PHOENIX — U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been authorized to start cleaning up construction sites and close small gaps in the southern border wall nearly a year after President Joe Biden took office and ordered building to stop.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement this week that wall building projects begun by the Defense Department within the Border Patrol’s sectors in California, Arizona and parts of Texas will be turned over to his agency so any safety and environmental concerns can be addressed.

Work will include installing drainage systems to prevent flooding, erosion control and slope stabilization, construction and improvement of access roads and removal of building materials that will no longer be used.

It was unclear when cleanup and any remediation work will begin.

CBP will also close any small gaps that remain open from prior construction and finish work on incomplete gates, including inoperable storm gates that need to open during the rainy season.

Mayorkas said the the Biden administration is still calling on Congress to cancel any remaining border wall funding left over from former President Donald Trump’s time in office and instead fund technology and other kinds of border security measures it considers more effective.

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This story has been updated to correct that the name of the agency is U.S. Customs and Border Protection, not U.S. Customs and Border Prevention.

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/border-agency-authorized-clean-wall-construction-sites-81899746

The post Border agency authorized to clean up wall construction sites first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

FILE – In this Sept. 18, 2021, file photo Haitian migrants use a dam to cross into the United States from Mexico in Del Rio, Texas. President Joe Biden embraced major progressive policy goals on immigration after he won the Democratic nomination, and he has begun enacting some. But his administration has been forced to confront unusually high numbers of migrants trying to enter the country along the U.S.-Mexico border and the federal response has inflamed both critics and allies. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing bipartisan criticism over its approach to immigration, the Biden administration on Thursday announced new rules that require authorities to only pursue migrants who recently crossed into the country without permission or are deemed to pose a threat to public safety.

The new guidelines replace interim rules issued in February that were initially blocked by a federal judge in August as part of a lawsuit brought by Texas and Louisiana. They break from a more aggressive approach to immigration enforcement under former President Donald Trump, who early in his presidency directed authorities to apprehend anyone who was illegally in the country.

The release comes as President Joe Biden has come under fire from allies for his reliance on a Trump-era public health authority to rapidly expel migrants encountered on the U.S.-Mexico border while also facing Republican criticism that he hasn’t done enough to counter a sharp increase in migrants seeking to enter the country.

The Biden administration has expelled about 5,000 Haitians who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border at Del Rio, Texas, in recent weeks. A federal appeals court in Washington on Thursday cleared the administration to continue expelling families under the public-health authority known as Title 42. The appeals court put on hold a lower court order barring the expulsions of families hours before the ban was to take effect.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters that the new policy was based on the reality that the U.S. can’t go after all people in the country without legal status and shouldn’t try because many “have been contributing members of our communities for years.”

Authorities will be directed to focus on noncitizens who have crossed recently, defined as after Nov. 1, 2020, or who determined to be a threat because of national security or “serious criminal activity.” Homeland Security includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol.

Unlike the interim rules, the criminal activity is not limited to the category known in legal terms as an aggravated felony but will depend on the “totality of the facts and circumstances,” Mayorkas said. Anyone would be considered a priority if they are engaged or even suspected of terrorism or espionage, according to the memo. The new rules take effect Nov. 29.

Immigration authorities would be prohibited from arresting and seeking to deport someone in retaliation for exercising First Amendment rights, such as joining a protest or taking part in union activities.

“We are requiring and frankly empowering our workforce, critically empowering our workforce, to exercise their judgment, their law enforcement judgment,” the secretary said.

Advocates for strict immigration enforcement have criticized the interim guidelines, which were similar in intent as the newly released rules, because they were seen as a top-down approach and one that precluded low-level arrests that might yield investigative leads into bigger cases or help serve as a deterrent to illegal immigration.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said on Twitter that Biden has “welcomed” the migrants who have crossed and would now promise those already in the country that “they may stay in the U.S. without repercussions” with the new rules.

Immigrant advocates, including some who have in the past called for eliminating ICE and immigrant detention altogether, welcomed limits on enforcement but are wary given the rapid detention and expulsion of thousands of Haitians at Del Rio.

“This policy is only going to be as good as the results,” said Jacinta Gonzalez, senior campaign organizer of Mijente. “If detention numbers continue to rise, as deportations continue to happen, if we still see human rights abuses at the border, this policy won’t mean anything.”

A federal judge in Texas blocked the interim rules in August, ruling that the administration did not have discretion to choose which migrants to detain, but a federal appeals court allowed the guidelines to take effect while the lawsuit proceeds.

Mayorkas said it makes little sense to pursue all of the estimated 11 million people in the country without legal status, even if the U.S. had the law enforcement capacity to do so.

“They contribute to the well-being of our country and justice requires that we exercise our discretion accordingly,” he said. “The fact that an individual is a removeable non-citizen should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them.”

Trump’s administration took hundreds of measures to restrict both legal and illegal immigration, including a zero-tolerance policy on border crossings that resulted in the forcible separation of thousands of families and requiring asylum seekers to await the processing of their cases in Mexico.

In the end, total deportations were higher under the first term of President Barack Obama, who enacted enforcement priorities similar to Biden’s, than under Trump. That was due in part to a lack of cooperation from many cities and states whose leaders opposed Trump’s immigration policies.

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Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

Source:  https://apnews.com/article/immigration-donald-trump-joe-biden-mexico-arrests-af64610730b9c603b592101e4a7ddfa8

The post New Biden rules would limit arrest, deportation of migrants first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

WASHINGTON – Pressure appears to be building on the White House and U.S. intelligence agencies to declassify some information and brief the public on possible Russian attempts to meddle in the upcoming presidential election.

Much of the push is coming from former U.S. intelligence and security officials upset at a series of leaks that led to reports Russia was trying to bolster the campaigns of both President Donald Trump and one of his Democratic challengers, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

But some of the pressure is also coming from lawmakers who want see the American public get what they describe as an untainted assessment of what Russia is and is not doing, rather than see the allegations used for domestic political gain.

Congressional officials say, so far, lawmakers have not made any official requests to the intelligence agencies for any sort of public briefing or official statement on possible Russian meddling, due to concerns about protecting intelligence sources and methods.

Still, the officials note some sort of public disclosure is in line with the recommendations of a bipartisan report issued earlier this month by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which warned against keeping voters in the dark.

“The public should be informed as soon as possible, with a clear and succinct statement of the threat, even if the information is incomplete,” the report stated. “Delaying the release of information allows inaccurate narratives to spread, which makes the task of informing the public significantly harder.”

Both the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment when asked by VOA if a plan to share some of the latest intelligence with the public was under consideration.

In India Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed anger over the intelligence leaks, calling the reports of Russia meddling to boost his reelection campaign or the campaign of Democratic front-runner Bernie Sanders “highly exaggerated.”

“Intelligence never told me,” he told reporters. “And we have a couple of people here that would know very well.”

Other Trump administration officials have also forcefully denied the reports of Russian meddling to boost the president.

But on Friday, Sanders confirmed U.S. intelligence had, in fact, warned him about the Russian meddling. He later warned Moscow to stay out of U.S. politics.

It is those contradicting narratives that have former intelligence and security officials calling for some sort of public disclosure.

“I would certainly encourage it…no matter what it says,” former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin told VOA. “We don’t know the whole story yet.”

Other longtime intelligence officials agree.

“Indications and warnings of threats to our democratic process are not like fine wine, getting better with age,” Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA chief of station, said. “We learned from 2016, we need a coordinated assessment based on the facts rather than innuendo and poor analysis tinged with confirmation bias.”

At least one White House official has indicated an openness to sharing some of the existing intelligence with the public.

“I’d have no problem with that,” U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “If there’s intelligence that we can declassify, that we can get out there — all the better — because, again, we weren’t in office in 2016 when the last election meddling took place and the administration did very little about it.”

However, some of those who were in office in 2016 accuse the Trump administration of doing even less.

“It is vital that the Trump administration declassify what we know so it can be described by our intelligence community publicly, so the voters are armed with this information,” Jeh Johnson, who served as Homeland Security secretary under former President Barack Obama, said during a forum in Detroit Monday.

“That’s what we did in the prior administration,” he added, referring to a statement he and other top officials issued in October 2016 blaming Russia for hacking and then leaking emails from the Democratic National Committee.

Some Democratic lawmakers have also seized upon the president’s handling of the latest allegations of Russian meddling.

“What does the president do in response to that information? He fires the head of the intelligence community,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said on the floor of the Senate late Tuesday, arguing for the passage of election security legislation.

“He fires them because he doesn’t want them to tell Congress what the Russians are doing,” he said.

Trump administration officials have consistently pushed back, arguing the president has made it clear that interference by Russia or anyone else will not be tolerated.

“Meddling in our elections is unacceptable,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Tuesday. “Should Russia or any foreign actor take steps to undermine our democratic processes, we will take action in response.”

Some former intelligence officials caution that President Trump’s long-contentious relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies, dating back to their 2017 assessment that Russia did seek to help Trump win the election, is hurting the administration’s credibility.

“One doesn’t get a warm and fuzzy feeling,” said Larry Pfeiffer, a former CIA chief of staff and former senior director of the White House Situation Room, who has been critical of Trump in the past. “The congressional intelligence committees should demand open hearings in order to assure the American people, and closed hearings in order to conduct appropriate oversight of the activities to assess that threat.”

Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.voanews.com/usa/growing-calls-us-intelligence-clear-russian-meddling-allegations

The post Growing Calls for US Intelligence to Clear Up Russian Meddling Allegations first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

President Trump laid the blame for a deadly attack in Syria partly on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.CreditTom Brenner/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Sunday promised a “big price” to be paid for what he said was a chemical weapons attack that choked dozens of Syrians to death the day before, and a top White House official said the administration would not rule out a missile strike to retaliate against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

In a tweet, Mr. Trump laid the blame for the attack partly on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the first time since his election that he has criticized the Russian leader by name on Twitter. Mr. Putin’s forces have been fighting for years to keep the Assad government in power amid Syria’s brutal civil war.

Mr. Trump also left no doubt that he believed the assessment of aid groups that Mr. Assad’s military had used chemical weapons to inflict the carnage on Saturday in Douma, a rebel-held suburb of Damascus. The attack left at least 42 people dead in their homes from apparent suffocation and sent many others to clinics with burning eyes and breathing problems.

“Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria,” Mr. Trump wrote. “President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad.”

“Big price to pay,” Mr. Trump continued in a second tweet. “Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!”

Thomas P. Bossert, Mr. Trump’s homeland security adviser, said he and the rest of the president’s national security team had been in talks with Mr. Trump late Saturday and early Sunday about how to respond. Asked specifically about the possibility of a missile strike, Mr. Bossert did not rule it out.

“I wouldn’t take anything off the table,” Mr. Bossert said on ABC’s “This Week.” “These are horrible photos; we’re looking into the attack at this point.”

That raised the prospect of a strike along the lines of one that the president ordered almost exactly a year ago after a sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 80 civilians. In that strike, the United States military dropped 59 Tomahawk missiles on the Al Shayrat airfield, where the chemical weapons attack had originated.

Mr. Trump may be considering such a strike even as he has expressed his desire in recent days to pull American troops out of Syria, where they are seeking to eliminate the last vestiges of the Islamic State. White House officials said Mr. Trump would have a meeting and dinner on Monday at the White House with senior military leaders.

Nikki R. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, announced an emergency meeting there on Monday to demand immediate access to Douma for emergency workers, urge an independent investigation of the massacre, and “hold accountable those responsible for this atrocious act.”

The assault on Douma and the president’s response also showed how Syria has bedeviled Mr. Trump just as it did his predecessor, repeatedly presenting them with grave challenges and few good options for confronting them.

It was not clear on Sunday whether his tweets reflected serious planning for a military strike, or if the suspected chemical attack had changed the president’s calculation about the necessity for a rapid wind-down of American military involvement in Syria. A White House official said he could provide no guidance beyond what the president had said on Twitter.

But some Republicans urged Mr. Trump to act, saying his talk of pulling United States troops out of Syria had telegraphed to Mr. Assad that he would pay no price for brutalizing his own people.

“President Trump last week signaled to the world that the United States would prematurely withdraw from Syria,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement, adding that Mr. Assad had been “emboldened by American inaction” to launch the attack in Douma.

“The president responded decisively when Assad used chemical weapons last year,” Mr. McCain went on. “He should do so again, and demonstrate that Assad will pay a price for his war crimes.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said Mr. Trump should make good on what the president appeared to be threatening.

If the president “doesn’t follow through and live up to that tweet, he’s going to look weak in the eyes of Russia and Iran,” Mr. Graham said on “This Week.” “This is a defining moment.”

“You need to follow through with that tweet,” he added. “Show a resolve that Obama never did to get this right.”

In his tweets, Mr. Trump also criticized former President Barack Obama for failing to take military action against Mr. Assad’s government when it used chemical weapons in 2013. Mr. Obama had threatened that any use of unconventional weapons would cross a “red line” for the United States.

e time, though, Mr. Trump argued fiercely against American intervention in Syria. In more than a dozen messages on Twitter in 2013 and 2014, he argued that the nation’s civil war was “not our problem” and that American troops should “stay out.”

On Sunday, Mr. Trump’s tweets came not long after a report on Fox News about the massacre in Douma, in which an anchor said that “all eyes” would now be on the president’s response, and that the airstrikes last year had “garnered praise” from American allies.

The timing of the tweets alarmed some progressives who warned that Mr. Trump might make military decisions based on commentary on his favorite cable news outlet.

“If Trump should launch missiles, it is because Fox and Friends told him to,” VoteVets, a group that focuses on military issues and is aligned with Democrats, said on Twitter. “We cannot possibly overstate how insane and disastrous for command of our military that would be.”

In a statement on Saturday night, the State Department called the situation in Douma an “alleged chemical weapons attack” and said the reports about it were “horrifying and demand an immediate response by the international community.”

The statement took Moscow to task, saying it had breached international obligations and calling into question its commitment to weapons nonproliferation.

“The Assad regime and its backers must be held accountable and any further attacks prevented immediately,” it said. “Russia, with its unwavering support for the regime, ultimately bears responsibility for these brutal attacks, targeting of countless civilians and the suffocation of Syria’s most vulnerable communities with chemical weapons.”

But while members of his administration have often been harshly critical of Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump has in general spoken warmly of his Russian counterpart.

American officials said the process was underway to confirm whether the Syrian government had used chemical weapons and, if so, what kind.

Since last April’s strike on the airfield, the Pentagon has updated lists of potential Syrian military and government targets should Mr. Trump order another strike.

A senior Navy officer said on Sunday morning that Navy warships capable of firing cruise missiles were in the Mediterranean on routine, long-scheduled deployments but had not received any orders to prepare to move closer to Syria or to prepare to carry out any strikes.

Before last year’s strike, American commanders at the sprawling Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar — the United States’ air war command for the region — gave their Russian counterparts a warning of no more than 90 minutes before striking the Syrian airfield. The Americans did this under a “deconfliction” agreement with Moscow to try to prevent an unintended confrontation between the two countries.

At a daily operations briefing on Sunday at the air command center, there was no indication of an imminent operation, said one official who was briefed on the meeting. “Things can change pretty quickly, though,” the official cautioned, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Indeed, only 63 hours passed between last April’s chemical attack and the American cruise missile strike.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/08/us/politics/trump-syria-chemical-attack.html

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