernandez, a 39-year-old construction worker from Chiapas, Mexico, straggled behind the group of seven other migrant men Wednesday afternoon after U.S. Border Patrol agents expelled them into the desolate border town of Sasabe, Mexico, just feet from the one-gas-station town of Sasabe, Arizona. Wearing a blue surgical mask, camouflage baseball cap, and a backpack, Hernandez said he was apprehended while walking along Highway 86 near the tribal reservation lands of the Tohono O’odham Nation, about 40 miles away. He had been trying to get to Phoenix, which is about 170 miles north of where Border Report witnessed him...