Free Republic

The top Kremlin-installed official in the oblast, Yevgeny Balitsky, said Russia should also have its eye on the Baltic states, as well as Poland and Finland, all five of which are NATO countries... In the interview shared by Russia watcher Julia Davis, Balitsky seemed ready to take on the alliance as he spoke of how the Russian Empire that ended with the 1917 revolution had "lost its footing" as well as "great numbers of people." "I'm not even talking about territories. I understand that it includes Warsaw, Helsinki, also known as Helsingfors," he said... "I don't believe in any diplomacy...

The number of small-boat migrants who have reached Britain since Labour came to power is poised to hit 50,000. The Home Office confirmed 435 arrived on Saturday – bringing the total since the General Election to 49,516. Hundreds more arrived at Dover on Sunday, with official figures due to be released on Monday. It means more than 1,000 migrants have come to the UK since the Government's 'one in, one out' deal with France became operational last Wednesday. The 50,000 milestone is likely to be hit in the coming days amid weather conditions for crossing the Channel. Shadow Home Secretary...

A historic synagogue in Odessa, Ukraine, sustained significant damage following a Russian drone strike this week, one of several Jewish sites caught up in intense bombardments this summer. The Nachlas Eliezer Synagogue in the Peresyp district of Odessa, which was built in 1898 and served the Jewish community until it was closed in the 1920s under Soviet rule, was struck Monday evening by a Russian suicide drone. The strike caused a large fire in the building, which had already partially collapsed in 1992, according to the United Jewish Community of Ukraine. No injuries were reported. “This sacred building, constructed at...

Did you know that the head of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) isn't a Lutheran OR a Christian at all? She's a progressive Communist (atheist) who used to work for Obama & Hillary at the State Department and as Michelle Obama's policy director....

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is quietly developing an artificial intelligence system that could dramatically speed up asylum approvals worldwide. While publicly marketed as an “efficiency tool” to identify bottlenecks in the refugee process, this AI system gives the UN something it has never had before: real-time control over the pace and volume of migration flows. According to UNHCR, the AI is designed to: Analyze global refugee case files in bulk. Flag points in the process where applications stall. Alert UN staff to “optimize” workflows in near real time. Western countries are already under enormous political pressure to expand...

Jailed, in physical pain and feeling utterly defeated, Luis Diaz Inestroza — a Kansas City, Kansas, immigrant who illegally crossed over into the United States 13 years ago from Honduras — has chosen to self-deport. In 2019, during the first term of President Donald Trump, the life of Diaz Inestroza, his 3-year-old stepson, Noah, and his then-pregnant partner, Kenia Mayorga, was featured along with the stories of seven other families in the six-part Netlix docuseries “Living Undocumented,” produced by singer and actress Selena Gomez. Diaz Inestroza and his family would subsequently come to settle in Kansas City, Kansas, where he...

Migrants attempting to land on a beach in Spain were tackled to the ground by locals and tourists before being taken into custody by police. Footage showed 13 men diving off a boat and swimming to the shore, where some were physically restrained by beachgoers in a tourist town in Andalusia, in the south of the country. The incident took place at Sotillo beach in Castell de Ferro on Sunday afternoon. Footage recorded on phones by witnesses showed a motorboat approaching the packed beach at high speed. The men, reportedly of North African origin, started diving into the water and...

Labour's £100 million funding boost to combat people smuggling gangs will not stop small boat crossings, opposition parties have warned. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage branded record illegal migration levels a “national security crisis”, while the Tories suggested Labour's latest “gimmick” will not make a significant difference. The Home Office has announced additional funding to support a pilot scheme of a new “one in, one out” returns agreement with France. Writing in the Daily Express, Mr Farage said: “This is not the first time we have seen a Labour or Conservative government throw taxpayer money at the illegal immigration crisis...

A federal judge out of San Francisco, California, is blocking President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from ending a temporary quasi-amnesty program for tens of thousands of migrants in the United States. As Breitbart News reported, in June and early July, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status for tens of thousands of migrants in the United States from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal. Though meant to be temporary, since the Clinton administration, TPS has been transformed into a de facto amnesty program as nearly every president has routinely extended it and designated new countries...

Mass migration was the overwhelming driver of near record high population growth in England and Wales last year, sparking warnings that Britain is fighting for its very “survival”. The three top years for population growth in modern history were 2022, 2023, and 2024 says the Office for National Statistics, revealing the population of England and Wales rose by 706,881 people in the year up to mid-2024 to a total of 61.8 million people. The official statistician noted that 98 per cent of the population growth was due to the net migration of 690,147 during the time period, the BBC states....

Many Hispanic Americans living along the U.S.-Mexico border are voicing strong support for President Donald Trump’s handling of immigration enforcement, adding that they got exactly what they voted for.In the 2024 presidential election, Trump managed to flip several border counties that had not voted for a Republican president in decades, and in one particular case, for more than a century. President Joe Biden’s mismanagement of the border was cited by members of these Latino communities as one of the defining reasons for this change, and Trump’s historic crackdown on illegal immigration has kept them satisfied with their choice. “Oh, I’m...

Congress has created several programs to allow illegal border crossers claiming to be minors to remain in the U.S. Despite years of documented abuse of the programs, Congress continues to fund them to the tune of billions of dollars. One is the failed unaccompanied minor program, with decades of documented reports of abuse and neglect of children ... Another is the Special Immigrant Juvenile Petition (SIJP) program that allows illegal foreign national minors already involved in the juvenile court system to remain in the U.S. and obtain a pathway to citizenship. For decades, the SIJP has been exploited by criminal...

Once a hub of migrant passage, the El Paso–Juárez corridor has fallen eerily quiet.Trump’s tariff threats have stunned industry on the Mexican side of the border, with factories laying off thousands of workers. EL PASO, TEXAS — Juan Ortíz trudged through 100-degree heat along the U.S.-Mexico border, weighed down by a backpack full of water bottles that he planned to leave for migrants trying to cross this rugged terrain. Only there hadn’t been many migrants of late. When Ortíz started water drops in this especially dangerous stretch of desert near El Paso nearly two years ago, he sometimes encountered dozens...

Immigration is killing Europe, warned U.S. President Donald Trump as he arrived in northern Britain for a four-day visit to Scotland. President Donald Trump touched down at Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland on Friday evening and briefly delivered on-camera remarks before travelling to his Turnberry golf resort, in which he warned of Europe despoiling its natural beauty with wind turbines and destroying itself with mass migration. While he kicked off with wind energy — President Trump has objected to green energy products marring the natural beauty of his ancestral Scotland for many years — his most strident comments of the...

On Friday’s broadcast of Fox 5 New York’s “Good Day New York,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) discussed the federal lawsuit filed over the city’s sanctuary policy and said that the law should be adjusted to allow for greater coordination with the federal government when it comes to violent criminals, but for people “who are going about following their next step on the American Dream that are undocumented. We should not be harming them at all” by denying them taxpayer benefits because they “are innocent people who are just trying to pursue the American Dream.” Adams said that...

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday said President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order is unconstitutional. In a 2-1 ruling, the appeals court upheld a nationwide injunction against Trump’s order. The three-judge panel included: Majority: Judge Gould (Clinton), Judge Hawkins (Clinton) – Dissent: Judge Bumatay (Trump). “The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” the majority wrote.

Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York admitted in comments that resurfaced Tuesday that she was eager for immigrants to enter the United States to help Democrats with redistricting. Clarke initially made the comments during an Oct. 7, 2021, House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, which were previously resurfaced in a January 2024 post on X from the EndWokeness account before resurfacing again. During the 2021 hearing, Clarke took aim at Republicans who were objecting to Haitian migrants. “I’m from Brooklyn, New York,” Clarke said during the hearing. “We have a diaspora that, that can absorb a significant number of these...

Though she has claimed the DIGNITY Act is not amnesty legislation, her own words undercut that defense.Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., admitted in a recent interview that her DIGNITY Act could serve as a launchpad for eventually granting citizenship to hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals currently in the United States.The DIGNITY Act, according to a press release from Salazar’s office, “allows certain long-term undocumented immigrants to earn legal status, without amnesty or a path to citizenship” so that illegal aliens who broke the law can have an “opportunity.” The bill would create a “7-year earned legal status program allowing”...

As someone who has researched U.S. immigration policy for over three decades, I’m often asked why the Biden administration effectively opened America’s borders, allowing in 9 or 10 million foreigners who had no legal right to enter. Was it done to import voters who would change the balance of power in red states? Or perhaps to bulk up the population of blue states that have been hemorrhaging residents, in preparation for the 2030 census? To change the nation’s ethnic composition? Or maybe just for cheap labor? None of these possibilities was the real reason—though some of those ends certainly have...

---snip--- A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations and the Internal Revenue Service, along with Enforcement and Removal Operations Officers, “conducted a federal court-authorized search” of the store. The spokesperson said agents took 14 people without legal status into ICE custody pending removal proceedings. Denisse Agurto, executive director of Unides Para Servir Norristown, said 17 people were detained in the raid, and as many as 23 were taken into custody.