U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) last week released its latest numbers of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions between the ports of entry and aliens deemed inadmissible at the ports of entry. Those numbers reveal a worsening crisis that involves not only family units (FMUs) and unaccompanied alien children (UAC), but also single adult males. Those statistics underscore the need for Congress to accede to the president’s request for supplemental funding, which I detailed in a May 3, 2019 post.

Specifically, total Border Patrol apprehensions in April 2019 were 98,977, an almost seven-percent increase over the month before. The individual numbers are worse, because the number of FMUs increased to 58,474 in April, an almost 10-percent increase over the month before. Plainly, FMUs and the smugglers who are assisting them have identified the loopholes that they can exploit to enter the United States illegally and gain release, and in particular the Flores settlement agreement and the lack of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detention space for FMUs.

As the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s CBP Families and Children Care Panel (Panel) April 16, 2019 Final Emergency Interim Report stated:

By far, the major “pull factor” is the current practice of releasing with a NTA most illegal migrants who bring a child with them. The crisis is further exacerbated by a 2017 federal court order in Flores v. DHS expanding to FMUs a 20-day release requirement contained in a 1997 consent decree, originally applicable only to unaccompanied children (UAC). After being given NTAs, we estimate that 15% or less of FMU will likely be granted asylum. The current time to process an asylum claim for anyone who is not detained is over two years, not counting appeals.

As the Panel notes, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) currently “has effective capacity to obtain only 2500 FMUs, and that capacity is woefully inadequate given the surge in FMU migration over the past year.” Compare that 2,500 to the apprehension of 58,474 FMUs in April alone, and the problem becomes apparent.

In addition, according to CBP, the number of single adults who were apprehended in May was 31,606, up three percent from the month before, but up almost 71 percent from December 2018. ICE should have detention space and legal authority to detain at least some portion of that population until they can be removed, but as the New York Times reported in April, the congressionally mandated limit on detention beds is 45,274. This includes not just aliens detained by ICE who were apprehended along the border, but also aliens (including and especially alien criminals) whom the agency has detained in the interior of the United States. It is no wonder that according to the Times, ICE was then “housing 50,223 migrants, one of the highest numbers on record.”

This places the agency in a dilemma: either use its limited detention beds to detain single adults entering the United States illegally (which would logically dissuade other single adult male aliens from seeking illegal entry) or utilize those beds to hold and remove criminal aliens and other aliens who pose a risk of flight or a danger to the community. There is no reason that American communities should have to face either the prospect of otherwise removable aliens remaining on the streets, or instead slowing the increase of future removable aliens entering illegally across the border.

This apparently falls on deaf ears among congressional Democrats, as I noted in that May 3 post, in which I detailed the president’s request for supplemental funding for immigration:

Despite the need for this additional funding, it does not appear that a key House Democrat, Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, is supportive. The Washington Post states that Lowey criticized the request “as an attempt to expand detention of immigrants by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.” It quotes her as stating:

The Trump administration appears to want much of this $4.5 billion emergency supplemental request to double down on cruel and ill-conceived policies, including bailing out ICE for overspending on detention beds and expanding family detention . … Locking up people who pose no threat to the community for ever-longer periods of time is not a solution to the problems at the border.

With all due respect to Chairwoman Lowey: (1) there is no crystal ball that enables even a powerful appropriator to know which aliens do or do not pose a threat to the community; and (2) detaining and removing aliens who have come to the United States to work is the best solution to the problem of additional aliens coming to the United States to work.

That doesn’t even count the fact that “people who pose no threat to the community” is a subjective standard. Tell the inner-city youth with a poor education and few opportunities to develop employment skills who is looking for a job that a foreign national with no right to be in the United States and who is competing for that job that the foreign national worker does not pose a risk to the community. I am the last apologist for the blight of inner-city crime (a subject on which I am an expert as a citizen of Baltimore), but if a working-age resident of that inner city cannot find a job, there are plenty of criminals who are looking for new accomplices. Marlo and Omar are fictional characters, but they have plenty of real-life counterparts. Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell can always use more help.

In any event, the CBP numbers also show a decrease in the number of FMUs who were deemed inadmissible at the ports of entry (from 4,196 in March 2019 to 3,443 in April 2019, an 18-percent drop from the month before), but this is little reason to celebrate. First, that decrease is small compared to the increase in FMUs entering illegally, a much more dangerous proposition for the migrants involved. Second, it likely reflects the fact that FMUs do not want to face long waits at the ports of entry to make asylum claims, but would prefer to “jump the line” and simply enter illegally to make those claims, despite the aforementioned danger to themselves and their children.

To quantify that danger, as the Panel explains:

Children who are crossing the borders of the U.S. are at great risk for multiple medical problems, which include but are not limited to, dehydration, malnutrition, infections, psychological trauma, physical injuries and all aspects of child maltreatment. Many of these sequelae are not necessarily evident within the context of a non-medical evaluation. An expectation for clinical acumen by CBP agents and officers is highly unrealistic. Even medical personnel need to have a higher level of expertise to anticipate some of the potential infectious disease complications that can be found in this population of children.

Maybe Chairwoman Lowey hasn’t read that report yet. She should.

Or, perhaps, she can go to Yuma, Arizona. As Fox News reported last week:

A rural border city in Arizona sees no end in sight to the surge of migrants and families crossing the border into their community.

Yuma mayor Douglas Nicholls issued a proclamation of emergency at the border in April, declaring a “humanitarian crisis” that is still affecting the community.

“This is a federal issue,” Nicholls said. “This is not a local issue. So, it needs a federal level response. We’ve had 2,500 people come through our shelter system. In a community of 100,000 people, that’s a large number that comes through a shelter system in a little over a month (April –May 2019). So, with that number, that volume, it’s a national issue. It’s not just Yuma’s issue.”

I visited Yuma in January when the problem was bad and getting worse. If she had gone with me, Chairwoman Lowey would have known where the situation was headed. It was probably warmer than “the Lower Hudson Valley of New York State . . . includ[ing] central and northwestern Westchester County and all of Rockland County” (which she represents), but the amenities were likely not as nice.

Or, maybe she should listen to the newspaper of record in the Empire State, the New York Times. In a May 5, 2019 opinion piece (captioned “Congress, Give Trump His Border Money“), the paper’s editorial board stated:

There is no pressing national security threat — no invasion of murderers, drug cartels or terrorists. No matter how often Mr. Trump delivers such warnings, they bear little resemblance to the truth.

But as record numbers of Central American families flee violence and poverty in their homelands, they are overwhelming United States border systems, fueling a humanitarian crisis of overcrowding, disease and chaos. The Border Patrol is now averaging 1,200 daily arrests, with many migrants arriving exhausted and sick. Last week, a teenage boy from Guatemala died in government custody, the third death of a minor since December. As resources are strained and the system buckles, the misery grows.

There are many errors, in my professional opinion, in just those two paragraphs, but the fundamental premise is solid: misery is growing “[a]s resources are strained and the system buckles.”

The latest numbers from the border quantify this. It is well past time for Congress to act, and “Give Trump His Border Money”.

Source: https://cis.org/Arthur/Latest-Border-Numbers-Show-Worsening-Crisis

The post Latest Border Numbers Show Worsening Crisis first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Attorney General William Barr arrives to testify before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on April 10, 2019.Andrew Harnik / AP

Speaking about his efforts to obtain the full, un-redacted version of the Mueller report and all of the supporting documents and evidence, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said on Tuesday, “If we don’t get everything, we will issue the subpoena and go to court.”

Nadler’s comments came on the same day that Attorney General William Barr appeared before the House Appropriations Committee and announced that he would release a redacted version of the Mueller report “within a week.” Barr then appeared before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee meeting on Wednesday, where he told lawmakers: “I’m landing the plane right now and I’ve been willing to discuss my letters and the process going forward, and the report is going to be out next week and I’m not going to go into the details until the plane is on the ground.”

Whenever the plane does land, it’s likely Barr’s redactions will do little to satisfy Democrats. Any hope that the attorney general would be impartial was erased when he released a four-page document that President Donald Trump has since used as a vehicle to falsely claim a “total exoneration” of all wrongdoing. Even more disturbing was Barr’s refusal to clearly answer questions about potential White House involvement in the crafting of that document.

Indeed, Barr even refused to push back on the president’s accusation that the special counsel’s investigation was nothing but a “witch hunt.” Asked by senators whether he agreed with this characterization, Barr remarked that it “really depends on where you’re sitting.” It was answer sure to make his boss in the Oval Office happy, if not Congress.

Bizarrely, Barr is now claiming that the four-page letter he released was “not a summary” of the Mueller report. Never mind the fact that in his own words, Barr literally wrote, “I believe that it is in the public interest to describe the report and to summarize the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation.”

Once again, a member of the Trump administration is lying. It is painfully clear that the attorney general cannot and should not be the arbiter of what Congress, and ultimately the American people, can see when it comes to the Mueller report. Someone who is not comfortable, at the very least, of respecting the efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is clearly far too partisan to be trusted with such an important moment in U.S. history.

Barr’s reticence is not super surprising given the White House’s statements. In recent days, Trump has telegraphed that he does not want the full report to be released publicly. On Monday, Trump tweeted: “The Democrats will never be satisfied, not matter what they get, how much they get, or how many pages they get. It will never end, but that’s the way life goes!”

The post The legal battle between Democrats and AG Barr over the Mueller report has begun first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

BLADENBORO, N.C. — Ten days after Hurricane Florence came ashore, the storm caused fresh chaos Monday across the Carolinas, where rivers kept rising and thousands more people were told to be ready to evacuate.

Authorities urged up to 8,000 people in Georgetown County, on the South Carolina coast, to be prepared to flee from potential flood zones. A “record event” of up to 10 feet of flooding was expected to begin Tuesday near parts of the Pee Dee and Waccamaw rivers, county spokeswoman Jackie Broach-Akers said.

Residents along the Waccamaw braced for water predicted to peak Wednesday at 22 feet near Conway. That’s twice the normal flood stage and far higher than the previous record of 17.9 feet, according to charts published Monday by the National Weather Service.

Pastor Willie Lowrimore and several members of his church spent Saturday sandbagging and spreading plastic sheets around the sanctuary of The Fellowship With Jesus Ministries church on the banks of the Waccamaw in Yauhannah, South Carolina, about 20 miles south of Myrtle Beach.

The nearly black, reeking water seeped around and over the sandbags around 2 a.m. Monday. By noon, it was several inches deep.

With the church pews moved to a flatbed trailer on higher ground, Lowrimore sat in a rocking chair listening to the normally calm river rush by, ruining the church he built almost 20 years ago.

“I’m going to go one day at a time. Put it in the Lord’s hands. My hands aren’t big enough,” he said.

In North Carolina, the Cape Fear and Neuse rivers remained swollen and were not expected to return to normal levels until October, the charts show.

“Florence continues to bring misery to North Carolina,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said Sunday evening in a statement.

Most of the Carolinas have seen the worst of the flooding, but people need to remain cautious, said Todd Hamill, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service’s Southeast River Forecast Center. With most rivers having crested, that water is moving toward the coast, he said.

Parts of Interstate 40 are expected to remain underwater for another week or more, and hundreds of smaller roads remain impassable. But there was some good news: Interstate 95 was reopened to all traffic Sunday night for the first time since the floods.

Floodwaters already receding on one stretch of Interstate 40 left thousands of rotting fish on the pavement for firefighters to clean up.

Crews conducted about 350 rescues over the weekend, and travel remains treacherous in the southeastern area of the state, the governor added. National Guard members would be shifting to more door-to-door and air-search checks on people in still-flooded areas.

The storm has claimed at least 43 lives since slamming into the coast Sept. 14.

On Monday, Republican education leaders in North Carolina announced planned legislation to assure teachers at still-shuttered schools that they will get paid without using vacation time. The proposal was part of broader disaster funding that the General Assembly will consider in an anticipated special session.

In Washington, lawmakers considered almost $1.7 billion in new money for disaster relief and recovery, even as they face a deadline this week to fund the government before the Oct. 1 start of the new budget year.

The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee said the money would be available as grants to states to help rebuild housing and public works, as well as assist businesses. GOP Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey called it “a first round” and said lawmakers are ready to act quickly if the federal disaster relief agency also needs more money.

The economic research firm Moody’s Analytics estimated that Florence has caused around $44 billion in damage and lost output, which would make it one of the 10 costliest U.S. hurricanes. The worst disaster, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, cost $192.2 billion in today’s dollars. Last year’s Hurricane Harvey cost $133.5 billion.

Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Yauhannah, South Carolina; Meg Kinnard in Galivants Ferry, South Carolina; Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama and Michael Biesecker in Washington contributed to this report.

MORE

• Hurricane Florence strengthens as experts warn of ‘large-scale disaster’
• Carolinas brace for extremely dangerous Hurricane Florence
• Washington, DC, declares state of emergency head of Hurricane Florence
• ‘Big and vicious’: Hurricane Florence closes in on Carolinas
• Hurricane Florence could flood many waste sites, creating toxic brew
• Slaves’ descendants have long history of enduring hurricanes
• Hurricane Florence: 10 million in crosshairs of storm’s uncertain track
• EDITORIAL: Hurricane Florence and Trump’s tweets really have us worried
• Florence’s flooding claims 3.4 million poultry, 5,500 hogs
• Trump arrives in North Carolina to survey Florence damage
• New evacuations ordered because of Florence flooding
• Carolinas farms could take billions in losses from Hurricane Florence

Source: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/hurricane-florence-carolinas-flood-zones-warning-rising-rivers/

The post Hurricane Florence: 10 days after storm, fresh chaos in Carolinas first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.