Former borders chief predicts 100,000 migrants will attempt to reach UK shores this year as Channel boats crisis grows

More than 100,000 Channel migrants will reach Britain this year, the UK’s former Border Force chief has told the Mail.

Backing the Government’s asylum deal with Rwanda, former director general of UK Border Force Tony Smith said: ‘There comes a point where we need to get a grip of our border and stop the boats.

‘The numbers are going up, a fourfold increase already this year – 28,500 last year,’ Mr Smith told the Mail at an immigration event by think-tank Policy Exchange.

‘That’s going to be over 100,000 this year just by migrant boats alone.’

Mr Smith’s prediction would be nearly 12 times the level seen in 2020, 54 times that of 2019 and more than 300 times that in 2018.

So far this year 6,693 migrants have reached the UK across the Channel – four times that seen by the same point last year.

There were 651 arrivals last Wednesday, a level not seen last year until the calm summer months.

In January, it emerged that the Home Office had produced official papers warning that 65,000 migrants could cross this year.

The number of crossings has since outstripped this.

Mr Smith praised the Rwanda scheme, which will see asylum seekers sent 4,000 miles to claim refugee status from the East African country.

‘We have to stop the boats - people are drowning and people are going to drown.

‘The problem the government has is the French won’t accept people back, nor will the EU, so the migrants know that simply by paying £5,000 and getting in a small boat, getting into the English territorial waters, they’re essentially in the UK.

‘So the Government is right to look at alternatives. We need to find countries that are prepared to take people.

‘If Rwanda is a safe country, which is offering them protection and a new life, if it means they don’t have to go back to the country they fear persecution from, then this is an alternative to having more and more people coming across the Channel and drowning.’

Another former top borders officer said the Rwanda agreement will short circuit the ‘classic’ asylum claim where someone claims to be facing religious persecution.

Glyn Williams, the former director general of the Home Office’s migration and borders group, said: ‘The classic claim at the moment is “I’m a Christian but I can’t pursue my Christian religion in Iran or Iraq”.

‘If Rwanda is, and I believe it is, a safe country, where someone who’s claiming they suffered discrimination, you can pursue it in Rwanda.

‘You will be given safe haven there. What’s wrong with that?’

Mr Williams led a Home Office delegation to Rwanda for the first ‘serious talks’ in November, and retired the following month.

He added: ‘One of the things I’ve been really disappointed about in the last few days is the level of assumptions that are being made about Rwanda.

‘People were just saying “it’s a terrible place, how can you possibly send anybody to there?”

‘I think because of their experience with the genocide in the mid-90s, they’re particularly sensitive about how people are treated and trying to stop exploitation because they had it big time.

‘I don’t think the Rwandans are doing this just for the money. I think that they actually have genuine humanitarian motivations as well.’

A Home Office spokesperson said:  “We do not recognise these figures. Last week, the Government announced a series of measures to overhaul our broken asylum system and through our Nationality and Borders Bill we are clamping down on illegal migration, including dangerous channel crossings which places vulnerable people at the mercy of evil people smugglers”.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10737627/Former-borders-chief-predicts-100k-migrants-reach-UK-shores-year-Channel-crisis-grows.html?fr=operanews

Operation Lone Star Pays Off with Arrests of Illegal Immigrants

Del Rio, TX - Troopers from the Texas Department of Public Safety and members of the Texas National Guard completed a successful mission Sunday night after arresting five illegal immigrants from Honduras.

The men arrested - most in their 20s - were in possession of Honduran passports and identification cards from Mexico. They were walking across a private ranch when they were spotted with a DPS drone.

As Townhall witnessed while embedded with Operation Lone Star along the U.S.-Mexico border Sunday night, the men were pursued on foot by soldiers and troopers after being spotted.

They were apprehended, handcuffed and walked to the road before being thoroughly searched for weapons and illicit items. Their backpacks were full of food, additional clothing and toiletry products. One man was carrying a box cutter.

When Townhall asked in Spanish why they came to the U.S., one young man said, "To work." When asked if they were afraid to be deported, the oldest man in the group spoke up and said he was fearful of being sent back to Honduras, parroting a line often coached by human smugglers to meet the federal government's low bar of credible fear to make an asylum claim.

After being searched and briefly un-handcuffed, the men were walked to a transportation van. They were handcuffed again and seated inside. They will be charged with criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor, and fingerprinted at the Del Rio processing center.

While DPS cannot charge or pursue federal crimes, prosecuting Texas crimes perpetrated by illegal immigrants has been a main priority for state law enforcement.  

The arrests are a result of Operation Lone Star, the partnership between Texas DPS and the National Guard to secure the border with Mexico and cut down on illegal immigration. Since Operation Lone Star was launched in July 2021, after the Biden administration made open border policies and lack of enforcement the federal standard, Texas DPS has made 3,800 arrests on private ranches. Patrols and missions are conducted nightly.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/04/25/operation-lone-star-pays-off-with-arrests-of-illegal-immigrants-n2606300

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
 
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Australia lures British and Irish immigrants with bargain basement FLIGHTS

An Australian state is so desperate for workers that it's offering bargain basement $17.60 (£10) fares to entice British backpackers to come Down Under.

The South Australian scheme is a modern twist on the post-war '10-pound Pom' scheme and will see Irish travellers get even cheaper trips to Australia costing just  €10, or $14.90.

The move comes as the battle for backpackers heats up due to worker shortages across the country.

The scheme is an updated version of the program that brought migrants from the United Kingdom - including future pop stars and prime ministers - to Australia in the decades after World War II until 1982.

That plan saw 1.5 million British and Irish people travel Down Under for just £10, but there are some major differences today in price, transport and availability.

The £10 of 1945 is the equivalent of £460 ($810) in 2022, so today's £10 is vastly cheaper.

It's also more comfortable now, with backpackers taking a 24-hour flight rather than a six-week boat journey.

But the availability is a lot tighter. Just 200 lucky travellers will be chosen for the £10 flights.

In a bid to 'populate or perish', Australia initiated the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme in 1945.

These people became known as '10-pound Poms' after the price of the transport by ship to Australia.

The scheme lasted until 1982 and saw 1.5million British and Irish people move to Australia.

Two of the most famous people to arrive Down Under that way were former prime ministers Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, who both migrated with their families in the 1960s.

South Australia has always played second fiddle to the eastern states of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland when it comes to attracting migrants.

Backpackers, in particular, are far more likely to fly into cosmopolitan Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane than South Australia's capital Adelaide - which has the well earned but not very exciting nickname 'the city of churches'.

Starting in May, young British and Irish people will be able to buy flights out of Heathrow, Manchester, Edinburgh or Dublin to Adelaide from Qatar Airways.

Those interested must be eligible to get a working holiday visa for Australia and be able to travel before September 30.

'South Australia is welcoming the return of working holiday makers – it's a real win-win for young people eager to travel and work abroad, and for our local tourism industry,' said South Australian Minister for Tourism Zoe Bettison.

She said tourism operators have missed having international visitors due to Covid restrictions over the past two years, while the state has also missed out on the backpacker workforce and 'the vibrancy they bring'.

'These backpackers foster a love for our state and our country which often inspires them to return later in life.

'Whether it's in our bars, restaurants, wineries and hotels, or on our outback stations and farms, there are so many ways that British and Irish citizens can work in Adelaide and in regional South Australia,' said Ms Bettison.

'We look forward to welcoming back young people from the UK and Ireland, and encourage them to make the most of these £10 fares.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10757273/New-generation-10-pound-Poms-Australia-luring-UK-Irish-backpackers-cheap-flights.html

Court blocks Biden from lifting Title 42 border restrictions on May 23

A Louisiana federal court issued a temporary restraining order Monday preventing the Biden administration from lifting pandemic restrictions at the southern border.

The restrictions, known as Title 42, allow authorities to expel nearly all migrants from the border in the interest of stopping the spread of COVID-19. The states of Missouri, Arizona and Louisiana brought suit earlier this month in Federal court to keep the restrictions in place.

"Our Office just obtained a temporary restraining order to keep Title 42 in place," Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt tweeted Monday. 'This is a huge victory for border security, but the fight continues on.'

The Centers for Disease Control announced on April 1 that it had determined a "[suspension of] the right to introduce migrants into the United States is no longer necessary," and said the mandated restrictions would be lifted on May 23.

At the time, the CDC said the order would remain in place for the next seven weeks to "implement appropriate COVID-19 mitigation protocols, such as scaling up a program to provide COVID-19 vaccinations to migrants and prepare for resumption of regular migration".

Fox News reported Monday that the restraining order prevents any action before a May 13 hearing scheduled in the case. Neither the CDC nor the Biden administration have proposed lifting the restrictions earlier than May 23.

"Congress would have to take action in order for the date not to be May 23," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday when asked about the administration's plans to lift the restrictions.

The decision to end Title 42 authority, named for a 1944 public health law, is being legally challenged by 22 states and faces growing division within Biden's Democratic Party.

Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas border Democrat, said last week that Biden is hurting their party by ending Title 42.

"This is not good for Democrats in November. You know, in talking with some of my Republican colleagues, they're saying 'We can't believe the White House is giving us this narrative. We can't believe that they're hurting Democrat candidates for the November election,'" the congressman told Fox News Digital on Thursday.

"And you know this, you look at the polls. The Republican voters are not happy by what's happening at the border. The Democratic voters are not happy. And if you look at the independent voters, they're not happy about this decision. So who are we trying to please?"

In addition, other Democrats, including Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Chris Coons of Delaware and Gary Peters of Michigan have come out asking the administration to reconsider rescinding Title 42.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/25/court-blocks-biden-from-lifting-title-42-border-restrictions-on-may-23/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
 
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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How Texas Is Confronting Illegal Immigrants Adapting to Operation Lone Star

 
KINNEY COUNTY, Texas — Five single adult men from Honduras attempting to avoid detection by trespassing on a private ranch were unsuccessful as the Texas Highway Patrol's Brush Team tracked down and arrested them on Sunday night. A transport van came by to take them away, but to be transferred to Border Patrol, they will be charged with state trespassing under Operation Lone Star.

It is a scene that has played out in this portion of the Del Rio Sector since July 2021. Texas state troopers, augmented by National Guardsmen, track down and arrest illegal immigrants trying to avoid being caught by law enforcement. Unlike the families and unaccompanied minors who willingly turn themselves in to Border Patrol, these groups usually consist of single adult men. While traffic through Kinney County has been steady over the past few months, troopers, National Guardsmen, and local residents told Townhall they have seen fewer groups of illegal immigrants go through the area.

It's not because the illegal crossings have stopped because the border crisis is finally over; instead, the human smugglers and traffickers have mostly figured out if you're caught in Kinney County by state police, you're not going to be released. Instead, the Texas Department of Public Safety has seen more and more illegal traffic move through Maverick County, just south of Del Rio. What human smugglers and illegal immigrants are about to find out is that the Brush Teams are operating in new counties.

"They're trying to take different routes, so they're trying to circumvent Kinney County and go down to Maverick County, but we do have access to Maverick County, so we are enforcing the criminal trespassing," Lt. Chris Olivarez, spokesman with DPS, told Townhall.

Due to the unique circumstance of the border crisis, the state of Texas has had to get creative with enforcing state laws on people who fall under federal law enforcement authority. That is why the state has to get agreements with landowners to press charges against illegal immigrants trespassing and the courts to prosecute the cases.

"We're still in the early stages, we're having those discussions, but we are planning on expanding ranch operations in May," Olivarez explained, noting DPS is working on deals in five other counties.

In the background, Olivarez said DPS is planning on encountering more illegal immigrants once Title 42 is lifted, which is why they are being proactive in expanding operations so they are better prepared for the expected influx.

Since July last year, DPS' Brush Teams have arrested over 3,800 illegal immigrants for trespassing. Without DPS, many of those arrested would have likely gotten away since Border Patrol is not working the private ranches.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2022/04/25/how-texas-is-confronting-to-illegal-immigrants-adapting-to-operation-lone-star-n2606299

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
 
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Immigration Tidal Wave Nears Border, but Team Biden Goes Full Steam Ahead

 
President Joe Biden appears to be going full steam ahead on ending Title 42. This is the health policy, created in the 1940s and implemented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Donald Trump, that allowed the swift deportation of illegal immigrants during the pandemic to prevent the further spread of COVID-19.

It has been one of the few things keeping the exploding southern border numbers under even the slightest control during the Biden presidency. The administration announced it would end Title 42 on May 23, but according to Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, it is starting to peel it away even sooner.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently released its March statistics for illegal immigrant border encounters. It’s a sign of what’s to come.

“In total, there were 221,303 encounters along the southwest land border in March, a 33 percent increase compared to February,” the agency reported. “Of those, 28 percent involved individuals who had at least one prior encounter in the previous 12 months, compared to an average one-year re-encounter rate of 14 percent for FY2014-2019.”

Of course, many others came through without being apprehended.

The March numbers are the highest monthly total in two decades. And this is before Title 42 is set to be discontinued.

It’s not just raw numbers of illegal border crossers that’s worrying. According to the agency, over 40 migrants on the terror watchlist have been apprehended since Biden became president. These are people who have been known to be involved in or are “reasonably suspected” of being involved in terrorist activity.

The U.S. Border Patrol is already swamped. In March, Customs and Border Protection estimated that, in addition to the over 221,000 encounters, over 60,000 border crossers slipped through without being apprehended—about 2,000 per day. Drastically increasing the total numbers of those attempting to cross the border—which will inevitably happen if Title 42 is rescinded—puts the country at risk that more potential terrorists will slip through.

When Biden was considering ending Title 42, a handful of border state Democrats warned him against it. But now that he’s made the announcement, the list of Democrats in opposition is growing. One of the opponents is Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.

Several Republicans on the committee wrote him a letter in early April expressing deep concern about what ending Title 42 would mean for the country. Peters seemed to have been receptive to the message.

“Unless we have a well-thought-out plan, I think it is something that should be revisited and perhaps delayed,” Peters said to reporters, according to The Hill. “I’m going to defer judgment on that until I give the administration the opportunity to fully articulate what that plan is. But I share … concerns of some of my colleagues.”

The entire situation conveys the impression that the Biden administration is reckless and partisan and that it caters to the most extreme voices on its left flank. It’s part of the toothless Caesarism that we’ve become used to over the past year. The administration does its best to create vast restrictions on Americans at home, but does nothing to protect the American people or our interests from threats abroad.

If the administration really does think it is necessary to end Title 42, it could at least show some commitment to options that would help maintain order at the border. Biden has even failed to do that.

Predictably, the administration has chosen to do everything to remove those options, too.

The Biden administration has done everything in its power—or beyond its power—to eliminate the Migrant Protection Protocols—better known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. The policy, like Title 42, was created under Trump and was designed as an answer to President Barack Obama’s “catch and release” border policy.

The Remain in Mexico policy makes it so asylum-seekers—those claiming to flee war zones, political violence, or persecution—must wait in Mexico while applying for asylum in the U.S. It deters people who may want to come to the United States with bogus asylum claims. Once in the country, many dodge their court dates or never get a court date at all.

Biden ended the Remain in Mexico policy on Day One of his presidency and is now engaged in a legal battle to put the policy entirely off the table.

So, what’s the administration’s plan if it gets its way? The Wall Street Journal editorial board did a good job of explaining what’s on tap:

The administration’s alternative seems to be a new policy that would let federal asylum officers grant residence to most claimants, rather than wait in the queue for Justice Department immigration judges. The asylum officers approve claims at a higher rate than judges, who weigh more seriously whether a claimant is fleeing genuine danger. That message will spread throughout Latin America as further incentive to make the trek and cross the border seeking asylum.

Battling the Remain in Mexico Policy, combined with ending Title 42 and the general lack of support for Border Patrol, suggests that the administration isn’t willing to uphold American law and protect our border.

Instead, it is doing everything in its power to not only keep those floodgates open, but to open them even wider, forcing the American people to pay the price for its recklessness.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/04/21/a-tidal-wave-is-coming-to-the-border-and-the-biden-administration-is-full-steam-ahead/

Hardline Denmark also wants to export refugees

While Britain’s plan to process asylum-seekers in Rwanda has provoked bemusement in much of Europe, it has been welcomed by Denmark, which appears poised to conclude a similar deal.

Since 2015, when more than a million asylum-seekers from Syria and elsewhere arrived in Europe, successive Danish governments of both right and left have introduced, or at least threatened to introduce, headline-grabbing measures to dissuade migrants by making the wealthy and otherwise liberal Scandinavian country seem as unwelcoming as possible.

Mette Frederiksen, the Social Democratic Prime Minister, has said her aim is to reduce the number of people seeking asylum in her country to zero.

One law, passed in 2016, stipulated that newly arrived asylum-seekers should hand over jewellery, gold and other valuables to help pay for their stay. Other measures included labelling areas with high numbers of immigrants “ghettos” and limiting the number of “non-Westerners” who could live in them.

Denmark gave refuge to 30,000 Syrians but ­became the first country in Europe to decide that it was safe for some to return to their homeland. But it has been unable to send them back because it does not have diplomatic relations with Damascus. Caught in legal limbo, they have been sent to so-called expulsion centres.

“Everything the Danish state has done for the past 20 years is about deterrence,” Michala Bendixen, the founder of Refugees Welcome, said last year at one such centre in rural Jutland.

“It is about scaring people away from Denmark. “The message is: you should stay in Germany or France or wherever. Everywhere else is better than here.”

Denmark, like Britain, has been negotiating with Rwanda for months but was pipped to the post by last week’s announcement by British Home Secretary Priti Patel.

The British plans are modelled on Australia’s offshore processing of asylum-seekers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.

Though stressing that a deal has not yet been agreed on, ­Mattias Tesfaye, Ms Patel’s opposite number in Copenhagen, said his talks with the Rwandan government included “a mechanism for the transfer of asylum-seekers and should ensure a more ­dignified approach than the criminal ­network of people smugglers that currently characterises ­migration across the Mediterranean”.

Mr Tesfaye, whose father ­arrived in Denmark as a refugee from Ethiopia, has welcomed Britain’s deal as “a step in the right direction”.

Denmark’s policy, which is in stark contrast with the liberal stance of neighbouring Sweden, began under the right-of-centre minority government of Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who came to power in June 2015 at the height of the migrant crisis and depended on the right-wing Danish People’s Party for his majority.

One of his government’s more controversial proposals was to use Lindholm, a tiny ­island a few kilometres off the coast, to house 100-150 migrants who had served sentences in Denmark for murder, rape and other serious crimes but were ­refusing to ­return to the countries of their birth. The island, immediately dubbed Alcatraz, had been used as a research centre into infectious animal diseases and was contaminated with traces of BSE, foot-and-mouth disease and swine fever. With the locals on the mainland opposed and the bill for decontamination put at 759 million krone ($162m), the plan was shelved.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Ms Frederiksen, whose centre-left coalition replaced Mr Rasmussen’s government in 2019, embraced her predecessor’s policies, which go down well with her party’s working-class voters. The measures have provoked controversy – and seen the country hauled before the European Court of Human Rights. It does, however, appear to have reduced numbers: only 1547 people ­applied for asylum in 2020, a 57 per cent fall from 2019 and the lowest number since the 1990s.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/hardline-denmark-has-spent-20-years-deterring-migrants/news-story/a411817d9ad011affdde990def5aafa0

Boris Johnson to send migrants from the Channel ‘straight to Rwanda’

Migrants crossing the English Channel to seek asylum in the UK will be flown more than 9000 kilometres to Rwanda to have their claims processed offshore.

The new policy will be part of a landmark immigration deal, to be detailed by British Home Secretary Priti Patel, under which thousands of asylum seekers will be relocated to the landlocked east African nation.

It comes as Prime Minister Boris Johnson warns that “vile” people smugglers are “turning the Channel into a watery graveyard” with people “drowning in unseaworthy boats and suffocating in refrigerated lorries”.

Johnson will on Thursday, London time, unveil a series of measures aimed at tackling illegal immigration, including putting the military in charge of operations in the Channel from Friday.

He will also signal moves to end the practice of housing asylum seekers in expensive hotel accommodation and unveil plans for the first purpose-built reception centre in England to hold illegal arrivals.

The immigration blueprint is a key part of plans to relaunch Johnson’s premiership ahead of local elections and after hew was hit by a public backlash over “partygate”.

Patel has come under sustained pressure to cut the number of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats. Already a record 4600 have crossed this year, double the 2021 figure. On Wednesday, 600 migrants reached the UK, the highest number in one day so far this year.

The Channel crisis has been blamed for exacerbating problems at airports by drawing Border Force officers away to handle it.

The plans are modelled on Australia’s offshore processing of asylum seekers in detention centres on the islands of Nauru and Manus, Papua New Guinea.

Alexander Downer, one of the architects of the Howard-era Pacific solution and formerly Australia’s high commissioner in London, has just been appointed by the British government to review the country’s Border Force department.

Ministers have struggled to remove illegal Channel migrants once they arrive in Britain and have been accommodating them in hotels at a cost of £3.5 million ($6 million) a day.

They believe offshore processing will act as a deterrent to migrants who think it is difficult for the UK to remove them

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/britain-to-send-migrants-from-the-channel-to-rwanda-20220414-p5adgf.html

Approval-seeking and the decay of critical thinking on the American Left

Immigration policy provides an even more striking example of the power of Progressivism Inc. to stifle debate on the center left. Up until around 2000, libertarians and employer-class Republicans wanted to weaken laws against illegal immigration and expand low-wage legal immigration, against the opposition of organized labor and many African Americans, who for generations have tended to view immigrants of all races as competitors. The Hesburgh Commission on immigration reform, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, and the Jordan Commission, appointed by President Bill Clinton and led by Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan, the pioneering civil rights leader who was left-liberal, Black, and lesbian, both proposed cracking down on illegal immigration—by requiring a national ID card, punishing employers of illegal immigrants, and cutting back on low-skilled, low-wage legal immigrants. As late as 2006, then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both voted for 200 miles of border fencing in the Southwest.

Then, virtually overnight, the progressive movement flipped and adopted the former talking points of the Chamber of Commerce cheap-labor lobby. While Democratic politicians deny that they oppose enforcing immigration laws, center-left journals and journalists keep pushing the idea of open borders, in alliance with crackpot free market fundamentalists. On April 12, 2022, David Dayen in the American Prospect wrote that “declining immigration rates since the pandemic have contributed to labor shortages in key industries and harmed Americans who rely on those services.” Dayen linked to an article in the libertarian Wall Street Journal bemoaning rising wages as a result of lower immigration. On Feb. 20 of this year, The New Yorker published a long essay by Zoey Poll, “The Case for Open Borders,” a fawning profile of the libertarian ideologue Bryan Caplan, author of Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, which, appropriately, takes the form of a graphic novel—that is to say, a comic book.

Back in 2015, Ezra Klein, then editor of the “progressive” outlet Vox, asked Sen. Bernie Sanders about the idea of “sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders.” Sanders replied in alarm: “Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal.” The lobby FWD.us, funded by Facebook and other large tech corporations that prefer hiring indentured servants (H-1Bs) bound to their employers instead of free American citizen-workers and legal immigrants, denounced Sanders for holding “the totally-debunked notion that immigrants coming to the U.S. are taking jobs and hurting Americans.” Vox then published an article by Dylan Matthews titled “Bernie Sanders’s fear of immigrant labor is ugly—and wrong-headed.” “If I could add one amendment to the Constitution,” Matthews declared, “it would be the one Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Robert Bartley once proposed: ‘There shall be open borders.’” In 2018, the progressive author Angela Nagle was canceled by Progressivism Inc. when she published an essay in American Affairs, “The Left Case Against Open Borders.” By 2020, when Matthew Yglesias, a co-founder of Vox, published One Billion Americans, the purging of dissidents and the fusion of the Progressivism Inc. party line on immigration with the anti-union, cheap-labor policies favored by The Wall Street Journal and Silicon Valley was complete.
 

Biden Directs ICE To Drop 'Low-Priority' Immigration Cases

The Biden administration is seeking to clear potentially hundreds of thousands of deportation and asylum cases pending before immigration courts, an unprecedented move that could significantly reduce the current backlog of 1.7 million cases.

In a memo dated Sunday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement directed its lawyers to review cases and try to clear those considered low priority under enforcement guidelines that the administration established last year. The American Immigration Lawyers Association estimates that there are at least 700,000 such cases — about 40 percent of the court backlog.

The agency would not provide an estimate of how many cases would be cleared under the directive or how long it would take. Previous administrations have moved cases off the court docket but not on such a broad scale. During the eight years of the Obama administration, more than 166,000 immigration cases were administratively closed, according to court data.

The court backlog has ballooned to the largest ever, causing yearslong delays for immigrants seeking asylum and other forms of relief. One reason is that the coronavirus pandemic has delayed proceedings. A significant number of cases were added during the Trump administration, especially after a surge in undocumented migrants crossing the border in 2019. That administration also reopened tens of thousands of cases that had been removed from the court docket.

The effort to reduce the backlog comes as the Biden administration prepares for what could be the largest increase yet of undocumented migrants crossing the border. The surge is expected to coincide with the end of a pandemic-era public health order that has given border officials the authority to quickly expel undocumented migrants.

https://archive.ph/wCxYg

Éric Zemmour: The anti-immigration insurgent reshaping the race for the French presidency

When 22-year-old Thaïs D'Escufon looks out her window, she sees a France that's disappearing. She posts provocative videos about it on YouTube — she has already been banned from TikTok — warning of a flood of migrants threatening the country.

The suburbs, she says, feel like a foreign country, and France's streets are no longer safe for white women.

More and more young people are tuning in to these views, even though they are exaggerated. They provide a populist answer to the insecurity about employment and the future that many of the country's young are feeling.

"I definitely support Éric Zemmour," she says. "I think he's a very, very brave person, that everyone says he's a demon."

Mr Zemmour gained notoriety as a journalist and pundit, with a million viewers tuning in to his appearances on conservative news channel C-News.

He popularised a conspiracy theory called "The Great Replacement", which claims white Europeans are being replaced by Muslims from Africa and the Middle East.

If elected, Mr Zemmour has proposed a program of "re-migration" which would see a million foreigners deported within five years.

Such extreme views were once unacceptable and consigned to the toxic margins of French politics.

In the last election, in 2017, far-right politician Marine Le Pen campaigned on a similar platform. She spoke against immigration and Islam, but lost to the upstart former banker, Emmanuel Macron.

Ms Le Pen is standing again and, this time, is presenting a more moderate image that is winning over voters. She's coming second in the polls — and rising.

That's allowed space for Éric Zemmour's extremist views to take hold on the political extreme right.

One in three voters are now saying they will vote for a far-right candidate when the country goes to the polls this weekend.

If no-one wins an outright majority on Sunday, then there will be another election two weeks later between the top two candidates.

Many are predicting it will be the current president, Macron, going head-to-head with a re-energised Le Pen.

Thaïs D'Escufon says Marine Le Pen is too "soft". Her moderation is a "betrayal" of her voters, she says. Thaïs wants Éric Zemmour to win the election.

"He loves France and wants to defend it," she says. "I really hope he will be elected because people just say to him, 'Please save us".

Thaïs, from Toulouse, is one of a growing band of far-right influencers trying to win over apathetic young French voters.

While surveys show most young people are concerned about global issues such as climate change and the environment, they are not engaged by the presidential candidates, and many simply will not vote.

Participation rates have been falling precipitously in recent elections, with a third of eligible voters aged 18 to 25 failing to vote in 2017.

France's youth have traditionally thrown their support behind left-wing candidates, but at the last election many flocked to the right.

Thaïs has gained a following online for her extreme views.  She was once part of the banned nationalist movement Generation Identity and has been convicted for "creating public disorder". Yet she persists, vehemently denouncing the laws that are designed to restrain hate speech.

"I want to defend my identity as a French person," she says. "This is considered you are a racist, the worst thing you can be, just for saying that you love your country and want to defend it."

In one YouTube video, she argues "white privilege" has driven much of the world's progress over the centuries.

And she continues to rail against what she describes as "mass immigration", despite no such program currently existing in France.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-07/zemmour-french-election-far-right-foreign-correspondent/100968198

2.5 million illegal immigrants have been apprehended since Biden took office. Almost all of them were released

Since President Joe Biden was sworn into office in Jan. 2021, more than 2.5 million illegal immigrants have been apprehended at the southern border, the greatest unchallenged influx of illegal immigrants in American history, according to data compiled by U.S. Customs & Border Patrol (CBP).

Of those, just 167,392 were either deemed inadmissible or expelled due to health concerns, according to the CBP.

Currently, just 20,146 illegal immigrants are currently detained in FY 2022 according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 136,725 have been released in FY 2022: 7,879 were bonded out, 85,747 were given orders of recognizance and 38,745 were paroled out. Besides that, ICE reports that Alternatives to Detention (ATD) currently number at 191,988.

That’s catch and release.

In addition, reports that in FY 2021, there were just 59,011 removals in its latest annual report, a 68 percent decrease from FY 2020, when 185,884 illegal immigrants were deported. And that was during the height of the Covid pandemic, and with far fewer apprehensions to work with.

So, working through the numbers: 2.5 million illegal immigrants were caught at the border, but only 167,392 were turned away and another 59,011 were deported.

Meaning, 2.27 million illegal immigrants just from Biden’s time in office remain in the country. They were all released.

Unfortunately, many of them are indentured slaves and victims of human trafficking who paid the Mexican drug cartels to get into the U.S. Once here, they are obliged to keep paying protection money. Many of them are sex slaves. How many?

In the year 2000, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimated as many as 50,000 women and children are smuggled to the U.S. every year to serve as prostitutes and forced laborers in violation of the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of slavery and indentured servitude.

After more than 20 years, that would mean there are more than 1 million slaves in the U.S. and likely, given the numbers we are seeing presently at the border, there are many, many more than that.

And the Biden administration—and prior administrations although not the Trump administration, which prioritized securing the border—is letting it happen. In fact, by opening the border, Biden is accommodating this abhorrent crime against humanity.

According to a report by the Organization of American States on human trafficking, the conditions of these slaves are atrocious: “The victims, mostly women and children, are often deceived about the true nature of the work. They are exploited in slavery-like conditions. The traffickers grow rich, but the victims are held in debt bondage… Some are abducted and sold, some are deceived into consenting by the promise of a better life or a better job, and some feel that entrusting themselves to traffickers is the only economically viable option. Regardless of the route of entry, most women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation suffer extreme violations of their human rights, including the right to liberty, the right to dignity and security of person, the right not to be held in slavery or involuntary servitude, the right to be free from cruel and inhumane treatment, the right to be free from violence, and the right to health.”

The report continued: “Why can’t they just leave? Some trafficking victims are physically imprisoned by locks, bars or guards. Those with apparent freedom to leave are controlled by other means. Physical, sexual and psychological violence are employed against them effectively.”

Former President Trump dealt with this problem by threatening Mexico with massive tariffs if they would not deploy their military to secure their side of the border. The Migrant Protocols and the Remain in Mexico policy were adopted by both countries, and apprehensions dropped substantially.

Then, Biden arbitrarily ended the Remain in Mexico policy, an action which the Supreme Court then struck down. Not that it matters. While the U.S. and Mexico have nominally agreed to reinstate the program in December, without the threat of tariffs, the amount of apprehensions is higher than ever.

Who’s remaining in Mexico if 838,685 illegal immigrants have been apprehended this year?

The better question is, of the millions of illegal immigrants coming here, how many of them are now enslaved here in the U.S. by the cartels? Maybe somebody should ask President Biden at this next press conference.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.

https://dailytorch.com/2022/03/2-5-million-illegal-immigrants-have-been-apprehended-since-biden-took-office-almost-all-of-them-were-released/