Free Republic

President Trump issued full pardons to two former Border Patrol agents on Tuesday. A federal prosecutor filed charges in 2007 against the two agents for the shooting of a drug smuggler. President Trump issued a full pardon to former U.S. Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. “These former Border Patrol Agents have been supported by one hundred members of Congress, including Rep. Louie Gohmert, Rep. Steve King, Rep. Ted Poe, Rep. Paul Gosar, Rep. Brian Babin, as well as the U.S. Border Control Foundation and the Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund,” the White House said. The White...

438 miles complete, 213 mile under Construction, 87 miles in Pre-Construction (738 miles total has been funded).

Congress will approve $1.375 billion for a wall along the southern border as part of the $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill for the next fiscal year, according to GOP sources. Congress is expected to pass the measure on Monday along with a $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill. The White House signaled Sunday evening that President Trump would sign it... Budget law requires the government to spend appropriated funds, but it is unclear whether President-elect Joe Biden will seek a way to circumvent the law or whether Congress would take action to enforce the law. The funding for the wall in...

On Thursday, I had a long phone conversation with a politician in Mexico. Forgive me for using "a source familiar with the situation" rather than giving you his name. Trust me that this guy knows the situation, and I cannot give you his name. We discussed the potential change from President Trump to Biden regarding U.S.-Mexico policies. Let me summarize the conversation by saying my friend is sure that a President Biden is going to get an earful from President Andrés López-Obrador about the border. In other words, Mexico is very happy that they've shut down their southern border and...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Thursday defended Mexico’s restrictive immigration policy, which has prevented many Central American migrants from crossing Mexico to reach the U.S. border. Mexico has sent National Guard officers and immigration agents to the southern border with Guatemala to prevent migrant caravans from entering Mexico and detain those who do manage to cross.... ...López Obrador’s willingness to assume ownership of the immigration policies despite evidence of U.S. pressure reflects his nationalist stance on most issues; he has made defending Mexico’s sovereignty a central issue...

Former Vice President Joe Biden is opening doors to the world’s migrants and is promising to temporarily halt deportations and eliminate President Donald Trump’s reforms at the United States-Mexico border. In a press call this week, Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan suggested that Biden’s rhetoric — where he has promised an amnesty for illegal aliens and to dismantle Trump’s legal wall — is contributing to illegal immigration at the southern border. Axios’s Stef Kight said, “cartels and human smugglers are fueling perceptions that our borders will once again be wide open, and that we will be reinstating...

SAN FERNANDO, Mexico — Miriam Rodríguez clutched a pistol in her purse as she ran past the morning crowds on the bridge to Texas. She stopped every few minutes to catch her breath and study the photo of her next target: the florist. She had been hunting him for a year, stalking him online, interrogating the criminals he worked with, even befriending unwitting relatives for tips on his whereabouts. Now she finally had one — a widow called to tell her that he was peddling flowers on the border. Ever since 2014, she had been tracking the people responsible for...

The U.S. government would save about $2.6 billion if President-elect Joe Biden halts construction on the border wall project on his first day in office, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates reviewed by The Washington Post... The U.S. Army Corps estimates show there will be about $3.3 billion in unused funds in the project’s accounts on January 21. Army Corps officials have engaged in a series of meetings in recent weeks about how to end the contracts — and what can be done legally, and when... While the Biden administration will have the ability to terminate or modify...

LOS ANGELES/MONTERREY, Mexico - After spending eight months of 2019 in a makeshift tent camp in the dangerous Mexican border city of Matamoros, Israel Martinez abandoned his hopes of seeking asylum in the United States. Beaten down by the cold and unsanitary conditions in the encampment, Martinez accepted a free flight back to his homeland of Honduras in January 2020. Last month, his house was severely damaged by flooding during back-to-back hurricanes. And in January, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, who has promised to relax some immigration restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border, takes power. Those factors have prompted Martinez and others...

In the Coronado National Memorial — where conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado entered what is now Arizona — contractors are pulverizing the wilderness in a rush to put up as many miles of border wall as possible before the Trump administration vacates Washington. They're dynamiting mountainsides and bulldozing pristine desert for a barrier the incoming Biden administration is expected to cancel... This is one of 29 construction projects being performed by 13 different contractors from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas. In Arizona, contractors have added shifts — they're working all night long under light towers to meet Trump's goal of...

A South Texas Congressman has gotten several lawmakers to sign off on a letter asking President-elect Joe Biden to rescind border wall contracts and other aspects with the controversial 730-mile project started by the Trump administration, Border Report has learned. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, on Wednesday sent Biden a letter asking that the new administration rescind the national emergency declaration and reprogrammed funding; direct the Department of Justice to dismiss all condemnation suits; terminate for convenience all current and pending Army Corps of Engineer contracts; and rescind Homeland Security waiver authority relating to the construction of new border barriers.

Two ruinous hurricanes that wrecked and flooded swathes of Central America last month have increased the number of families planning a risky journey northward. And after a year of travel bans and soaring unemployment, demand to reach the U.S. was already high. “There are going to be caravans, and in the coming weeks it will increase,” said Jose Luis Gonzalez, coordinator of the Guatemala Red Jesuita con Migrantes, a non-governmental organization. “People are no longer scared of the coronavirus. They’re going hungry, they’ve lost everything, and some towns are still flooded.” Joe Biden has pledged to abolish many of the...

GUADALAJARA (Reuters) - Early next year, a Chinese businessman named Gan Xianbing will be sentenced in a Chicago courtroom for laundering just over $530,000 in Mexican cartel drug money. Gan, 50, was convicted in February of money laundering and operating an unlicensed money-transfer business that whisked cartel cash from U.S. drug sales offshore. Gan has maintained his innocence; his lawyers say he was entrapped by U.S. authorities. The trial garnered few headlines and little of the public fascination reserved for kingpins of powerful narcotics syndicates that U.S. federal prosecutors said Gan served. Still, U.S. law enforcement officials told Reuters that...

423 miles completed, 228 miles under construction, 87 miles under pre-construction (738 Total).

<p>A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a lower court was wrong to bar the Trump administration from taking $3.6 billion from military construction projects for a border wall.</p><p>A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that El Paso County and the nonprofit Border Network for Human Rights did not have the standing to challenge President Donald Trump’s redirecting funds from more than 100 military construction projects, including a $20 million road project at a base located in the city. The appeals court found that neither the county nor the Border Network proved it was directly harmed by Trump’s move. The court reversed a December 2019 ruling by U.S. District Judge David Briones.</p>

<p>HOUSTON - A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a lower court was wrong to bar the Trump administration from taking $3.6 billion from military construction projects for a border wall.</p><p>A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that El Paso County and the nonprofit Border Network for Human Rights did not have the standing to challenge President Donald Trump’s redirecting funds from more than 100 military construction projects, including a $20 million road project at a base located in the city. The appeals court found that neither the county nor the Border Network proved it was directly harmed by Trump’s move. The court reversed a December 2019 ruling by U.S. District Judge David Briones.</p>

415 miles completed, 236 miles under construction, 87 miles under pre-construction (738 Total).

Mexico City (AFP) - Mauricio Lopez was deported to Mexico after spending most of his life in the United States. Now he hopes against the odds that Joe Biden's administration will let him return. The 26-year-old English teacher is one of thousands of migrants known as "dreamers" who as children were taken to the US by their parents. Like many Mexicans who were expelled, in particular under outgoing President Donald Trump, Lopez is hoping that President-elect Biden will push for changes that protect undocumented migrants. "It would be good for us if he relaxes immigration laws ... if there are...

MATAMOROS, Mexico — Griselda was 38 weeks pregnant when she sneaked across the Rio Grande into the United States late one night last year. She started having contractions in a Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, and was taken to a hospital where the medical staff gave her an injection to calm her pain and stop her from going into early labor. Two days later, she was on a crowded bus back to Mexico, moving into a tent camp with hundreds of other migrants who were waiting for permission to enter the United States. When she finally gave birth 10...

409 miles completed, 242 miles under construction, 87 miles under pre-construction (738 Total).