Free Republic

Decades of writing about politicians has taught me that the successful ones generally do not make big decisions on the fly. If you watch and listen, you can usually spot a deliberative process and defensible reasoning behind their positions. But now comes a major exception: the decision by the Biden administration to throw open our southern border. Two years into this national disaster, I don’t have a clue about why the president and his team are still doing this. What started as a foolish bid to undo everything Donald Trump did has become a permanent policy that undercuts national security...

President Biden is breaking records. Not even 6 months into the fiscal year and border encounters are already eclipsing most past year totals. The Biden Border Crisis is getting worse—and Democrats have no plan to deal with it.

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Chilean police said Monday they have detained an international group of migrant traffickers who have sent more than 1,000 migrants out of the South American nation, including lone children heading to the United States.... ...Police said the ring was led by a Haitian man and also included people from Peru, Paraguay, Venezuela and Chile. The head of the metropolitan police brigade on human trafficking, Giordano Lanzarini, said officials last year detected that children less than 5 years old — offspring of Haitians who are Chilean citizens because born here — were being detected by immigration officials in...

Panama’s foreign minister warned Wednesday that up to 60,000 migrants, many of them of Haitian origin, are making their way through the Central American country toward the US-Mexico border — threatening the Biden administration with a fresh illegal immigration crisis. Erika Mouynes claimed in an interview with Axios that her government had notified the White House of the most recent migration surge, which culminated in more than 15,000 people gathering under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas ... ...Axios, quoting estimates from the Panamanian government, reported that nearly 27,000 migrants are expected to pass through the hazardous jungles of the...

The Senate parliamentarian said Wednesday that Democrats’ Plan B to include amnesty for illegal immigrants could not be included in their sweeping social spending budget reconciliation bill. Democrats had sought to adjust the “green card through registry” date — most recently set at Jan. 1, 1972, during the Reagan administration in 1986 — to 2010, granting a pathway to legal permanent residency to illegal immigrants who can show they came to the United States before 2010.... ....“The policy changes of this proposal far outweigh the budgetary impact scored to it and it is not appropriate for inclusion in reconciliation,” she...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Tuesday sought to bar state agencies from assisting the Biden administration with its immigration efforts, including the transportation of migrants. “Except as otherwise required by federal or state law, no Executive Agency under the direction of the Governor shall provide support or resources to, or in any way assist, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or any other federal department or agency, federal contractor, or non-governmental organization, in transporting to the State of Florida any aliens apprehended at the Southwest Border,” DeSantis wrote. According to DeSantis’s order, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and...

It’s not just Haitians, and it’s not just Texas where the border seems out of control. Some 3,400 migrants — most of them Brazilian, Venezuelan or Cuban — were mired in Border Patrol holding facilities in Yuma, Arizona, over the weekend, according to the sheriff, who said he has never seen such unruliness.... ...Sheriff Wilmot said Yuma was holding about 930 people from Brazil, 819 from Venezuela, 430 Cubans, 400 Haitians, 270 Colombians and others from a mix of countries....Of 110,000 crossers caught in the Yuma Sector this fiscal year, only about 10,000 have been expelled, he said....

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is working on hiring more civilians for processing roles to help respond to the influx of asylum-seekers at the Southern border, with the agency hoping to free up more time for border patrol agents to devote to law enforcement. The Associated Press reported Saturday that CBP graduated its first class of "processing coordinators" in January, with plans to eventually hire a total of 1,200. ...The processing coordinator positions, which last for 13 months and are eligible to be renewed up to four years, have an average salary ranging from $35,265 to $51,103, according to...

Jet skis are set to be used as a new way to intercept migrants in the Channel Officers will use them to spin boats around and escort them back to France Priti Patel has ordered a major replacement of five ageing border patrol boats The new vessels could be used to block dinghies from entering UK waters The sum is on top of the £54million to be given to France for coastal patrols Training is said to have taken place over the summer, with officials learning how to redirect migrants back to French waters using the high-powered armoured ‘personal water...

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said his country can't help the United States with migrants "forever" and that there must be investments in "poor countries" such as in Central America where many migrants come from, the Associated Press reported. López Obrador's comments came after the reinstatement of the U.S. "Remain in Mexico" policy of sending asylum seekers back to Mexico, established under the Trump administration. ... ...The U.S. Supreme Court refused Tuesday to block a lower court ruling ordering the administration of President Joe Biden to reinstate the Trump-era policy of forcing people to wait in Mexico for hearings...

Lawyers have apparently been denied access to a Texas border facility where hundreds of migrant children are being held. The Border Patrol tent facility, which is located in Donna, Texas, is housing more than 1,000 people and has children sleeping in close quarters, with some sleeping on the floor due to a dearth of mats. Nonprofit lawyers are complaining that they have been denied access to evaluate the situation. “It is pretty surprising that the administration talks about the importance of transparency and then won’t let the attorneys for children set eyes on where they’re staying,” said lawyer Leecia Welch.......

Citizens in the small central European state of Slovenia have formed a civil defense force to put a stop to illegal migrants entering their country from Croatia.The Balkan route for migrants heading north from Turkey and Greece into Germany is well-known. However, thanks to Hungary’s national populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the classic Balkan route which starts from Turkey or Greece, goes through Serbia, and then into Hungary has been sealed off. ‘Replacement Migration’, as the United Nation puts it, now comes mainly comes through Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Austria. This is the alternative route that’s been established for illegal...

Pope Francis announced this week he is donating half a million dollars to assist stranded caravans at the US southern border. Red Francis believes in open borders and has attacked American policies that promote autonomy.

It’s only 7.30am but Daniel is already looking stressed. Every few minutes his mobile buzzes and he steps out of earshot to take another call from a client. A shipment is being dispatched tomorrow, and he is still learning the basics of logistics. “The business responds to the market, and right now, the boss says the market is families,” he says... ...Like a travel agent offering a range of package holidays, El Profe punches his prices into a calculator as he runs through the options. The premium package costs $11,000 and includes a plane ticket from Guatemala to the Mexican...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Mexican government said Tuesday there are significant slowdowns at U.S. border crossings, particularly at three of the eight between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas. The slowdowns have been caused by a U.S. decision to re-assign some 2,000 border officers who normally check vehicles at border crossings to deal with growing crowds of migrants. But the slowdowns caused huge backups of trucks and cars, threatening to strangle the movement of goods and people. "If we don't get this back to normal very soon, it is going to have an economic cost for both countries," warned...

Migrants hijacked a cargo ship that rescued them in the Mediterranean Sea and forced the crew to put the Libya-bound vessel on a course north toward Europe, authorities in two European countries said. Italy's interior minister, Matteo Salvini, identified the ship as the Turkish oil tanker El Hiblu 1. He said the tanker had rescued about 120 people and described what was happening as "the first act of piracy on the high seas with migrants" as alleged hijackers. The new route put the ship on a route to Italy's Lampedusa island and the island nation of Malta. The governments of...

BRITISH holidaymakers were caught in travel chaos after 100 migrants stormed a ship in Calais in a bid to get to the UK last night. Brits were left stranded on ferries and the port closed for an hour during the incident 46 migrants who climbed abroad a ferry that arrived from Dover were arrested by French police. They entered the hub at around 8:30pm and used ladders to get on the ship. Two of those who stormed the port fell into the water and had to be rescued by fire crews. A number of ferries set to arrive from Britain...

The Democrats have abandoned their pro-immigration policy which heretofore was even left of Bush and Republican Business. That is, of course, if one can believe Howard Dean’s attack on George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy. Dean sends a chilling message: Republican President Bush has failed at border security and Dean plans to make it a Democrat 2006 election issue. If Howard succeeds, because 81 per cent of the American people polled, demand action, then the law and order crowd in the Republican Party better get on the spore because the Democrats, with the help of their in-house pimp media, are...

Illegal Immigration, Human Trafficking, and Organized Crime Raimo Väyrynen* Abstract It is important to make a careful distinction between illegal immigration, human smuggling, and human trafficking which are nested, but yet different concepts. This distinction is relevant because these different categories of the illegal movement of people across borders have quite different legal and political consequences. Human smuggling and trafficking have become a world-wide industry that ‘employs’ every year millions of people and leads to the annual turnover of billions of dollars. Many of the routes and enclaves used by the smugglers have become institutionalized; for instance, from Mexico and...

"Push one for English, push two for Spanish and Three for Arabic" a benign voice offers you over the phone when you call businesses. Before long, you’ll hear, "Press one for Russian, two for Vietnamese, three for Korean, four for Hmong, five for Swahili, six for Moroccan and seven for Eskimo." Before you push the button for your language, you probably wonder whose idea was it to change English the language of America into different languages? How long can we maintain a cohesive, united and viable country without the ability to talk among ourselves? In his brilliant piece in the...