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Fresh off a week-long tour of security installations along Arizona’s border with Mexico, Montana congressman Matt Rosendale blasted the Biden administration’s actions halting construction of former President Donald Trump’s southern border wall.

“The first thing that became extremely clear was the policies of the Biden administration are already, right now, having impact and not in a positive way,” Rosendale said. “It’s compromising our national security, it’s hurting the economy. There’s just a whole host of problems that are already beginning to show up.”

Last week’s journey to the Arizona desert was Rosendale’s first congressional trip as the newly elected Representative for Montana. He was joined by eight additional Republican House members including Arizona congressman Andy Biggs, co-chair of the Border Security Caucus, who organized the event.

“If the Biden administration persists with its open-borders policies, the United States will be overrun with a historic surge of illegal aliens, who are chasing amnesty and sanctuary from the rule of law,” Biggs said in a news release on Monday.. “I hope this administration will stop pandering to the radical left when it comes to securing our border and enforcing our laws.”

Building a wall on the U.S border with Mexico was one of former President Trump’s most divisive campaign promises. Supporters assert that a physical barrier is necessary to bolster national security and halt the flow of undocumented immigrants and illegal drugs into the United States.

While a majority of Americans favor increased security at the southern border, many argue that building a 1,954-mile-long wall would be enormously expensive, would trample on private property rights, cause vast ecological damage, and would ultimately prove ineffective in halting illegal traffic into the United States.

Montana Representative Matt Rosendale walks with a U.S. Border Patrol agent at a port of entry on the Arizona/Mexico border. Photo: U.S. Representative Matt Rosendale

Thus far about 475-miles of wall has been completed along the southern border, the majority replacing pre-existing barriers with 30-foot tall, steel bollard fencing. A recent story in the Arizona Republic newspaper reports that construction includes new roads, lighting, and sensors to help agents better patrol areas at a cost of roughly $24.4 million per mile to U.S. taxpayers.

On his first day in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order halting construction on the wall and redirecting funds that had been set aside for its construction.

Rosendale said that during his four-da-long trip to the Arizona border he spoke with Border Patrol agents, members of local law enforcement, customs officials, and government contractors about the construction shutdown, and warned that dire consequences were already apparent.

“Right now, with construction shut down, there is a hole in this barrier 150 miles wide, from Sasabe, Arizona to Yuma, and there are people putting together caravans right now that are starting to come north because they hear that the new administration’s policies are going to be a lot more lax on illegal immigration. Thousands and thousands and thousand of people,” Rosendale said.

“They’ve already, since the election seen a 15% increase in illegal crossings,” he added. “Only 30% of the detainees are from Mexico. We also have folks that are coming in that they are detaining from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, India. This is a really, really big problem for our national security.”

President Joe Biden signs his first executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Six of Biden’s 17 first-day executive orders dealt with immigration, such as halting work on a border wall in Mexico and lifting a travel ban on people from several predominantly Muslim countries. Photo: Evan Vucci, AP

A 2019 report by the Associated Press shows that nearly ¾ of all detainees at the southern border come from just four countries; Guatemala (21%), Mexico (19%), El Salvador (18%) and Honduras (16%). Additionally, the number of southwest border detentions has tripled during Trump’s four years in office as tens of thousands have headed north hoping to enter the U.S. before the crossing becomes more tenuous and escape from the poverty and violence of their home countries.

About 10.5 million people currently reside in the U.S. illegally according to a 2017 report from the Pew Research Center. Of these, roughly 40% did not cross into the United States illegally, but simply remained after their legally issued student or work visas expired, that according to a recent article in The New York Times.

“More than 60 percent have resided in the country for more than a decade, and they have more than four million U.S.-born children,” the Times article reads. “They account for 5 percent of the work force, representing the backbone of the agriculture, construction and hospitality sectors.”

The American Immigration Council reports that fewer than 5,000 undocumented immigrants currently reside in Montana, constituting less than ½ of 1% of the state’s total population.

Rosendale emphasized the increase in illegal drug seizures documented at border crossings at the Arizona border in the past year.

“There was 1,300 pounds of heroin that got across that border last year,” he said. “There were 8,600 pounds of meth that came across that border last year. There was 3½ million tabs of fentanyl that came across that border last year, and these guys are talking about increases. When those increases take place they don’t just land in Arizona. When the border becomes that porous every town across this country has the potential to become a border town.”

As security measures along the southern border have become more stringent, undocumented immigrants have increasingly been willing to risk crossings at more remote and hazardous locations.

File – In this June 23, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump tours a section of the border wall in San Luis, Ariz. President Donald Trump is expected to travel to the U.S. Mexico border on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021 to highlight his administration’s work on the border wall, the White House said Saturday, (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) – Evan Vucci, AP

“Children, infants and the elderly attempt to cross,” a story from the C/NET news website reports. “The conditions are extreme and some people will go for days without food or water. According to the Human Rights National Commission of Mexico and the American Civil Liberties Union, almost 5,000 people died attempting to cross the border between 1994 and 2007.”

Rosendale cited these humanitarian costs as an added motivation for his support for continuing border wall construction.

“They’re being sexually molested, they’re being physically abused, they’re forcing these women into prostitution, they’re taking those children and abusing them and forcing them to carry drugs across the border,” he said of the human smugglers paid to transport illegal immigrants into the U.S.

“If they in fact survive that area between the crossing and when they finally get picked up –  which could be anywhere from 10 miles to 60-miles traversing some very bad country – if they’re not killed by the severe exposure of the elements, then many of these folks are forced into servitude to pay off that debt – and if they’re not paying that debt off then guess what, they’ve got family members back in Nicaragua or El Salvador or Mexico that are at incredible risk. Anyone who walks around this country and thinks we’re helping these folks – we are not helping people when we expose them to that kind of treatment.”

According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the current price migrants pay to get themselves smuggled from Central America ranges between $5000 and $12,000. Mexican drug cartels control routes along the Mexican portion of the journey, and are known to charge fees to smugglers and migrants who use them. The cartels are also known to kidnap and kill smugglers and migrants who fail to pay these fees.

Rosendale also highlighted the economic impact a cancellation of government contracts would have on local economies.

“When you see millions of dollars worth of heavy equipment; excavators and bulldozers parked on the lay-down yards, and the materials that they were actually constructing the wall with setting there on the side – it is very, very troubling,” he said. “In talking to the contractors they say, look, we’ve got about a 60-day window here where … we would be able to commence work again if we were able to get some authority and direction, but after 60 days, then people start pulling out.”

The Arizona Republic estimates the Trump administration secured about $16.3 billion for border wall construction, based upon congressional appropriations, reprogramming notices and contract award data. Of that, perhaps $8 billion has already been spent.

In 2017 the Washington Post estimated that completing the wall would take three and a half years and cost roughly $25 billion – enough to hire 50,000 teachers for 10 years.

President Donald Trump tours a section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall under construction Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021 in Alamo, Texas. Photo: Alex Brandon, AP

In early January the Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Mark Morgan, criticized any effort to stop construction, claiming it would cost taxpayers even more money to cancel the contracts.

“If the Biden team implements the immigration policies that they have campaigned on, that they promised the American people on Day One, they will create an unmitigated crisis in the first few weeks,” he said in a telephone interview with reporters.

However, contracting experts quoted by the Arizona Republic said Biden will have various legal options to stop construction, including the termination for convenience clauses built into federal contracts that allows the government to cancel them any time and provide adequate compensation to contractors.

“There is an established regulatory process to stop these contracts, if the president should so decide, in an efficient and orderly manner that will also fairly compensate the contractors for the work that has been performed,” said John Horan, a professor on government procurement law at Georgetown University Law Center.

In the final months before Biden assumed the presidency, contractors along the Arizona border proceeded at a break-neck pace, completing approximately 1.5 miles of construction a day with limited expectation that the project would ultimately be completed.

“Every single day, the Department of Homeland Security continues to dynamite, to blow up these rugged mountains in order to clear a path for a wall that, in all likelihood, will never be built,” Laiken Jordahl from the Center for Biological Diversity told National Public Radio in November, 2020  “It’s just destruction for destruction’s sake.”

Most environmental organizations oppose the wall’s construction, which has already cut paths across the Coronado National Memorial and Guadalupe Canyon, a wildlife corridor for Mexican gray wolves and endangered jaguars.

Environmentalists claim that existing walls have already blocked off or divided the habitats of several rare animals, including the jaguar, ocelot, mountain lions, desert big horn sheep, and low-flying pygmy owls.

Montana Representative Matt Rosendale speaks with a contractor near the Arizona/Mexico border. Photo: U.S. Representative Matt Rosendale

However, Rosendale continues to emphasize the importance of seeing the project through to some form of completion.

“We have to continue this construction,” he said. “We have to continue to raise the awareness and work with the administration to help them see the errors in his ways.”

Montana’s lone congressman in the House of Representatives said he his working on several pieces of legislation “to help sort out some of this immigration issue and stem some of these problems.”

David Murray is Natural Resources/Agriculture reporter for the Great Falls Tribune. To contact him with comments or story ideas; email dmurray@greatfallstribune.com or call (406) 403-3257. To preserve quality, in-depth journalism in northcentral Montana subscribe to the Great Falls Tribune.

Source: https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2021/02/04/montana-congressman-promotes-completion-southern-border-wall/4357546001/

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The suspected nuclear explosion occurred Thursday off the coast of Russia’s Nenoska Missile Test Site, an installation suspected of developing Russia’s next generation of advanced missiles. Seven people were reportedly killed.

“The United States is learning much from the failed missile explosion in Russia,” Trump tweeted Monday. “We have similar, though more advanced, technology. The Russian ‘Skyfall’ explosion has people worried about the air around the facility and far beyond. Not good!”

Russian media reported radiation briefly spiked to 200 times the normal rate, according to the New York Times, but these reports were later scrubbed from the websites of Severodvinsk, a small city located 25 miles away from the explosion in Russia’s Archangel province. Fears over radiation poisoning caused a run on iodine by local residents, which can protect the thyroid gland from absorbing radiation.

Experts and intelligence officials believe the explosion was the result of a botched test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile known by NATO as the SSC-X-9 Skyfall.

“Our working hypothesis is that the event in Russia yesterday was related to Russia’s nuclear-powered cruise missile, the 9M730 Burevestnik (NATO name: SSC-X-9 Skyfall,” Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the Middlebury Institute, said Friday on Twitter. “Possibly a botched recovery effort involving the Serebryanka […]”

The Serebryanka is a Russian nuclear fuel carrier, which an image from Planet Labs shows was near the test site at the time of the incident. The ship was last reported as of Monday in Murmansk, a port 355 miles from Severodvinsk.

Russia is believed to have conducted a partially successful test of the Skyfall on Jan. 29, preceding the Trump administration’s announcement removing the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty on Feb. 2. The missile’s small nuclear reactor theoretically makes it capable of traveling across the globe for an indefinite amount of time. It is also believed to be capable of avoiding conventional missile defense systems.

This isn’t the first incident involving the Skyfall. Russian Navy ships were sent to search for the remains of a Skyfall missile in August after it landed off the coast of northern Russia in March 2018 during a failed test. Putin unveiled the missile that same month, bragging that it renders defense systems “useless.” He went on to make a thinly-veiled threat against the U.S.

“I want to tell all those who have fueled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, introduced unlawful sanctions aimed to contain our country’s development … you have failed to contain Russia,” he said.

“Nobody listened to us. Well, listen to us now.”

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/trump-us-has-better-weapons-than-the-failed-russian-skyfall-missile

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Agents encountered 1,036 people, primarily from Central America, near El Paso, Texas, early Wednesday morning. The arrest marks the largest group of unauthorized immigrants that Border Patrol has ever taken into custody at once.

The group included 63 children traveling without a parent or guardian. Another 39 people were single adults, and the remaining 934 claimed to be traveling with a family member, according to a report. Guatemalan citizens made up just over half the detainees. The rest are primarily from other Central American countries, including Honduras and El Salvador.

It’s not clear if the group came from Northern Triangle countries as part of a caravan, though it’s not likely, given no news of a convoy traveling through Mexico. Border Patrol has said human smugglers often oversee the movement of migrants at the border and use the groups to distract federal law enforcement while they move narcotics or people hoping to avoid arrest over unmanned parts of the border. Smugglers charge migrants an average of $5,000 to $8,000 each to get to the United States.

Border Patrol said in late March its agents on the southern border had since October apprehended 100 groups that contained 100 or more people. In its 2017 fiscal year, CBP documented two groups of 100 people or more. That jumped to 13 groups in 2018.

Until Wednesday, the biggest group of people to arrive at once consisted of more than 430 individuals. That apprehension took place Monday in the same region of the southern border. Memorial Day marked the busiest day in history for Border Patrol’s El Paso region as 2,200 people were taken into custody.

President Trump told reporters at the White House earlier Thursday to expect a major statement about the border in the next day or two. Wednesday’s apprehension has not been publicly shared by Customs and Border Protection or its parent, the Department of Homeland Security.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

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The group has been described by Mexico’s Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero as “caravana madre,” which has been widely referred to as the “mother of all caravans” in American media.

Around 90 people embarked from El Salvador the last week of March then crossed into Guatemala and then into Mexico. By March 29, Sanchez said the group was expected to exceed 20,000 members. Although the caravan is roughly half that size currently, it has been reported as one of the most diverse groups because in addition to Central Americans, it is made up of people from Cuba, Haiti, and Africa.

The Human Rights Commission said it is working with the federal government in advance of the caravan’s arrival to ensure migrants have food, shelter, and any access to other services they may require. Beds, covers, bathrooms, and other items have been brought in for the group, according to Diario de Mexico.

The migrants are expected to be housed in the Magdalena, a sports stadium that was used in the 1968 Olympics.

Cordero said in late March the group would be blocked by federal forces when they arrived at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which is 250 miles southeast of Mexico City and 100 miles northeast of the Mexico-Guatemala border.

Mexican officials said they have deported thousands of people this month, but 10,000 have made it past federal officers and intend on traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Caravans making their way from Central America to the U.S. began grabbing national media attention last spring when a group of a few thousand people prompted executive action from President Trump. Trump responded by deploying the National Guard to the four southern border states to free up Border Patrol agents from administrative and non-law enforcement jobs.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced all asylum-seekers who apply at a port of entry must remain in Mexico while their cases are decided. That process can take two to five years.

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mother-of-all-caravans-heads-north-10k-migrants-due-in-mexico-city-any-day

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After being rebuffed by the U.S. Congress in his request for $5.7 billion to help build the wall that was a signature 2016 campaign promise, Trump on Friday invoked emergency powers given to the president under a 1976 law. The move, according to the White House, enables Trump to bypass lawmakers and redirect money already appropriated by Congress for other purposes and use it for wall construction.

Peter Shane, a professor at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, said challenges to the emergency declaration could end up as a replay of the legal battle against Trump’s travel ban targeting people from several Muslim-majority nations. The Supreme Court last year upheld the travel ban after lower courts had ruled against Trump, with the justices giving the president deference on immigration and national security issues.

Trump has painted illegal immigration and drug trafficking across the border as a national security threat.

“Courts are reluctant to second-guess the president on matters of national security,” Shane said.

Democrats, state attorneys general and at least one advocacy group have vowed to take the Republican president to court over the declaration.

“I’ll sign the final papers as soon as I get into the Oval Office and we’ll have a national emergency and then we’ll be sued,” Trump said at the White House.

The National Emergencies Act of 1976 has been invoked dozens of times by presidents without a single successful legal challenge. Congress never defined a national emergency in the law.

The legal experts said Trump’s declaration could be challenged on at least two fronts: that there is no genuine emergency and that Trump’s action overstepped his powers because under the U.S. Constitution Congress has authority over federal appropriations, not the president.

Trump made the declaration after asking Congress to appropriate $5.7 billion for wall construction and lawmakers gave him none.

The Supreme Court has a 5-4 conservative majority that includes two justices appointed by Trump, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. Chief Justice John Roberts has emerged as the court’s swing vote, and the decision on the legality of Trump’s action could come down to him.

“The handwriting is on the wall here,” said Steven Schwinn, a professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. “The Supreme Court is almost certain to uphold President Trump’s emergency.”

Legal experts said the 1976 law gives presidents vast discretion. Trump plans to redirect $6.7 billion in federal funds to pay for a wall, money that would come from a U.S. treasury forfeiture fund, a defense counter-drug program and the military construction budget.

“The odds favor the president by a significant majority,” George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley said. “He has the authority to make the declaration and he has the money.”

But the administration’s defense of Trump’s action may not be a smooth ride. Lawsuits could delay the use of funds the president is planning to tap, and legal experts said the bulk of funds may be tied up for years.

Trump is running for re-election next year and a loss would mean his presidency ends in January 2021. It is possible the legal fight over the emergency declaration might not be resolved by then.

“My guess is the money, the significant amount of money, won’t flow before the 2020 election,” Harvard Law School professor Mark Tushnet said.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, and Chuck Schumer, the Republican-led Senate’s top Democrat, said Trump actions “clearly violate the Congress’s exclusive power of the purse.”

Congress is unlikely to muster a veto-proof majority to vote down Trump’s emergency move. The Democratic-led House could try to sue, but courts generally do not allow Congress to litigate after lawmakers fail to legislate, the legal experts said.

States may lead the fight. California Governor Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, both Democrats, said they anticipated they would sue, saying the state would be harmed because Trump’s action could drain money from its drug-fighting efforts, endangering its residents.

One possible advantage for California is that its case likely could at some point go to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has dealt Trump setbacks on previous policies including the travel ban and potentially could impose or uphold an injunction against the emergency declaration.

Legal experts said landowners along the border could sue because they face the imminent threat of land seizure by the federal government to build the wall.

Opponents may have more traction arguing that the president is unlawfully trying to tap funds Congress appropriated for the Pentagon, the experts said. The Defense Department construction money that Trump wants has almost never been used for domestic construction. In addition, Congress required the money be spent supporting military operations, and opponents could argue the border wall fails to qualify.

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