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McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — The federal government has placed a record number of migrants in the Alternatives to Detention program, which is a way to monitor asylum-seekers without having to incarcerate them, according to new data. The latest data shows there are 150,755 migrant families and single individuals currently being monitored .... ...TRAC reports that most migrants placed in ATD are assigned a SmartLINK app that connects to their cellphones and records their locations. The latest data received and analyzed by TRAC is from Dec. 18...

President Joe Biden has pitched his foreign policy agenda to America under a handful of labels and themes. His administration promises to "build back better" both at home and abroad. During the campaign in 2020, his future national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, spoke frequently of a "foreign policy for the middle class." In language that harks back to the Cold War, Biden convened a 110-nation virtual "Summit of Democracies" this month, with the avowed aim of reasserting American leadership among ideologically aligned friends and partners.... ...Facing expansive global commitments, finite resources, and continued calls from foreign policy elites for American...

China on Tuesday said it would keep modernizing its nuclear program in the name of "safety" but called on the United States and Russia to make greater cuts to their arsenal stockpiles. ... ...Fu’s comments come one day after the five states recognized under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — the U.S., Russia, France, the United Kingdom and China, who are also the five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council — issued a joint pledge to lower the risk of nuclear war. The P5 affirmed that "nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought" and...

China is turning a major part of its internal Internet data surveillance network outward, mining Western social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to equip its government agencies, military and police with information on foreign targets, according to a Washington Post review of hundreds of Chinese bidding documents, contracts and company filings.... ...The software primarily targets China’s domestic Internet users and media, but a Washington Post review of bidding documents and contracts for over 300 Chinese government projects since the beginning of 2020 include orders for software designed to collect data on foreign targets from sources such as Twitter, Facebook and...

The Taliban want to use the flights to send their own people abroad to earn desperately needed money. The Afghan economy is in tatters. The Taliban have halted all flights of Afghan evacuees for the past two weeks in a dispute about how the airport in Kabul is run and who is allowed on the evacuation flights, according to a congressional source, two refugee advocates and a source familiar with the matter. A State Department official involved in relocation efforts confirmed that flights have stopped.... ...The Taliban’s argument is that they run the country and that it is their airspace...

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan took an ominous tone Friday when speaking about efforts to bring Iran back in line with a 2015 nuclear agreement saying, "It's not going well."... ...Sullivan said there has been "some progress" over the last few days but did not appear hopeful that a concrete resolution would be found following months of indirect talks with Tehran. President Biden made it a top priority for his administration to bring Iran back to the negotiating table .....

A global conflict between the great powers of the world is already "in full swing,” according to a senior Russian diplomat, and it's happening in cyberspace. "The war [in cyberspace] is underway and unfolding very intensively,” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s international information security director, Alexander Krutskikh, told a political science conference on Thursday. “The media rightly says that this [is] a Third World War, and what matters now is to calculate the damage and determine who will lose it in the end and what shape the world will eventually acquire as a result of this war.”... ...“No matter how hard...

A former defense contractor was arrested after allegedly attempting to send classified U.S. Air Force information to Russia. John Murray Rowe Jr., a 63-year-old man from South Dakota, "attempted to provide classified national defense information to the Russian government," according to a Justice Department press release Thursday. Row, who is originally from Massachusetts, spent 40 years as a test engineer for multiple defense contractors, where he was able to obtain multiple security clearances.... ...Rowe then spent months exchanging over 300 emails with the undercover agent in which he said he was willing to work with the Russian government and share...

....According to the FBI and Department of Justice, Xu had since 2013 used multiple aliases to target US and third-country aviation companies and experts in that field. He would invite them to China on academic pretexts and then slowly lure them to espionage. Xu's arrest and conviction are unique and shed light on a shadowy conflict in which Beijing is trying to wrestle global supremacy from the US using any means possible. Military secrets aren't the only target. The US's top counterintelligence agency estimates that Beijing steals $200 billion to $600 billion worth of economic secrets from the US every...

China is attempting to woo Equatorial Guinea into allowing them to build a military base off their coast, according to a report - a move which would give Beijing a foothold in the Atlantic, and deeply worry Washington.... ...Were China to convert the Bata port into a military base, it would enable Beijing to repair and rearm their warships and other naval equipment in the same waters in which the US Eastern Seaboard sits. ....U.S. government lawyers accused the president's son - whose Instagram account shows him meeting world leaders such as the Pope and Israel's prime minister; playing polo,...

...Under the version of the Build Back Better Act that passed the House last month, new offshore drilling would be permanently prohibited in three major regions: the Atlantic, the Pacific and the eastern Gulf of Mexico... ...Other policies aimed at limiting oil and gas development have inspired fierce partisan divides on Capitol Hill. But coastal lawmakers of both parties have rallied around preventing drilling off their coastlines.. ...Still, the U.S. oil and gas industry has expressed serious concerns about the limitations on offshore drilling... ...Asked yesterday whether he supported royalty hikes, Manchin told reporters: "I think adjustments need to be...

When the coal-fired power plant just outside the tiny town of Nucla, Colorado, closed in 2019, it had the makings of a disaster. The plant, which opened in 1959, shut down three years ahead of schedule when it ran out of coal, leaving the town shocked and facing the loss of its largest employer. The facility provided nearly half the tax revenue to the region... ....The huge Navajo Generating Station in northern Arizona, within the Navajo Nation, also shut down in 2019. Local leaders complained that plant operators closed the facility decades ahead of schedule, although the region did have...

Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida sponsored a bill on Thursday that would require the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to investigate the "vetting and processing" of migrants apprehended by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officials at the southwest border. The bill is co-sponsored by Republican Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rob Portman of Ohio, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Mike Lee of Utah.... ..."My bill, the Upholding the Law at Our Border Act, requires an immediate investigation to ensure the proper vetting and processing of anyone that...

The Biden administration’s more lenient approach to illegal immigration is now showing up in the nation’s immigration courts, where over the final three months of the last fiscal year, judges issued deportation directives in less than a third of cases. That’s down dramatically compared to 2019 and 2020, under the Trump administration, when 80% of cases resulted in either removal orders or grants of voluntary departure. Department officials said the numbers are the result of the administration’s push to expand the reach of “prosecutorial discretion,” cutting thousands of migrants loose, even though judges did not rule in their favor....

The president’s son was part owner of a venture involved in the $3.8 billion purchase by a Chinese conglomerate of one of the world’s largest cobalt deposits. The metal is a key ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles. An investment firm where Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was a founding board member helped facilitate a Chinese company’s purchase from an American company of one of the world’s richest cobalt mines, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr. Biden and two other Americans joined Chinese partners in establishing the firm in 2013, known as BHR and formally named Bohai Harvest...

The Western States Sheriffs’ Association has issued a declaration of “no confidence” in Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, saying he’s led a Biden team that has turned the southern border into “an invisible line in the sand.” The sheriffs, who represent 17 states, called on President Biden to oust Mr. Mayorkas and find a new department chief who will work with them to restore respect for the border and immigration law.... ...“America’s sheriffs have watched in disbelief as the southern border has turned into an invisible line in the sand,” the sheriffs said this week in a position paper signed...

The U.S. Department of Defense recently released its annual report on China’s military power, which shows that China’s military has made astounding advancements to “modernize its capabilities and improve its proficiencies across all warfare domains” in a relatively short period. The report also made it clear that one of the main objectives of the Chinese military’s modernization is to fight and win wars “against a strong enemy,” a not-so-subtle reference to the United States.The most significant advancement of the Chinese military is its navy, which was almost non-existent four decades ago and now is the largest in the world, “with...

The United States is setting up its own version of the 'Iron Dome' on the Pacific Ocean island of Guam as it begins testing the missile-defense system on the heels of China flexing its military might. Soldiers from Fort Bliss, Texas flew to the US territory weeks ago to help set up the Iron Dome, according to a spokesman for the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command. The system arrived on Guam last week. ....

(CNN)The Department of Homeland Security has rescinded a Trump-era policy limiting entry of undocumented immigrants at legal ports of entry and released new guidance on the process, according to a recently-released memo. Migrants seeking asylum can present at ports of entry to make their claim, but under the Trump administration, DHS put in place policies limiting the processing of undocumented immigrants, including asylum seekers, at ports. The practice, known as "metering," essentially created a waitlist to allow people to enter only if the department had the capacity to process and detain them at one of its facilities. The latest memo,...

Major oil producers on Thursday refused to accelerate plans to gradually lift oil production each month, raising the potential for the U.S. to take advantage of prices for the commodity, which trade close to multiyear highs.If capital does start to flow back into the oil field and production from non-OPEC countries, which include the U.S., starts to climb again, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies, together known as OPEC+, will “have to make a decision about how to respond,” said Brogan. OPEC+ reaffirmed their previous decision on production levels at a videoconference held Thursday, and said...