Is it just my imagination, or is this one of the coolest Summers ever?  East Texas is my Mom’s home, and we visited often.  One time when my Mom and Dad went to tour Europe, they left us kids with my Mom’s parents.  It was the only house on the right when you enter the Big Sandy property.    The global warming set must be in a panic.  But it’s hot in Dubai.  Do tell.

Andrew McCarthy, who usually knows what he’s talking about, says Trump will be found guilty and sentenced to prison two months before the election.  Can you imagine?  Having watched most of the Trump rallies, people are fired up.  Those that fear or hate Donald Trump better watch what they hope for, or they risk setting off something they apparently don’t see coming.  We still don’t know what the crime was.  An accounting error?  

More videos related to the assassination attempt are coming out all the time.  I just saw one where the kid is walking on the ground, carrying his rifle.  Trump is praising the Secret Service, and publicly mourning the murder of one of his supporters, a fireman who shielded his family with his body and was fatally hit.  Now, it’s like it never happened.  Just a lone crazy person who was a genius at protecting himself.  There were mistakes by the score, almost too many to be coincidental.  How is it possible that there was no communication between the local Police units and the Secret Service?  Not even a phone number?

The good news is the would-be assassin only managed to clip an ear.  Then they killed him, after he got off eight shots (reportedly).  Imagine the disappointment when Trump walked off the stage under his own power.  Phones must have been ringing.  Now what are they going to do?  They’ve tried everything.  You think they’ll stop?  We don’t even want to consider where we’d be if he hadn’t turned his head when he did.  He’s crediting the fact that he’s still alive to Divine intervention, saying he believed in God before, but he’s crediting God with having saved his life, to a huge roar from the crowd.  

The Israel war against the terrorists in Gaza goes on and on.  The bad guys must have dug deep.  You don’t suppose that’s where all the aid has been going?  There’s a much more difficult situation than there was a few short years ago.  Some Arab leaders who would like to make peace are afraid to do it.  Remember Anwar Sadat.  They cursed his name and celebrated when he was assassinated.  How dare he have anything to do with the hated Jews.  

Suddenly the news has Ukraine on the offensive, and Russian positions being evacuated.  Whatever.  So Ukraine is going to defeat Russia?  In Zelensky’s dreams.

I think everybody realizes that the next few months are an extremely dangerous time for the United States.  We have no leadership at the moment.  All important functions have been delegated to the woke bunch they brought in with them, or so we’re told.  The border czar never went to the border, and whatever the policies are now, they’re letting untold numbers invade the United States.  When you think of all the paperwork you have to carry to cross any border, anywhere in the world… and these people just walk in to be let go.

There’s talk everywhere of civil war.  I was going to dismiss it.  Talk is cheap, but it’s all over the internet.  They better hope nothing happens to Trump, or these keyboard warriors are going to have to back up their words.   

Mark

The post Weekly Update  by Mark Armstrong – August 16, 2024  first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Having just written the monthly letter, the realization struck me that nothing had been said about the war in Ukraine.  We’re not hearing much.  I wonder why.

The big peace deal to stop the war in Gaza officially fell apart.  But there’s no shortage of criticism about how the IDF is doing its job.  It seems that an area is never really cleared.  They’ve got tunnels running for miles, as you’ve heard.  The terrorists keep appearing in areas already cleared.  Maybe that was part of the strategy.  It must have cost a lot to dig all those tunnels, and where do you think the money came from?  You don’t suppose humanitarian aid has been used?

The pretender has fallen out of love with the Israeli Prime Minister.  There have been years of accusations and court cases, almost like we’re seeing here with Donald Trump, against Netanyahu.  

Since October 7, things have gotten serious.  The relationship has soured, and our fake president is angry.  It’s made him almost as mad as he is at people who think he’s too old to be president.  But the liberal media is on his side.  They’re mad at Netanyahu too!  Oh well.  They say Biden is done playing nice with Netanyahu.  What’s he going to do?  Cut off the money?

Haiti is a disaster.  The news is talking about a total collapse as if it hasn’t already happened. The gangs have take over, and there are bodies all over the place.

Maybe you’ve seen what happened in El Paso.  There’s been a breach of the razor wire, probably by cartel members, to let hundreds clamor in on foot.  They are already sleeping on the streets  down there, and you might not have a heart if you stop them from stealing.  

Did European governments consult Al Gore before making assurances to get rid of the tractors?  This global warming belief is wearing a little thin.  European governments know they can’t survive if the farmers stop farming.  What is everybody supposed to do, eat or save the planet?  The mainstream media takes it as doctrine.  The mantra about global warming appears in nearly every nature documentary.  It must be a requirement.

It no longer seems that the government is on our side.  There’s more trouble around the world than we could have imagined in only three years.  It seems like Americans are not listening to the higher powers.  Who do we think we are?  

Maybe it would be different if they hadn’t flim-flammed us so many times.  The medical community has virtually destroyed itself over Covid 19.  They’ve got a lesbian doing the White House press conferences.  If our nation continues to mock God and His Commandments, we’ll turn into Haiti in no time.  If you can’t recognize God’s hand in history, and in the formation of the United States you’re not looking.    Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – March 22, 2024 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Demonstrations are going on all over the world, and here in the U. S.  They’re on several university campuses, choking Central Station, the Brooklyn bridge…  They’re waving flags, shouting slogans, demanding a ceasefire?  Maybe somebody should have thought of that a few weeks ago.

The way to break up these demonstrations is to place a big screen where it can’t be avoided.  We don’t want to see what Hamas did, but they need to.  

Informed diplomats are popping up everywhere to demand a humanitarian pause in Israel’s response to the terrorists in Gaza.  Somehow the news anchors are not swayed by terrorists tunnels safely beneath the hospital.  Everybody’s an innocent victim, except that guy on the phone with his parents boasting in near tears about how he’d killed them “with my own hands.”  

I saw a report on a guy who survived the assault on a kibbutz.  He had a Glock.  Otherwise he and his family would have been shot or dragged off as hostages.  The guy killed ten or twelve bad guys and saved his family.  They’re giving interviews.  Israel is going to have to do something about their strict gun laws.  Apparently the demand is surging amid current circumstances.  What sense does it make to be defenseless in that environment?

The Hamas shot-callers are reportedly phoning it in from lavish penthouses in Qatar.  The Israeli military already has assets in Gaza, having cleared a path.  From there, you presumably know the latest on the situation.  Assuming you’re interested.  It’s our job to be interested, and we probably would be anyway.  

Now Erdogan of Turkey is making brave threats about sending his military to the war zone.  

As you’ve heard, Qatar is doing all the negotiating for the hostages.  Somehow they’ve been able to position themselves as the broker of Middle East deals.

Some Iranian diplomat was allowed into the United States where he threatened the U. S. on Iran’s behalf at the UN podium.  Now the Houthis from Yemen have declared war on Israel.   Diplomats are racing around like its WWIII.  Not yet, but the war is threatening to take on new dimensions.  Do those in Lebanon really want Beirut to look like Gaza?  There are drone shots of crowds of young men scouring the powdered concrete blocks.

Maybe I-24 News has the most detailed coverage, but the news channels are Live around the clock.  Black and white target cams obliterate your screen as bombs detonate structures.  They say there are 300 miles of tunnels deep under Gaza city.  Hostages are still being held, even some with American passports.  There will be books written, movies made.  We can’t imagine all that is transpiring in real time.

Israeli forces caught a bunch of the infiltrators.  They were making maybe 25 or 30 of them listen to Israeli nursery music by the hour.  They say they’re conducting interrogations “by the law.”  Some of the target information for all the buildings we see imploding is coming from these guys.  Some reportedly start singing right away, others…  Physical pressure is applied.  You don’t want to know.

The top universities in the U. S. are choked with demonstrations on behalf of… Hamas?  Yes, you read it right.  

Now we’re wondering if the terror will come to the United States.  The F.B.I. Director said it’s a strong possibility.  The border is leaking at a tremendous rate.  We can’t even stand to watch as huge crowds stream toward the crossings.  Just another day for those responsible.  They send some moron before Congress to explain how it’s all under control.  Department of what? 

So the terrorists are making brave threats.  Americans will pay for their support of Israel, they boast.  You don’t suppose some terrorist network has infiltrated amid the border charade?  They’re not sure who all got away, but as we’ve seen the “immigrants” are coming from all over the world.

Congress is wrestling with funding.  As you know, the administration is lobbying for Ukraine funding and financial help for Israel be lumped together.  Some, growing weary of backing the skirmish in Ukraine, want the two issues decoupled.  An interview with someone in the know in the top echelons of Ukraine made the reporter turn off his tape recorder, and then said they’re stealing “like there’s no tomorrow,” speaking of the distribution of U. S. aid.  We suspected so.

You know Al Gore must be pacing the floor, worried that there are more immediate threats than his desperate view of the future. We weren’t buying it anyway. 

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – November 3, 2023 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The Title 42 policy, implemented by the Trump administration during the pandemic to allow border officials quickly to expel migrants on public health grounds, will be terminated next month, the CDC announced Friday.

Title 42 was the last tool border officials had left to stem the flow of illegal migration from more than 150 countries across the southern border. Now, they are anticipating a doubling or tripling of numbers to as many as 18,000 a day.

We know what that means. More secret migrant flights fanning out from the southern border to a town near you.

Already, charter flights to White Plains airport in Westchester have started again, after a hiatus following The Post’s report last October revealing migrant planes landing in the middle of the night several times a week, and unloading hundreds of migrants, claimed to be children, to be spirited away on buses to locations around New York and neighboring states.

Unlike before, they now are landing before the airport’s midnight curfew, and there are fewer each week. The planes are stopping en route, in cities like Houston, Texas, and Oklahoma City, Okla., as opposed to Jacksonville, Fla., where The Post observed them last year disgorging migrants.

Publicly available flight data show World Atlantic Airways charter planes began landing again in White Plains in late February.

On February 25, March 11, March 19 and March 21, World Atlantic Airways flights from El Paso flew to White Plains via Houston, arriving between 7.59 p.m. and 9.21 p.m.

On March 4, and March 26 World Atlantic Airways planes flew from El Paso to White Plains via Oklahoma City, arriving at 9:25 p.m. and 9:33 p.m.

It is not known who was on board, but these are the same McDonnell Douglas MD-83 aircraft with the same registration numbers which were chartered by the Department of Health and Human Services and were observed by The Post flying illegal migrant minors into White Plains last year.

It is not just White Plains. Migrant flights from the border are traveling all over the country, as the administration tries to manage the deluge at the border by spreading the problem far and wide, turning every state into a border state.

With the end of Title 42, already record numbers are set to explode.

Even moderate Democrats think the move is insane. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have condemned the plan to nix Title 42.

Manchin described it as “a frightening decision . . . Title 42 has been an essential tool in combatting the spread of COVID-19 and controlling the influx of migrants at our southern border.

“We are already facing an unprecedented increase in migrants this year, and that will only get worse if the Administration ends the Title 42 policy. We are nowhere near prepared to deal with that influx.”

Already, since President Biden dismantled Trump-era border restrictions on his first day in office, the number of illegal migrants who have entered the US is the equivalent of the fifth largest city in the nation. By the time the midterms roll around, we will have another 5 million.

That’s at least 7 million total, the equivalent of the second largest city in the country. Almost the size of New York City. It’s like importing the entire population of Libya.

And from next month, that’s the number who will enter every year unless someone wrests control of the border from the cartels.

By the time the next presidential election rolls around, in 2024, the number of Biden illegals will be over 20 million at these rates. That’s a 6% population increase over Biden’s term in illegal migration alone, against a backdrop of rampant inflation.

How do we house and feed such a horde? How do hospitals, schools and jails cope with this unheralded influx with no planning or preparation?

This is Biden’s biggest disaster, and there have been a few.

Throwing Hunter under the bus won’t be enough to clear Joe
Hunter Biden won’t like the interview his father’s chief of staff Ron Klain did with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

Asked about the Delaware investigation into the president’s son’s business affairs, Klain threw Hunter and his uncle Joe Biden under the bus.

“The president is confident that his family did the right thing. But, again, I want to just be really clear, these are actions by Hunter and his brother. They’re private matters. They don’t involve the president. And they certainly are something that no one at the White House is involved in.”

This is the party line, parroted by The Washington Post and CNN in their belated coverage of the story last week.

Sure, they say, it looks bad for Hunter, but, gosh, Joe Biden had nothing to do with it.

Unfortunately, this line of defense does not sustain scrutiny.

Judging by morsels trickling out of the ongoing investigation into Hunter, the scope has widened to include questions involving the president.

‘Big Guy’
Witnesses testifying before the Delaware grand jury are believed to have been asked if they know who is the “Big Guy” referred to in coded fashion in e-mails on Hunter’s abandoned laptop and in WhatsApp messages his former business partner Tony Bobulinski handed to the FBI in October 2020.

Bobulinski asserts that the “Big Guy” is Joe Biden.

The identity of the “Big Guy” is relevant because he was to be allocated 10% equity in a joint venture Hunter and partners were cooking up with Chinese company CEFC, according to an e-mail on the laptop.

“Hunter Biden called his dad ‘the Big Guy’ or ‘my Chairman,’ and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing,” Bobulinski wrote in a letter to the Post in October 2020. “I’ve seen VP Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.”

There is evidence on the laptop that Joe Biden profited from Hunter’s overseas business dealings, indicating mingled finances, shared bank accounts and household bills Hunter was expected to pay for his father.

Hunter complained about having to give “half” his salary to his father and “pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years.”

But even if Klain and media pals want to dismiss evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence-peddling scheme — including meetings with Hunter’s foreign partners — that doesn’t clear the president.

There is no country in the world where millions of dollars paid to a top official’s son for doing nothing would not be regarded as corruption.

“Large payments to the children of powerful government officials by those with interests potentially affected by those officials’ actions are universally understood to be corrupt efforts to influence the officials,” Manhattan litigation lawyer Francis Menton writes in the Manhattan Contrarian blog.

“In cases involving people other than the Bidens, whether the official/parent ‘personally benefited’ from the payments or ‘knew details’ of the transactions are considered completely irrelevant.”

Klain will have to find a better response.

Source: https://nypost.com/2022/04/04/biden-opens-the-title-42-gates/

The post Biden opens the Title 42 gates – prepare for madness first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

(CNS News) — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNSNews.com on Wednesday that U.S.-Mexico border is “absolutely not” secure.

“You can’t be a secure, sovereign nation if you have an open border,” Grassley said.

“The president of the United States ought to uphold the law, and he’s inviting violation of the law,” said Grassley.

At the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, CNS News asked the senator, “Should illegal aliens be given a pathway to citizenship?”

Senator Grassley said, “That would have to be part of a comprehensive piece of legislation. If you’re asking me just cold out as a separate issue, should they have a path to citizenship, the answer is no. But when you’re negotiating a bipartisan piece of legislation, what you call comprehensive immigration, that could be a part of it.”

“But I would say it would be a pathway that would be fairly long and you can’t have criminal activity and they have to pay all their taxes,” he said.

In a follow-up question, CNS News asked, “And is our southwestern border secure now?”

(Getty Images)

Senator Grassley said, “Oh, absolutely not. We have an open border. You can’t be a secure, sovereign nation if you have an open border. No, they, we had — we were on a path to having a secure border, when you build a fence, and the fence should have been completed.”

He continued, “And I was down there three months ago and the Border Patrol told us that they were called in to advise a transition team before Biden was president, and they were asked what to do about the border.

“The Border Patrol said, ‘Just leave things alone. If you want to bring people in the country, bring them in in an orderly way.’ And then they said they didn’t do it. So on January 20th, they just opened the border up and invited people in. That’s not right.”

“The president of the United States ought to uphold the law, and he’s inviting violation of the law,” said Senator Grassley.

(Getty Images)

Senate Democrats are pursuing a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 8 million illegal aliens, or “undocumented immigrants,” as part of a $3.5 trillion budget resolution aimed at achieving many items on President Joe Biden’s agenda. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has said they will act on the resolution before the extended August recess.

As part of the broad economic package, the Senate Judiciary Committee was charged with crafting a $120-billion bill for “making improvements on U.S. ports of entry, clearing out a backlog of visa applications, or other changes,” a Senate Democratic aide working closely on the plan told Bloomberg News. There was no mention of any funds going towards border security.

“Of the 8 million immigrants that Democrats want to aid in the economic package, 3 million would be young, undocumented immigrants known as ‘Dreamers,’ migrant workers, and some with ‘temporary protected status’ because dangerous conditions present risks, if they return to their home countries, the aide said,” according to Bloomberg News. “The other 5 million would be ‘essential workers’ who have yet to be defined.”

This immigration piece apparently is becoming increasingly crucial for the Senate Democrats to secure, as several House Democrats have said they will not support the larger economic package unless it is included.

Source: https://www.cnsnews.com/article/washington/elisabeth-nieshalla/sen-grassley-us-mexico-border-absolutely-not-secure-its-open

The post Sen. Grassley: ‘You Can’t Be a Secure, Sovereign Nation If You Have an Open Border’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The numbers in March indicate the steady rise has continued. During the first four days of the month, more than 1,500 unaccompanied migrant minors were taken into custody, according to the data. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency charged with housing these minors, has been receiving an average of 337 children per day, according to figures shared with Congress.

In January, the refugee office’s network of shelters and foster homes received more than 4,000 unaccompanied children — a 19% increase from December.

The post U.S. shelters received more than 7,000 migrant children in February, posing early border test for Biden first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan insisted Tuesday that America’s borders “are not open” as the White House moved to try to head off a growing migrant surge that threatens to undermine President Biden’s immigration plans.

In a statement issued in English and Spanish, Mr. Sullivan and Homeland Security Adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall tried to tamp down on expectations of a more lenient posture for both illegal immigrants and future legal migrants eager to come.

Their warning came even as they announced they would allow entry of tens of thousands of migrants who have been mired in Mexico, blocked from entering by the Trump team.

“We caution people seeking to immigrate to the United States that our borders are not open and that this is just the first phase in the administration’s work to reopen access to an orderly asylum process,” the advisers said.

Homeland Security is preparing to admit some 25,000 migrants who were blocked from entry under the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. MPP helped solve the last border surge in 2019, sapping the incentive for illegal immigrants to come by making them wait in Mexico while their cases proceeded in U.S. immigration courts, denying them a foothold here.

But the program was criticized by immigrant-rights advocates who said it left some legitimate asylum-seekers vulnerable in Mexico. Bowing to those concerns, the Biden team has said it is scrapping the MPP and will process those people still stuck in the program for entry over the ensuing weeks.

Mr. Sullivan said the new administration’s leniency only applies to people with active MPP cases.

Source: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/16/biden-national-security-adviser-our-borders-are-no/

The post Biden national security adviser: ‘Our borders are not open’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

TUCSON — Two senior Homeland Security officials traveled to southern Arizona Monday to decry censorship and tout the Trump administration’s achievements on border security and immigration, just hours before polls opened in Arizona.

Homeland Security Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan took an aerial tour of border wall construction near Sasabe on Monday morning ahead of a news conference at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.

Cuccinelli defended his decision to travel for the first time to Arizona, which is considered one of the key battleground states in this presidential election, on the eve of Election Day. He dismissed the idea that his visit served to prop up President Donald Trump and sway voters.

“We don’t stop doing our job because there’s an election coming or going, and this is part of that whole effort,” Cuccinelli said, adding that it was similar to other visits he had undertaken as acting deputy secretary to other border communities.

“I make no apologies for being here. This is my job. It’s part of the commissioner’s job and we’re proud to do it, proud to trumpet what’s been accomplished and recognizing fully there’s plenty more to do,” he added.

During his remarks following the border wall tour, Cuccinelli said the Trump administration’s achievements on border security and immigration can be summed up in three words: “stop, detain and deter.”

The news conference focused mainly on two areas: the construction of physical barriers and the reduction of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

President Donald Trump has been campaigning on the construction of nearly 400 miles of border wall that has gone up under his administration as an example of him keeping the promises he made four years ago. Cuccinelli said an additional 50 miles will be completed by the end of the year.

Arizona is the epicenter of border wall construction. More than 200 miles have been completed or are under construction in the state. That includes about 100 of the 128 miles planned for the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which covers the eastern two-thirds of the Arizona border, according to Roy Villareal, the chief patrol agent for the Tucson Sector.

The sun sets over newly built sections of the border wall east of Sasabe, Arizona on 16 September 2020. Rafael Carranza/The Republic

Cuccinelli and Morgan also talked about policies that have reduced the apprehension of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. They cited an end to the “catch and release” policy, referring to the process of detaining and then releasing potential asylum seekers into the interior of the U.S. with a notice to appear in court at a later date.

But Morgan acknowledged the policy has not ended completely. In 2019, when a surge in migrant families seeking asylum in the U.S. overwhelmed border agents and officers, CBP released 230,000 migrants from their custody. This year, the number is down 1,000 migrants he said.

They attributed the large reductions in apprehensions to the Trump administration’s agreements with the Mexican government to crack down on the flow of migrants through that country, and to accept more than 68,000 U.S. asylum seekers under the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as “Remain in Mexico.”

Since March, CBP has been immediately expelling migrants detained at the U.S.-Mexico border during the pandemic under an emergency health order known as Title 42 and ground nearly all asylum processing to a halt.

Morgan warned about the consequences of repealing those policies in a not-so-veiled jab at Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

“If you remove MPP, prematurely end Title 42, and take other actions to stop building the wall, I wanna be clear, it will drive another massive illegal immigration crisis, one that will make last year’s crisis pale in comparison,” he said.

Both Morgan and Cuccinelli decried what they called censorship at the hands of “big tech” companies, with especially pointed words for Twitter, which they accused of arbitrarily suspending Morgan’s account last week for sharing information about border wall construction and arrests of migrants with criminal backgrounds.

“Not everyone trying to enter the country illegally are good. It’s why we need the tools like the wall,” he said. “This is exactly what Twitter didn’t want the American people to hear. Yes, Twitter, walls work, borders matter.”

Despite their claims that their visit was not meant to influence the upcoming election, Monday’s tour was the second time in two weeks that senior DHS officials have traveled to Arizona to tout Trump’s achievements on immigration and the border.

The acting Homeland Security secretary delivered similar remarks Oct. 22 from Phoenix during a meeting with local law enforcement groups in the state. He did not travel to the border on that occasion.

Trump himself has visited the state seven times this year, underscoring Arizona’s significance as a battleground state in the election. Two of those visits in June and August were to the Arizona-Mexico border in Yuma.

Monday’s visit was also Morgan’s second to Tucson in the past month. He traveled here Oct. 14 for a news conference on CBP’s enforcement statistics for Fiscal Year 2019.

Have any news tips or story ideas about the U.S.-Mexico border? Reach the reporter at rafael.carranza@arizonarepublic.com, or follow him on Twitter at @RafaelCarranza.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

Source: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2020/11/02/top-homeland-security-officials-swing-arizona-before-election/6131914002/

The post On the day before election, Homeland Security officials decry big tech censorship, tout Trump border achievements first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Matamoros, Mexico – Preparing for lunch hour, Maria* adds firewood to her wide mud stove shaded by a tarp shelter amid hundreds of similar structures home to asylum seekers like her, waiting for months in this camp with hopes to cross the border, just a few paces away, into the United States.

Maria, 38, serves grilled meat, rice, salad, and tortillas for lunch to some of her neighbours encamped on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, just across from Brownsville, Texas.

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Dozens of other cooking fires like Maria’s burn throughout the camp all day. Hundreds of mismatched camping tents cluster between the scraggly mesquite trees, picked clean for firewood. Families without tents sleep under plastic tarps hoisted over branches and tied to wooden stakes in the mud.

Carla Moradel wipes her face after prepping tortillas to sell for lunch at a makeshift kitchen in the Matamoros encampment for asylum-seeking migrants [Pu Ying Huang/Al Jazeera]

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Maria eventually came here from El Salvador with her husband and nine-year-old son, with hopes of filing their asylum claims then moving on to join family in the US like many other Salvadorans who had come before. But when they arrived, the door had been shut.

Now, almost six months later, the American flag waves to Maria from behind a razor-wire fence, just across the river from where she does laundry. At this point, she says, all she can do is to keep waiting with hope.

“We have faith in God that the law will change and they will let all these people in,” Maria says, shielding smoke from her eyes as people stroll along the broad dirt pathway through the tents outside her stall. “That’s why we keep waiting here.”

Her family stays in the encampment with between 2,000 and 3,000 other migrants and asylum seekers, many of whom are waiting for their cases to make their way through the US courts. They are forced to wait in Mexico under the US government’s Migrant Protection Protocols programme, informally known as the “Remain in Mexico” programme. Many often must wait months.

When Maria’s family first arrived, they slept on the street until local churches brought tents and clothing to the growing population of stranded migrants and asylum seekers, most of whom are from Central America and Cuba.

Through a few odd jobs Maria’s family raised the money to start roasting corn for sale, and over the months built their business into the tiny restaurant that also serves eggs for breakfast and beans for dinner. During that time they saw a haphazard clumping of tents grow into the sprawling little shantytown, it is today, supported almost entirely by charity from across the border.

“In a few month’s time an entire village has been created,” says Joyce Hamilton, 69, standing amid a cluster of tents where she and six other self-proclaimed “Angry Tias and Abuelas of Brownsville” stock supplies and staples that they buy for about $7,000 each Monday, shopping at a wholesale store with donated funds. “It’s amazing how much infrastructure has developed.”

But the encampment is not a village at all – at least not in the sense of comfort and permanency. The goal of most of the people here is not to stay forever, but to be allowed to enter the US.

Coalition of grassroots efforts

Under four massive awnings raised earlier this year by the Mexican government, a third section of the camp has grown with more orderly rows atop plastic flooring rather than the squiggling paths through brush and often mud in the first two sections.

In January, World Central Kitchen, a nongovernmental organization, opened a large tented dining hall to harbour the efforts already made by local and incoming volunteers to feed everyone each night. Global Response Management, another NGO, offers basic medical services out of a trailer and a few shelters. A local woman runs a thrice-weekly primary school on a sidewalk on evenings here. A large portable filter-and-pump system draws clean water from the river.

Hundreds of families cook dinner on fires each night and wash themselves and their clothes with donated soaps in the nearby river. The Mexican government has supplied a phone-charging station and 50 portable bathrooms, and it plans to lay gravel to control the deep mud that follows the rain here.

This effort has happened without the large organizations that would typically mount responses to refugee crises. Instead, a coalition of grassroots groups has joined up under the guidance of a nearby nun.

Donations brought over the border from volunteer group Angry Tias and Abuelas are wheeled into the Matamoros migrant camp [Pu Ying Huang/Al Jazeera]

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Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, hosts a weekly conference call with 10 to 15 individuals from local charity groups. Each week, she sits down with Mexican government officials and a few volunteer leaders.

“Pretty much anything we ask [the Mexican government] to do when we meet with them, they do,” Pimentel says.

The Mexican government has covered most costs for camp infrastructure, says Miguel Garay, spokesman for the Matamoros city hall. But the encampment has stressed the border city of 500,000, which finds itself obligated to manage the situation.

“International rules say that we have to attend to them,” Garay says. “We can’t kick them out by force.”

He adds that the government had hoped to move the migrant population into a large empty factory near the border, but had abandoned an initially selected location after outcry from local residents. Those residents didn’t want the large displaced population sheltered close to their homes, so the search continues for a more permanent shelter space.

“The idea is to build like a dignity village,” says Sister Pimentel, describing a massive order of rigid shelters and better facilities for hygiene and schooling. But fundraising has fallen short of that massive goal, and summer flooding will force this camp to relocate. Pimentel hopes the government will find a new and appealing shelter for them before that.

“Some of them have been there so long that it will be very hard to move them from where they are,” says Pimentel, who grew up in the local Rio Grande Valley. “But as soon as we get into hurricane season, we’re going to see the river flood.”

Challenge with getting legal counsel

The shelter, Pimental says, is a temporary solution. The most urgent objective, she says, however, is finding lawyers to represent the asylum seekers so they could move into the US.

Erin Thorn Vela, a lawyer who works in the camp with the Texas Civil Rights Project, says that although many lawyers have turned up to offer volunteer services, less than one percent of asylum seekers in Matamoros have legal counsel to guide them through the process.

“What we see is an incredibly low success rate,” she says, citing compiled records requests and regular interviews that have been conducted outside nearby tents due to the absence of public information. “There’s no hard data we can access.”

Lawyers estimate that about one percent of asylum claims are being approved from the Matamoros camp.

Without lawyers, the migrants and asylum seekers are left to navigate the asylum process for themselves, appearing via video conference before US immigration judges from new tented court facilities built on the northern bank of the Rio Grande.

Migrants and asylum seekers living in the Matamoros encampment pause from their midday swim to watch US Border Patrol guards steer their boat down the Rio Grande [Pu Ying Huang/Al Jazeera]

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One asylum seeker, a 30-year-old Cuban woman, says she paid a local restaurant owner $40 to explain to her how to assemble an asylum case, and she carried a file full of flawed English translations.

“God is my lawyer,” says another 42-year-old woman from Belize at the camp.

Maria, patting tortillas in her tarp-shelter restaurant in the camp, explains that she still doesn’t understand the asylum process. She has been to the tent courts twice, once on September 12 and again on October 28.

Both times, she says, she was led with a long line of people to appear before a judge speaking on a TV screen through a Spanish interpreter for about 15 minutes. She still hadn’t been asked to explain her case.

“The judge tells us the best thing would be to get a lawyer,” she says, “but obviously here we are in no condition to pay a lawyer.”

Migrants – most of them asylum seekers sent back to Mexico from the US under the Remain in Mexico programme, officially named the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) programme – wait in line for a meal outside the human repatriation office in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico [File: Loren Elliott/Reuters]

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Her troubles, she says, started about a year ago when her husband, who drove a truck, was kidnapped while driving. His truck was stolen and his family paid a ransom to release him. Despite warnings from his kidnappers, he reported the crime to local police.

Some weeks later, gang members showed up at the shoe store that Maria had owned for 15 years, demanded $20,000 and threatened to kill the entire family if she didn’t pay.

Maria and her husband put their parents in hiding, and two days later left the country with their son, traveling by bus through Mexico for a week before arriving at the border in the same clothes they’d worn when they left home.

Everyone here is here because we can’t return home.

MARIA

Maria and her family thought they could just walk into the US as immigrants had done before new rules this year required that they wait across the border. They slept in the streets of Matamoros before a local church gave them a tent. They started selling fire-roasted corn, then expanded their business with pots and pans and a tall mud oven to make and sell full meals.

Maria’s next court date is set for this week. She isn’t sure if she’ll be granted admission northward, but word around the camp is that the chances are not good.

“Everyone here is here because we can’t return home,” she says, wafting smoke from her cooking fire away from her face. “All the sacrifice that these people have made in the end isn’t worth anything.”

If her family’s asylum isn’t granted, Maria says, she’ll use some money she’s saved from her business to pay smugglers to take them over the river anyway.

*Name has been changed to protect the individual’s identity.

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The post A refugee camp grows on the US-Mexico border first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Valerie, a Congolese woman, fled her war-torn country with her family and is now trying to create a new life here.

“We left the Congo because there weren’t any resources for us…my son has really liked it here. I’ve liked it here, as well. It’s for this reason I’ve come here to figure out my life, to improve my life,” she said in French.

BORDER ARRESTS SKYROCKET IN MAY, AS OFFICIALS DECLARE “FULL-BLOWN” EMERGENCY

Many of the migrants stayed at Travis Park Church in downtown San Antonio before heading to different cities across the country.  (Fox News)

Valerie is one of hundreds of African migrants who arrived in San Antonio last week. City leaders said they weren’t given a heads up and quickly scrambled to accommodate them and quickly recruit several French-speaking volunteers who could serve as translators.

“The City of San Antonio has received more than 200 individuals, mostly families and children. The families were released by the United States Customs and Border Patrol into the country with paperwork directing them to Portland, Maine,” said Interim Assistant City Manager Dr. Colleen Bridger.

The majority of them stayed at Travis Park Church, which regularly hosts asylum seekers.

“I’m not necessarily surprised…we react to changes on the border every day, we just had to figure out that process it didn’t really shake us up too much,” said Gavin Rogers, associate pastor.

It’s not just Congolese migrants arriving in alarming numbers. Border Patrol agents reported arresting more than 500 people from Africa since May 30. The group included nationals from Angola, Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Border Patrol agents in the Del Rio Sector say they’ve arrested more than 500 migrants from Africa since the end of May. (Border Patrol)

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While Border Patrol has previously seen migrants from Africa, this is the first time they have seen such a large group crossing together.

“It really has been a bit of an anomaly for us,” said Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Raul Ortiz. “I think most of them, you know, obviously are flying to different locations. And then, when they find themselves congregating in a location then they start to formulate a plan just south of the U.S. Mexican border here.”

For years, people from the Congo and neighboring countries have fled to escape political instability and violence. According to the UN Refugee Agency, 4.5 million people from the DRC have been displaced. But the numbers seem to be increasing and officials in border towns are struggling to keep up.

“Some [refugees] may have been traveling for months to get to the Mexico border in search of better opportunities that the U.S. has to offer, the human rights that the U.S. has to offer,” Bonita Sharma, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio’s College of Public Policy, told The Rivard Report.

Unlike most Mexicans and Central Americans, many of the migrants from Africa don’t have roots in America or families who can take them in once they are released from immigration detention. And many speak languages the immigration officials do not.

“Quite often, the individuals from the African continent do not have a permanent address or a sponsor already in the U.S. And so you really just have to pinpoint an immigration court near where they think they are going to ultimately end up and hope that they report themselves in,” said Ortiz.

FOOTAGE SHOWS MIGRANTS WALKING AROUND BORDER WALL TO ENTER US

The city says it will continue to work with Travis Park Church, Catholic Charities, and other non-profit organizations to find long-term resources for these migrants.  (Fox News)

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TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CUTS REFUGEE ADMISSIONS TO 30,000

Over the weekend, the city, along with Catholic Charities, worked with the asylum seekers to figure out their next destination as many arrived without designated host families and cities.

“If we don’t know exactly the best place to send the migrant community like the Congolese. We have to figure out what shelters are available around the nation, where’s the best place for their community to go,” said Rogers.

There was also concern that some of the migrants could carry diseases, as there is currently an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

However, Bridger quickly shut down those rumors, telling local reporters that the migrants go through multiple health screenings.

“It’s a 21-day incubation period so it’s really not possible that, if they were exposed to Ebola in the DRC, that now, six months later, they develop symptoms and infect us,” Bridger said.

By Monday, the majority of the migrants had left on buses, heading to cities where they may have friends or family members. The line outside the city’s Migrant Resource Center downtown had dwindled.

But, if more come, Rogers said they’ll be ready.

“We’re a church always willing to serve our neighbors,” Rogers said. “We’ll continue to do so whether that’s with migrants or the homeless or a new need that will crop up in the future.”

The post Immigration officials see drastic rise in number of African migrants arriving at US-Mexico border first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.