Free Republic

Oil smuggling has been so enormously profitable that no matter how many obstacles Washington and Brussels put up, the barrels kept flowing. With a daily turnover of $1 billion, the black market has been just too attractive. For the first time, however, I see cracks in the illicit business. Millions of barrels of unsold Iranian and Russian crude are accumulating in storage. The reason isn’t just more U.S. and European sanctions and political pressure. Sure, they’ve helped. But the key factor is more mundane: The buyers of sanctioned crude oil have plenty of alternative aboveboard barrels available — at reasonable...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WKRC) - A Kentucky woman was arrested after federal agents intercepted a package from Poland containing what investigators said were OxyContin pills hidden inside Lego pieces. Agents with the Department of Homeland Security contacted local police Feb. 5 after seizing a package at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, per WLKY. Court records state the package, addressed to Amber Back, 41, contained 100 OxyContin pills concealed inside Lego pieces, reports WAVE. That package was destined for her home in Mount Sterling. Police said an officer delivered the package to Back’s address Feb. 6 before detaining her and taking...

One of the more horrible aspects of the mass illegal immigration that was allowed to fester under the presidency of Joe Biden and whoever was running the autopen was the number of unaccompanied illegal alien children that went missing. Most estimates place the number at 300,000. Until recently, we didn't know what had become of those children. Now, we have nearly half of them back. On Friday, Border Czar Tom "The Hammer" Homan took a few moments off from staring down ICE protestors in Minneapolis to take note of this on his official X account.The dedicated, talented, and compassionate men...

Catholic organizations marched in downtown Miami against immigration enforcement operations. NBC6’s Valerie Ryan

Governor Newscum May Be Involved in Dirty Money Laundering Scheme From Mexican Cartels

FBI Director Kash Patel said on Oct. 15 that the agency is cracking down on espionage by foreign adversaries, with an increase in arrests as high as 50 percent. “We have gone after espionage activities against our main counterparts in China, Russia, and Iran,” he said at a press conference. “In China alone, we’ve had over a 50 percent increase in espionage arrests alone, and prosecutions,” Patel said. “In Iran, we have had a 50 percent increase, again, in espionage cases. And in Russia, we had a 33 percent increase in espionage cases alone.” State Department employee Ashley Tellis, arrested...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued with Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul Wednesday over whether the U.S.’ capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro was an “act of war.” Paul expressed disagreement with Rubio by stating that if any country captured the U.S. president in the same kind of operation carried out in Venezuela, he would declare war. President Donald Trump’s administration, including Rubio, have repeatedly stated that Maduro’s arrest was simply a “law enforcement action” and not an act of war against Venezuela. Trump said that the move brought Maduro to “justice” and that the U.S. acted within its constitutional...

LAGOS, Nigeria -- A global crackdown on human traffickers and migrant smugglers coordinated by Interpol led to the arrest of more than 3,700 suspects and aided over 4,400 potential trafficking victims around the world, the law enforcement organization said Monday. Interpol said 14,000 officers carried out Operation Liberterra III between Nov. 10 and Nov. 21. The operation across 119 countries resulted in 3,744 arrests, the protection of 4,414 potential victims and the detection of 12,992 people caught in illegal migration schemes. Authorities opened at least 720 new investigations, according to the agency headquartered in France that helps police in 196...

[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Strickland confronts US bishops on their silence over trafficked childrenBishop Joseph Strickland exhorted not only the bishops but lay Catholics to confront their own complacency over the children being trafficked in the U.S.Bishop Joseph Strickland confronted U.S. bishops about their silence over children trafficked upon crossing the border illegally.During a Catholics for Catholics award ceremony for U.S. border czar Tom Homan in honor of his work saving over 62,000 children from human trafficking, Strickland highlighted the approximately 250,000 children still lost from border crossings under Joe Biden’s administration. The bishop stressed that if the unborn are not...

Trump’s critics charge him with violating both domestic and international law by using the U.S. military to target drug cartels and drug runners, claiming that his actions are unprecedented. But as far back as the Reagan administration in 1986, U.S. Army infantry and aviation assets operated with Bolivian forces against drug producers in that country. And in 1993, President Bill Clinton issued a Presidential Decision Directive on Counternarcotics in the Western Hemisphere, assigning a substantial role in drug interdiction to the military.The National Defense Authorization Act of 1995 authorized use of military assets in drug interdiction: 14 USC Section 526...

“Energy is the chokehold to kill” the Cuban regime, said a person familiar with the discussions. The Trump administration is weighing new tactics to drive regime change in Cuba, including imposing a total blockade on oil imports to the Caribbean country, three people familiar with the plan said Thursday. That escalation has been sought by some critics of the Cuban government in the administration and backed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to two of the three people, who were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive discussions. No decision has been made on whether to approve that move, but...

WASHINGTON – Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder who was among the FBI’s top fugitives and faces charges related to multinational drug trafficking and the killing of a federal witness, has been arrested in Mexico, top Justice Department officials said Friday. Wedding, 44, is accused of running a drug trafficking operation, and officials say he orchestrated several killings to further the drug crimes. He was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and authorities had offered a $15 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel...

PARIS (AP) — France’s navy, working with intelligence provided by the United Kingdom, on Thursday intercepted an oil tanker in the Mediterranean Sea that traveled from Russia, in a mission targeting the sanctioned Russian shadow fleet, officials said. French maritime authorities for the Mediterranean said the ship, the Grinch, is suspected of operating with a false flag. The French navy is escorting the ship to anchorage for more checks, the statement said. The tanker departed from the city of Murmansk in northwestern Russia, it said.

🚨🇺🇸 AMERICAN FENTANYL DEATHS COLLAPSE AFTER YEARS OF EXPLOSION After more than a decade of nonstop increases, monthly fentanyl deaths are now plunging. At the peak, over 6,000 Americans were dying every month. Now the number has dropped to around 2,700. That didn’t happen by accident. Border enforcement tightened. Drug seizures surged. Pressure on cartels increased. Trump warned this would happen years ago. The data is clear. Source: @endwokeness

…The US has accused the Marinera of breaking its sanctions by carrying oil for Venezuela, Russia and Iran. The ship, previously known as Bella 1, was boarded while south of Iceland last week and is now in the Moray Firth while a US Coast Guard ship involved in the operation is berthed in Aberdeen. US administration sources said the tanker would be subject to a judicial forfeiture process when it arrives in the US and any individuals involved in its attempts to flee face federal prosecution.… …But Moscow denounced the seizure, demanding that the US treat Russians aboard properly and...

The Rocky Mountain West remains in the grip of fentanyl and methamphetamine addiction, with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reporting record drug seizures throughout the region in 2025, Wyoming included. Last year, the DEA seized 8,729,000 fentanyl pills and nearly 3,100 pounds of methamphetamine across the four-state mountain region that includes Colorado, Utah, Montana and Wyoming, with fentanyl seizures in Wyoming up by 264% in 2025, according to DEA figures. Statewide law enforcement continues to grapple with drugs infiltrating Wyoming communities as traces of carfentanil, an extremely potent synthetic opioid used to tranquilize large animals, was discovered in small doses...

HOUSTON, Jan 12 - Two China-flagged supertankers that were sailing to Venezuela to pick up debt-paying crude cargoes amid the U.S. oil embargo on the OPEC country have made u-turn and are now heading back to Asia, LSEG shipping data showed on Monday. Following the U.S. announcement last week of a $2 billion deal to export up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil stuck in storage, U.S. president Donald Trump said China would not be deprived of Venezuela's crude. But the Asian country, the first market of the South American nation's oil, has not received any cargoes since last...

President Donald Trump announced in an interview aired Jan. 8 that the United States will begin launching strikes on the cartels in Mexico. “We knocked out 97 percent of the drugs coming in by water, and we are going to start now hitting land with regard with the cartels,” Trump told Fox News. “The cartels are running Mexico,” Trump said. “It’s very sad to watch and see what’s happened to that country.” The announcement comes just five days after Trump ordered an operation to remove Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to the United States to face criminal charges, including narco-terrorism. This...

he oil tanker Marinera, seized by the United States, had been chartered by a private trader under the flag of Guyana.It changed its flag to Russian while in the Atlantic, already being escorted by a U.S. Coast Guard vessel, Caliber.Az reports, citing REN TV.The U.S. Coast Guard began pursuing the tanker off the coast of Venezuela after failing to obtain confirmation from Guyanese authorities that the ship was sailing under their flag.U.S. officials demanded that the captain proceed to a U.S. port, but he refused and steered the vessel into the Atlantic. En route, the tanker requested temporary registration under...

The UK's Ministry of Defence confirmed that it had provided "enabling support" to the US during its operation to seize the tanker. US forces have boarded a Venezuela-linked sanctioned oil tanker in North Atlantic after pursuing it for weeks, the US military announced on Wednesday. "The vessel was seized in the North Atlantic pursuant to a warrant issued by a US federal court after being tracked by USCGC Munro," US European Command said in a post on X. Russia sent a submarine to escort the empty oil tanker the US military had been pursuing and attempting to seize for weeks,...