On Saturday, former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Tom Homan appeared on “Fox &amp; Friends: Weekend” with host Griff Jenkins.
During the segment, Jenkins asked Homan about the Trump administration’s plans to allow Border Patrol agents to travel to sanctuary cities in order to capture illegal immigrants.
Homan praised the policy, saying that Trump is “absolutely right,” and that he himself asked Congress to do something about the issue for years, but they didn’t, and they won’t because “they want it to be a 2020 issue.”
Homan added that when “California passed their sanctuary law,” and he was the head of ICE, he “sent a lot of additional agents out to California,” which he claims the state saw as “retaliation.”
<blockquote>It wasn&#8217;t retaliation. When you take an agent of the jail, an agent that can process ten illegal aliens during a shift, and you choose to kick the officer out of the jail, then release those ten illegal aliens, it takes a whole fusion of operations teams to find this person on his turf, [who has] access to who knows what weapons &#8230; cover the backdoor, cover the front door, make an entry team. So, it takes a hell of a lot more agents.</blockquote>
“I&#8217;m glad the President&#8217;s doing this,” Homan said. “This is a great idea. This will help arrest those who are public safety threats and take them off our streets.”
Jenkins asked Homan if Trump’s new policy will “send a message south of the border,” to which Homan replied, “Absolutely.”
<blockquote>It&#8217;s going to send a strong message that, look, this country is not open to illegal immigration. If you&#8217;re lucky enough to get by the Border Patrol, you&#8217;re not home free no matter what the Democrat leadership wants to say. You can go to a so-called sanctuary city. There&#8217;s no sanctuary. ICE is not going to allow sanctuary; neither is the Border Patrol.</blockquote>
Switching gears, Jenkins then played Homan a clip of former Vice President Joe Biden speaking with journalist Jorge Ramos, claiming that illegal immigration isn’t a “burden,” but “a gift.”
Homan reacted, saying that Biden has “lost his mind because illegal immigration is not a gift.”
<blockquote>Legal immigration is &#8230; that&#8217;s why the President wrote a plan to base immigration on merit where those people can assimilate, help us grow this country and this economy. Illegal immigration is far from a gift. 31% of women being raped is not a gift. Children dying on the border is not a gift. Me, [standing at the] back of a tractor trailer with 19 dead immigrants at my feet was not a gift. Driving down American wages is not a gift. Taxing our schools and our hospitals is not a gift.</blockquote>
Homan then noted that when he worked under the Obama/Biden administration, he was given the Presidential Rank Award. “I don&#8217;t know what he&#8217;s doing other than pandering. It&#8217;s just a ridiculous statement to make.”
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According to the official <a href="https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ero-ead-thomas-homan-receives-2015-presidential-rank-award">ICE website</a>, Homan was given the award in part because he “marshalled efforts to handle the surge of unaccompanied children and family units from Central America who illegally entered the United States from across the Texas Rio Grande Valley,” and “he spearheaded the management and reform of the largest civil detention system in the nation.”
During his State of the Union speech on February 4, President Trump urged Congress to pass Sen. Thom Tillis’ (R-NC) legislation, which would allow people to sue sanctuary cities “when a loved one is hurt or killed as a result of these deadly practices.”
<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2059/text?r=1&amp;s=1">S. 2059</a> reads in part:
<blockquote>Any individual, or a spouse, parent, or child of such individual (if the individual is deceased or permanently incapacitated), who is the victim of a murder, rape, or any felony (as defined by the State) for which an alien (as defined in section 101(a)(3) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (<a href="http://uscode.house.gov/quicksearch/get.plx?title=8&amp;section=1101">8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(3)</a>) has been arrested, convicted, or sentenced to a term of imprisonment of at least 1 year, may bring an action for compensatory damages against a State or a political subdivision of a State in the appropriate Federal or State court if the State or political subdivision failed to comply with—
(A) a request with respect to an alien that was lawfully made by the Department of Homeland Security under section 236 or 287 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (<a href="http://uscode.house.gov/quicksearch/get.plx?title=8&amp;section=1226">8 U.S.C. 1226</a> and 1357); and
(B) a detainer for, or notify about the release of, the alien.</blockquote>
The following is a portion of the president’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-state-union-address-3/">SOTU speech</a> pertaining to illegal immigration:
<blockquote>In sanctuary cities, local officials order police to release dangerous criminal aliens to prey upon the public, instead of handing them over to ICE to be safely removed.
Just 29 days ago, a criminal alien freed by the sanctuary city of New York was charged with the brutal rape and murder of a 92-year-old woman.  The killer had been previously arrested for assault, but under New York’s sanctuary policies, he was set free.  If the city had honored ICE’s detainer request, his victim would still be alive today.
The state of California passed an outrageous law declaring their whole state to be a sanctuary for criminal illegal immigrants – a very terrible sanctuary – with catastrophic results&#8230;
Senator Thom Tillis has introduced legislation to allow Americans like Jody to sue sanctuary cities and states when a loved one is hurt or killed as a result of these deadly practices.
I ask Congress to pass the Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act immediately.  The United States of America should be a sanctuary for law-abiding Americans, not criminal aliens.
In the last three years, ICE has arrested over 5,000 wicked human traffickers.  And I have signed nine pieces of legislation to stamp out the menace of human trafficking, domestically and all around the globe.  My administration has undertaken an unprecedented effort to secure the southern border of the United States.</blockquote>
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Trump

WATCH: Former ICE Head Praises Trump’s Proposal To Send Border Patrol Agents To Sanctuary Cities

Customs and Border Patrol

Donald Trump

Illegal Immigration

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Sanctuary Cities

Tom Homan

No matter what the reason, we should all be able to agree that sending a suitcase full of dead birds – from anywhere, to anywhere – is not right.
The ordeal is made more disturbing by the fact that the suitcase was sent from China, which is currently dealing with the coronavirus and has struggled in the past with a bird flu epidemic. WTHR <a href="https://www.wthr.com/article/dead-birds-found-passengers-baggage-china-virginia-airport">reported</a> Monday that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents intercepted a package at Dulles International Airport in Virginia that was filled with small dead birds.
“According to officials, the traveler arrived on a flight from Beijing, China on Jan. 27, 2020 where the traveler&#8217;s final destination was to a residence in Prince George&#8217;s County, Maryland,” the outlet reported. “During a baggage examination, CBP specialists discovered a package with pictures of a cat and dog that the passenger said was &#8216;cat food.&#8217; The package, according to officials, contained a bunch of unknown small birds, about 2.5 to 3.5 inches in length.”
CBP provided disturbing images of the pet-food packaging that does, in fact, contain dead birds.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/CBP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CBP</a> agriculture specialists at Dulles airport continue to protect our nation&#8217;s vital agricultural resources and our economy by intercepting potential animal threats, like those posed by these tiny dead birds from China packaged as &#8220;pet food.&#8221; Read <a href="https://t.co/uJj5o5xfmN">https://t.co/uJj5o5xfmN</a> <a href="https://t.co/xTldZ6G6jM">pic.twitter.com/xTldZ6G6jM</a>
— CBP Mid-Atlantic (@CBPMidAtlantic) <a href="https://twitter.com/CBPMidAtlantic/status/1226988732747743232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
As one can imagine, importing dead animals such as birds from China isn’t a good idea.
&#8220;These dead birds are prohibited from importation to the United States as unprocessed birds pose a potentially significant disease threat to our nation’s poultry industries and more alarmingly to our citizens as potential vectors of avian influenza,&#8221; said Casey Durst, director of field operations for CBP’s Baltimore Field Office. &#8220;Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists continue to exercise extraordinary vigilance every day in their fight to protect our nation’s agricultural and economic prosperity from invasive pests and animal diseases.&#8221;
CBP published <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/dulles-cbp-intercepts-dead-birds-passenger-baggage-china">a press release</a> about the find that included an additional quote from Durst.
“Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists protect our nation’s agricultural industries from a variety of potential threats every day, including from highly pathogenic animal diseases that threaten our nation’s economy,” Durst continued. “CBP agriculture specialists continue to exercise extraordinary vigilance in their fight to protect our nation’s agriculture and economic prosperity from invasive pests and animal diseases.”
The press release also said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “regulate the importation of animals and animal products into the United States.”
On any given day in 2019, CBP agriculture officials across the country likely “seized 4,695 prohibited plant, meat, animal byproduct, and soil, and intercepted 314 insect pests at U.S. ports of entry.”
As of January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) <a href="https://www.who.int/influenza/human_animal_interface/2020_01_20_tableH5N1.pdf?ua=1">reported</a> that between 2003 and 2020, there were 861 cases of avian influenza reported around the world. An estimated 455 people died due to the virus.
China is currently dealing with an epidemic of the coronavirus, which has killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of people in the communist nation already. The WHO <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/w-h-o-warns-as-coronavirus-deaths-hit-1000-may-be-the-tip-of-the-iceberg">suggested</a> on Monday that the deaths so far “may be the tip of the iceberg.” It is so far estimated that more than 1,000 people have died from the virus while more than 40,000 were infected.

Baggage

Suitcase Full Of Dead Birds From China Intercepted At Virginia Airport

animals

China

Illegal border crossings in Arizona &#8220;plunged&#8221; in December of 2019, <a href="https://apnews.com/0360a57afc0bd34cd15dfa28e42dc20f">according to the Associated Press</a>, dropping a staggering 90% year-over-year following a Trump administration change in policy that has asylum seekers waiting for their adjudication hearings in Mexico and not in the United States.
Last winter, a &#8220;record number&#8221; of illegal border crossers were apprehended in the Arizona sector of the United States-Mexico border, with 60,000 migrants taken into United States Border Protection custody in December of 2019 alone, per the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/record-number-of-families-arrested-at-southern-border-in-december">Washington Examiner</a>. That was the beginning of a surge migrants crossing the United States&#8217; southern border; by May of 2019, the Border Patrol was recording a record number of apprehensions every month, sometimes topping 100,000.
&#8220;50,753 people were arrested for trespassing from Mexico in December. It marks the third month in a row that more than 50,000 people have illegally crossed into to the U.S. Another 10,000 people who tried to enter through ports were told they lacked the documents to do so,&#8221; according to the Examiner. &#8220;Illegal immigration apprehensions at the southern border have skyrocketed since Trump&#8217;s first few months in office, when 15,000 to 20,000 people were reported being apprehended per month.&#8221;
In Arizona alone, the Border Patrol was registering around 14,000 apprehensions per month by May of 2019, but in October of 2019, there were only 800 apprehensions. In December of 2019, the streak kept up, and apprehensions dropped around 90%.
The Border Patrol credits the Trump administration&#8217;s new &#8220;remain in Mexico&#8221; policy, which requires those who want to seek refuge from violence and disorder by emigrating to the United States to stay south of the border until their asylum case comes before a judge. Before that policy took effect, asylum seekers were given a piece of paper with a court date and then released into the United States to stay with friends and family until they had to appear before a judge.
By the time their cases rolled around &#8212; sometimes two to three years after apprehension &#8212; most asylum-seekers were in the wind, impossible to find, and well-integrated into American life.
&#8220;Arrests in the Border Patrol’s Yuma sector nearly hit 14,000 in May, when the policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico took effect there. By October, they fell 94%, to less than 800, and have stayed there since, making Yuma the second-slowest of the agency’s nine sectors on the Mexican border, just ahead of the perennially quiet Big Bend sector in Texas,&#8221; the AP reported.
&#8220;Illegal crossings in western Arizona have swung sharply before, and there are several reasons for the recent drop. But Anthony Porvaznik, chief of the Border Patrol’s Yuma sector, said the so-called Migration Protection Protocols have been a huge deterrent, based on agents’ interviews with people arrested,&#8221; the outlet added.
“Their whole goal was to be released into the United States, and once that was taken off the shelf for them, and they couldn’t be released into the United States anymore, then that really diminished the amount of traffic that came through here,&#8221; Porvaznik said.
So far, the courts have largely upheld the president&#8217;s policy. In California, a court did order that asylum seekers be provided with access to an attorney before being sent back, and the courts have also suggested that those apprehended by Border Patrol be processed within 72 hours. Some waited &#8220;up to a week&#8221; in Yuma before being sent on.

Border Wall

Illegal Border Crossings Fall A Staggering Ninety Percent In Arizona Following Trump Policy Change

A tractor-trailer crossing into the U.S. from Mexico was discovered to be carrying more than 10 tons of marijuana – that’s an estimated street value of $8.4 million.
Around 9 a.m. on the morning of November 18, a tractor-trailer driven by a 47-year-old Mexican citizen drove through the Otay Mesa Cargo port of entry. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer looked over the truck’s manifest, which said it was carrying a shipment of “plastic garment hangers.” The officer directed the driver to undergo an x-ray examination. During that examination, CBP officers found an “anomaly,” according to <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cbp-officers-find-over-10-tons-marijuana-hidden-cargo-shipment">a press release</a>, and brought in a dog to search the vehicle. The dog alerted the handlers to the trailer, and officers climbed inside to conduct a search.
After searching through a few rows of boxes, CBP officers discovered 858 packages of marijuana, wrapped in plastic and stacked from the floor to the ceiling. The packages contained more than 10 tons of marijuana for an estimated street value of about $8.4 million.
“The ability of CBP officers to interdict contraband at the port of entry is a perfect example of CBP’s efforts to secure our border,” said Joseph Misenhelter, Officer in Charge at the Otay Mesa port of entry.  “CBP officers prevented over 10 tons of marijuana from entering our community.”
CBP officers seized the marijuana as well as the truck, trailer, and cargo shipment. The driver’s B1/B2 visa was also cancelled and he was turned over to Homeland Security.
This is simply the latest drug bust for CBP.  Last week, officers uncovered 24 bottles of shampoo inside a man’s suitcase that contained <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/border-patrol-found-400k-worth-of-liquid-cocaine-in-shampoo-bottles-at-houston-airport">35 pounds of liquid cocaine</a> – an estimated street value of $400,000. The man was intercepted as he attempted to retrieve his luggage at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The man, a 26-year-old Columbian citizen, was sent back to his home country once the drugs were seized.
In mid-June, federal law enforcement officials in Philadelphia seized 16.5 tons of cocaine, the largest drug bust in the history of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
In September, Virginia police arrested more than 30 people suspected of possessing a massive quantity of fentanyl, enough to kill 14 million people. It was the largest drug bust in Virginia in the past 15 years, with authorities seizing more than 30 kilograms each of fentanyl and heroine, another five kilograms of cocaine, and more than $700,000.
“This opioid crisis is not an issue that is happening someplace else, or to someone else. It’s happening right here in Norfolk,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, G. Zachary Terwilliger, said during a press conference at the time of the arrests.
“We’re not talking about $500 and $600 deals, we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he added. “You know, $20,000 in the trunk of somebody’s car in a gym bag, you know, behind a local restaurant.”
In late October, police in North Carolina arrested four people in connection with a drug trafficking scheme, seizing 6,800 pounds of marijuana, 39 pounds of cocaine, and $200,000.

18 wheeler semi-truck on the highway at night

Truck Supposed To Be Carrying ‘Plastic Garment Hangers’ Actually Hauled 10 Tons Of Marijuana

Drugs

Border Patrol agents apprehended a record 851,000 people during the fiscal year 2019, which ran between October 1, 2018 and September 30, 2019.
My former employer The Washington Examiner <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/most-illegal-crossings-in-12-years-border-patrol-took-851-000-into-custody-during-fiscal-2019">reported</a> on exclusively obtained federal data showing that the number of apprehensions included 132,000 arrests in May, which was another record. In September, 40,000 people were arrested illegally crossing into Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas.
“The 851,000 arrested at the southern border does not include the number of people who approached ports of entry, or border crossings, to claim asylum or pass through but were turned away,” the outlet reported. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security agency that oversees these figures, is expected to release this and related data in a few weeks.”
The numbers provided to the Examiner also don’t include the number of people who cross illegally but then claim asylum once taken into custody.
In addition to the 851,000 who entered the country illegally, another 263,000 entered via ports manned by the Office of Field Operations, a department within Customs and Border Patrol (CBP).
“These numbers do not include additional arrests and denied port crossers at the U.S.-Canada border and along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, nor does it include the September figure for those encountered at the ports,” the Examiner reported.
Of those who entered the country illegally along the southern border, 250,000 were from Guatemala and another 250,000 were from Honduras.
The data, as reported by the Examiner, showed that more families entered the country illegally than in previous years, although it is unclear whether these numbers reflect proven family units or traffickers posing as family members. Just four years ago, fewer than 80,000 people apprehended were caught with a family member. In 2019, that number was more than 450,000, showing that loopholes allowing family members to enter the country have created an incentive for those crossing illegally.
The Epoch Times <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/border-patrol-took-851000-people-into-custody-during-fiscal-year-2019-report_3108452.html">added</a> that President Donald Trump recently praised new sections of the wall along the southern border during a trip to San Diego’s Otay Mesa area.
“It was like a sheet metal, and people would just knock it over like just routinely,” Trump said of the old border wall, <a href="https://www.apnews.com/56fe325e5b334d0c87fa77f60edd8b04">according to The Associated Press</a>. “When the wall is built, it will be virtually impossible to come over illegally, and then we’re able to take border control and put them at points of entry.”
He also thanked the Mexican government for providing troops to the border to help stop illegal immigrants before they cross into America.
In mid-September, the Times reported, Pentagon chief spokesman Jonathan Hoffman gave an update on the construction of the new southern border wall.
“Right now we’re at a pace of about a mile a day. And we’ll see that continue to go up,” Hoffman said.
“It’s going to be a few months but our goal is that by the end of next year, we will have completed over 100—450 miles of wall construction all told across the entire federal government,” he added.

Mexico Border

Border Patrol Apprehended 851,000 People In Fiscal Year 2019, Report Says

Southern Border

So many immigrants appeared at the southern border seeking asylum in the first half of 2019 that the Federal immigration court&#8217;s backlog is now over a million cases &#8212; and that&#8217;s without more than a quarter million cases still being assessed.
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/18/politics/immigration-court-backlog/index.html">CNN reports</a> that court watchdogs tracking asylum cases at the border now report more than 1 million asylum cases awaiting adjudication. Syracuse University, which released a study on the matter last week, claims that there are an additional 300,000 cases that have yet to make it into the system, leaving those asylum seekers &#8220;pending&#8221; without a court date or legal status.
The courts, it seems, are simply overwhelmed. Each individual or family who presents themselves to border patrol or other border law enforcement and requests asylum must be assessed and most are given a court date for an asylum hearing. There are now so many asylum-seekers, though, the standard timeline for adjudication &#8212; at one time as little as three months &#8212; is now around 700 days, or just a little under two years.
&#8220;If nothing else, the continuing rise of the backlog shows that the immigration court is broken,&#8221; Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, told CNN. &#8220;Until we fix the design defect of having a court in a law enforcement agency, we will not be able to address the backlog in a fair and effective manner.&#8221;
It&#8217;s not clear that anyone is interested in making inroads into the defect, and immigration has long since fallen by the wayside in Congress, which is now focused on an impeachment inquiry, even though border conditions haven&#8217;t necessarily improved. The case backlog is the result of months where more than 100,000 migrants requested asylum at the southern border.
“The latest case-by-case court records through the end of August 2019 show the court’s active case backlog was 1,007,155,” the Syracuse report notes. “If the additional 322,535 cases which the court says are pending but have not been placed on the active caseload rolls are added, then the backlog now tops 1.3 million.”
The Justice Department says it doesn&#8217;t officially acknowledge reports done by independent agencies since they may not have all the information necessary to give a true count, but they did admit there&#8217;s problems.
“This report and DOJ’s own data further confirms there is a crisis at the border,&#8221; a spokesperson told CNN. &#8220;This Administration is taking aggressive steps to increase productivity, close loopholes, and hire a record number of judges to address the backlog with our existing authorities.”
The Trump Administration&#8217;s &#8220;Remain in Mexico&#8221; policy, which recently survived a legal challenge, has been helping to alleviate the problem somewhat. Now, instead of crossing the border to official Customs and Border Patrol facilities, being given a court date, and set free into the United States with a demand to return, migrants who want to declare asylum are staying at camps south of the border and having their claims adjudicated by teleconference judges.
The number of migrants appearing at the border has abated somewhat as well. The numbers are no longer in the six figures, likely because the Trump Administration has put a halt to temporary &#8220;catch-and-release&#8221; policies and empowering law enforcement to make educated decisions about which migrants are in immediate danger.

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