Free Republic

The border wall is well underway in southern New Mexico. And James Johnson couldn’t be happier. The third-generation farmer, wearing sunglasses, blue jeans and dusty work boots, beamed as he talked about the wall that winds alongside the southern edge of his farm, about 12 miles west of Columbus. “It’s beautiful. I mean, we’re ecstatic,” Johnson, the owner of Carzalia farms, told the Journal... Just over a year ago, Johnson told the Journal he was “eager” to see the wall built and even granted the federal government an easement to get the ball rolling. Johnson said that construction began on...

The National Park Service cited public safety concerns for its decision this week to prohibit access to a sacred Tohono O’odham site, a move that comes amid rising tensions between border wall protestors and federal agents. Park service officials said the decision to shut down roads to the Quitobaquito Springs, posted Monday on a website for nearby Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, was made at the request of Customs and Border Protection, and referred questions to the border agency... The order comes a week after protestors and federal agents clashed during a demonstration at the site of border wall construction...

Two construction contracts valued at nearly half a billion dollars have been awarded to build 40 new miles of border wall in the South Texas city of Laredo, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials announced Wednesday. A $201 million contract for a 13-mile section of border wall to be built in Laredo was awarded to Southwest Valley Constructors Company, CBP and U.S. Army Corps of Engineer officials said. The other contract, worth $283 million for a 27-mile long stretch of a new border wall and the accompanying infrastructure system, was awarded to Fisher Sand & Gravel Company. Construction is scheduled...

A federal judge found the federal government should not be forced to stop construction on the border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in California despite claims human remains were bulldozed over. U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia, a Barack Obama appointee... hearing Thursday in a challenge brought by the La Posta Band of Diegueno Mission Indians. The tribe claims President Donald Trump and the federal government have failed to meet tribal consultation requirements regarding border wall construction, which cuts through Kumeyaay land in San Diego... The tribe and the federal government are at odds over whether the type of notices, given...

The leaders of the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection are scheduled to travel to South Texas on Thursday morning and stop at a section of border wall to mark the 300th mile... Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan are both planning to christen a section of the newly completed segment of border wall in Hidalgo, Texas... On Wednesday, President Donald Trump nominated Wolf to be the permanent head of the agency, the largest law enforcement agency in the nation. His nomination is pending confirmation by the Senate. Morgan and Border...

GEORGETOWN COUNTY, S.C. (WMBF) – A Georgetown County woman is now dealing with an unthinkable tragedy after police said her husband and daughter were shot and killed Monday during a reported fight over a traffic crash. Coroner Kenny Johnson identified the victims as Charles Nicholas Wall, 45, and Laura Ashley Anderson, 21, both of Georgetown. Wall was Anderson’s stepfather, Johnson confirmed. “My husband Nick loved everybody. He would do anything for anybody,” Kimberly Wall said about her husband. “He was loving and had a heart of gold.” Kimberly Wall called her daughter a free spirit and fun-loving. She said Laura...

Editor’s note: Federal prosecutors in New York have arrested former senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon and three other men, and charged them with allegedly defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors to an online fundraising campaign to build portions of wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a University of Notre Dame law professor who researches nonprofits, explains what’s going on and what the consequences could be. ============================================================================================================ 1. Who is accused of what, exactly? Audrey Strauss, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, has accused Bannon and the founder of the “We Build...

A defiant Steve Bannon claimed Thursday that his bombshell indictment on fraud and money-laundering charges was a “fiasco” caused by people who want to block the construction of the border. As he walked out of Manhattan federal court in Lower Manhattan Thursday, Bannon ripped off his surgical mask before claiming to members of the press that “this entire fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall.”

New trend is a marked change from the waves of Central American families in recent years; repeat crossings become popular after Covid-related change. Illegal crossings are back on the rise at the southern U.S. border after having plummeted at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, driven by a large increase in single adults from Mexico. It is a marked shift from the past five years, during which a surge of asylum-seeking families and children from Central America accounted for most of the people entering the U.S. without legal authorization and at times overwhelmed the immigration system.

AUSTIN, Texas – U.S. Border Patrol Agent Marco Gonzales was working the brush in the cooking heat of late June one night near his home town of Del Rio when he spotted four or five Mexicans together fresh out of the Rio Grande. Once among them, he noticed all were showing Covid symptoms, his 23-year-old daughter Catherine Gonzales told the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) last week.  The 49-year-old Border Patrol veteran of 15 years told his family he loaded up the Mexicans in his vehicle anyway, per duty, and drove them to the Acuna-Del Rio International Bridge for their...

An illegal immigrant succumbed this weekend to injuries from a fall from the border wall in Arizona, federal authorities said Sunday. Agents found the 33-year-old Mexican man in an open field near Yuma on July 26, and he told them he’d fallen from the wall. The agents gave first aid and summoned the local rescue squad, which took the man to the Yuma Regional Medical Center.

The Supreme Court on Friday declined to block the Trump administration from using $2.5 billion in reallocated Pentagon funds to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall. In a 5-4 ruling that broke along ideological lines, the court's conservative majority denied a bid by interest groups to halt construction after a federal appeals court last month said the use of defense funding for the project is illegal. The court's four more liberal justices dissented from the ruling.

The Supreme Court has allowed President Trump to defy Congress and continue to spend more than $6 billion diverted from military funds to pay for the construction of a border wall in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California.

Joe Biden once spoke about jailing employers who hire "illegals," said sanctuary cities shouldn't be allowed to violate federal law, and argued a fence was needed stop "tons" of drugs coming into the country from "corrupt Mexico." "Folks, I voted for a fence, I voted, unlike most Democrats -- and some of you won't like it -- I voted for 700 miles of fence," Biden told the group. "But, let me tell you, we can build a fence 40 stories high -- unless you change the dynamic in Mexico and -- and you will not like this, and -- punish...

Mexican military forces killed a total of 16 gunmen from a faction of Los Zetas in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas... The shootout took place on Friday early morning in the Los Fresnos neighborhood when members of the Mexican army were patrolling the streets of Nuevo Laredo. The soldiers encountered a convoy of SUVs filled with cartel gunmen in military-style uniforms, Breitbart Texas initially reported... The deceased gunmen are believed to be members of a paramilitary group known as Hell’s Troops or Tropa del Infierno. The group is part of the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas....

The Supreme Court is leaving in place a decision that rejected environmental groups’ challenge to sections of wall the Trump administration is building along the U.S. border with Mexico. The high court on Monday declined to hear an appeal involving construction of 145 miles (233 kilometers) of steel-bollard walls along the border in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Southwest Environmental Center had challenged a federal law that allows the secretary of Homeland Security to waive any laws necessary to allow the quick construction of...

A federal appeals court decided 2-1 Friday that the Trump administration violated the law when it used military funds to build a wall on the Mexican border. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the power of the purse belongs to Congress, and the administration lacked constitutional authority to transfer the military money. Two Democratic appointees were in the majority. A Trump appointee dissented.

SEATTLE -- The occupied protest zone in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood known as the CHOP is getting some extra safety measures from the city. Tuesday morning, the Seattle Department of Transportation replaced tent barriers with concrete barriers around the edges of the six-nine block protest zone surrounding the abandoned SPD East Precinct. The barriers will help to prevent cars from driving through the protesters, which happened last week, while also leaving a travel lane for emergency responders. Although the occupied protest has remained largely peaceful since it popped up more than a week ago, residents and business owners in the...

Flynn & the U.S. v. Sullivan (AKA In Re: Michael T. Flynn) is going to be streamed from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals tomorrow (Friday) at 9:30 AM EST. The court is expecting a lot of interest in the case, so they’re directing people to their YouTube channel, which is here:

(Laredo, TX) City Council reaches agreement with government providing right of entry for 982 acres along the Rio Grande. The city is the largest landowner in the Laredo area to have been sued over this right of entry, the first document the federal government needs signed by any property owner with land that could be impacted by a border wall. If a landowner does not agree to sign this form, the Department of Justice will pursue a condemnation case against them in federal court. A landowner has never won a right of entry case against the government... The agreement, which...