Free Republic

Russell Bentley, a self-described “Donbass Cowboy,” joined Russian forces soon after they created a proxy state in eastern Ukraine in 2014. He quickly became one of Russian propaganda’s favorite Americans, receiving a Russian passport and a gig with state-run Sputnik TV. On April 8, the 64-year-old Austin native better known under his call sign “Texas” was detained by Russian soldiers in the city of Donetsk, occupied by Russia for the past decade, according to his wife. Eleven days later, he turned up dead. He is the latest in a string of figures involved in Russia’s 2014 takeover of parts of...

Drug traffickers are spending $1 million a pop to build boats that look like submarines and can carry 4 tons of cocaine for 2,000 miles without refueling. Nicknamed "narco subs," they're made to sneak loads up from South America to Mexico, where the drugs are offloaded and taken overland into the United States. "It is a semi-submersible coffin," said Jay Bergman, Andean regional director for the Drug Enforcement Administration. "You batten down the hatches and you are doing everything to not be detected sailing in the middle of the ocean." At least 13 of the craft have been stopped and...

For US, a terror threat lurks in drug smuggling subs Shift of cargo to arms and people is feared By Bryan Bender KEY WEST, Fla. - Skimming just below the surface, they are extremely difficult to detect from surveillance aircraft or patrol boats. Their sleek design, up to 80 feet in length, can secretly carry several tons of cargo thousands of miles. These "semi-submersibles," which exhibit some of the same characteristics as military submarines, mark a significant advancement in the ability of drug smugglers to slip past coastal defenses. So far this year, the Coast Guard says it has encountered...

The Biden administration placed thousands of illegal alien children in the care of unvetted sponsors, according to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley. The Iowa Republican has released Department of Health and Human Services data showing that during President Joe Biden’s administration, over 11,000 unaccompanied alien children were placed with unvetted sponsors who were not the children’s parents or legal guardians. Additionally, no home visits were conducted for over 79,000 illegal immigrant children. Moreover, some children were “allowed to be placed with sponsors who were actually smugglers and sex traffickers,” according to the Department of Homeland Security. “My oversight continues...

The United States has ordered the deployment of U.S. air and naval forces to the Southern Caribbean Sea to address threats from Latin American drug cartels, two sources briefed on the decision told Reuters on Thursday. The sources had few details of the operation, but President Donald Trump has wanted to use the military to go after Latin American drug gangs that have been designated as global terrorist organizations. The Pentagon had been directed to prepare options. Trump has made cracking down on drug cartels a central goal of his administration, part of a wider effort to limit migration and...

BREAKING: President Trump and SecDef Pete Hegseth just sent out 3 United States Navy destroyers, joined by an attack submarine, near Venezuela to crack down on the cartels. The gloves are finally coming off.

State prosecutors have charged two more migrants as part of an investigation into the trafficking of narcotics and firearms into Chicago by suspected members of the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua street gang. The men are the fourth and fifth individuals known to be charged in the case. Judge Luciano Panici Jr. ordered Yefferson Camacho Cedeno, 27, and Jose Vasquez Hernandez, 30, detained, calling them “member[s] of a transnational criminal organization.” Camacho Cedeno is a Venezuelan citizen who is “not a legal resident of the United States.” He is charged with two counts of gunrunning and six additional charges tied to...

Now that Republicans have narrow control of the House of Representatives, the GOP is investigating the Biden administration with gusto. Still, Republicans seem not to have noticed one major foreign policy scandal that's hiding in plain sight. As I recently reported , the rising scandal surrounding retired FBI senior official Charles McGonigal is perhaps the worst in the bureau’s history. Multiple sources have told me that McGonigal, while still serving with the FBI as head of counterintelligence in New York, shook down Balkan business people, most of them Albanian, in an audacious political corruption scheme worth many millions of dollars....

A few months before he was killed, Dumas gave Huff a USB drive with a letter naming soldiers involved in a wider network trafficking opiates from Afghanistan. Huff, who read the letter, called it an "insurance policy" and "seriously incriminating shit." Three other people independently mentioned the letter to Harp on the record. After Huff was arrested, the USB drive was seized by the Winston-Salem Police Department—which told Harp that the drive was completely empty.

The government for the first time yesterday said illegal immigrants on Algerian-flagged LNG tankers in Boston ``may have had indirect associations'' with the so-called millennium plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport.

UK Sailors-Iran Arrests Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray Monday supported Iran's decision to arrest 15 UK marines in the Persian Gulf last week. "In international law the Iranian government were not out of order in detaining foreign military personnel in waters to which they have a legitimate claim," Murray said, who was also a previous head of Foreign Office's maritime section, carrying out negotiations on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. "For the Royal Navy, to be interdicting shipping within the twelve mile limit of territorial seas in a region they know full well is...

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...

President Trump is upping the ante against the terrorist drug cartels who have been poisoning America and endangering its citizens for decades in an unprecedented fashion. The New York Times reported Friday that Trump ‘secretly’ signed a directive ordering the Pentagon to start using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels. The order provides an official basis for the possibility of direct military operations at sea and on foreign soil against cartels. This means that US troops could find themselves in countries like Mexico battling the Sinaloa Cartel, for example. As TGP readers know, Trump has long floated the...

Wednesday morning, ICE conducted a raid in Los Angeles at a Home Depot where known MS-13 gang members hang out. It was pretty epic. (Yes, I got what I voted for again) It's something you see in law enforcement operations pretty regularly. Law enforcement hangs out in the back of an unmarked, nondescript vehicle, then pounces. But apparently, Penske wants you to know you can't put people in the back of the truck like that! And they're going to tell on the DHS for improper use of their trucks! Here's the statement in case they wise up and delete the...

Police are investigating the death of a 20-year-old Brazilian woman who died on a bus with 26 iPhones glued to her skin. The woman, who has not been publicly identified, died of cardiac arrest on July 29, according to multiple outlets, including the Daily Mail. Cops suspect the young woman was likely smuggling the iPhones, the Mirror reported. Passengers on the bus told police the woman, who was traveling solo, had become ill during the trip from Foz do Iguaçu to São Paulo, according to the reports. She complained she was having trouble breathing. Emergency responders tried to revive the...

"This trade generated as much as $70 billion for Iran, propping up the regime and its nuclear weapons program." China is reportedly using a “dark fleet” to conduct secret ship-to-ship transfers of Iranian oil in an effort to evade U.S. sanctions on Tehran’s tankers. CBS News sent a crew to scout an area roughly 80 nautical miles from Singapore and found four ship-to-ship transfers occurring; all the “dark fleet” tankers had their transponders switched off, and “clearly do not want to be identified,” the outlet reported. “Both ships have a net or something, a tarp, deployed over the stern, covering...

Ukraine counterintelligence investigates presence of sicarios on front line. [Spanish word for a hitman or a hired killer, especially in Latin American and Mexican drug cartels.] Ukraine's domestic intelligence suspects Spanish-speaking volunteers of infiltrating the International Legion to train in flying FPV drones. [First-Person View drones.] Some are reportedly linked to cartels and have been recruited through private military companies.

Illegal immigration used to be commonplace on the roadways of America, but now texas DPS, ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies are cracking down on smuggling networks coast to coast. More show notes: ICE is stopping cars/trucks/moving vans/dumptrucks, sometimes after a chase. Illegals come out like coming out of a clown car.

The widow of slain Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 terror attacks, was reportedly smuggled out Gaza with their kids using fake passports — and has already remarried. Samar Muhammad Abu Zamar managed to slip out of the Palestinian enclave with huge chunks of cash in the early days of the war, Ynet reported Wednesday, citing multiple sources. The Birkin bag-loving widow fled with the couple’s two young sons to Turkey, where she remained in hiding as Israeli forces hunted down her husband, the sources added. Credit: IDF Then, just months after her husband was wiped...

Beach Weekend Marina crew retrieved the vessel after a three-day mission involving diplomatic complications and changing requirements. ============================================================== A stolen rental boat has been recovered from Cuba after a three-day mission by a crew from Beach Weekend Key West, according to the marina. The crew, led by Beach Weekend owner Jayme Nabors and Brett Divine, departed Key West last Tuesday aboard a second vessel, heading to Marina Hemingway to retrieve the stolen boat, the marina said. The boat, a Panga Release center console, was stolen on July 9 when renters took it to Cuban waters without authorization, according to the...