by Staff Reporter | Jul 4, 2024 | News
By Staff Reporter |
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claimed during a recent visit to Tucson that the Biden administration has reduced illegal immigration.
Levels of border encounters have dropped since this time last year, but remain much higher than those that occurred during the 2022 fiscal year and exponentially higher than those of past administrations.
Mayorkas held a press conference last week at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. In his remarks, Mayorkas claimed that southwest border encounters dropped 40 percent since President Joe Biden took executive action.
“We are imposing stricter consequences for those who cross the border without authorization,” said Mayorkas. “These actions are changing the calculus for those considering crossing our border.”
Mayorkas also claimed that the blame lies with Congress, not Biden, for the prolongation of the border crisis.
The secretary said that Congress needed to provide more funding to hire agents, officers, support personnel; buy, install, and maintain technology; and equip border agents to remove illegal immigrants.
Just several days after addressing Tucsonans, Mayorkas granted an 18-month temporary amnesty to over 300,000 illegal Haitian immigrants. Mayorkas and the Biden administration stated that the migrants don’t pose a threat to national interest.
Yet earlier this year, a Haitian man was arrested for murder and criminal possession of a weapon. That Haitian national, Kenol Baptiste, came into the country using the controversial Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) One app. The CBP One app has come under scrutiny for its perceived facilitation of illegal migration; it began allowing appointment scheduling last January, offering otherwise illegal immigrants the option to schedule an appearance at a port of entry to be released into the country rather than go through smugglers.
Since last January and through May, the app has brought in over 636,600 individuals according to the CBP.
The House impeached Mayorkas earlier this year over his handling of the border crisis, but the Senate later opted to dismiss the impeachment.
While the numbers presented by Mayorkas appeared high, total illegal border crossings remain at historical highs.
According to CBP data last updated in May, southwest border encounters totaled nearly 1.7 million this fiscal year (from October to present), a decline of 46,00 from this time last year and an increase of 152,000 from this time in the 2022 fiscal year.
Since Biden took office, there have been over 8.1 million illegal immigrant encounters. That number serves as an estimate of total illegal immigrant entries, as it doesn’t include “gotaways,” or those who evaded detection upon entry.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) pointed out that the Biden administration continues to allow over 70,000 illegal immigrants into the country through the CBP One app and the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV) parole program, the latter which FAIR disputed was unlawful.
Violent crimes involving illegal immigrants have been on the rise under this administration. The most high-profile cases have frequently involved illegal immigrants who were either inadmissible for admission or were eligible for deportation.
Earlier this week, two employees in a Texas Chick-fil-A restaurant were shot and killed by an El Salvador illegal immigrant, 37-year-old Oved Bernardo Mendoza Argueta.
A number of murders by illegal immigrants also occurred earlier this month.
In Texas, two Venezuelan illegal immigrants — Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 22, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26 — murdered a 12-year-old girl in Houston, Jocelyn Nungaray. In New York, 21-year-old Ecuadorian illegal immigrant Jhon Moises Chacaguasay-Ilbis murdered a 21-year-old woman on her birthday.
Last month, police arrested 23-year-old El Salvador illegal immigrant Victor Martinez-Hernandez for raping and killing 37-year-old Rachel Morrin, a Maryland mother of five, while she was on a run last August. Martinez-Hernandez allegedly fled his home country last February due to accusations of murdering another woman there.
Earlier this year, an illegal immigrant who had been scheduled to be removed in 2020, 25-year-old Mexican citizen Brandon Ortiz-Vite, was arrested for the murder of Ruby Garcia, a 25-year-old woman in Michigan.
There was also the murder of 22-year-old college student Laken Riley in Georgia by 26-year-old Venezuelan illegal immigrant Jose Ibarra. Ibarra was permitted entry despite documented ties to Teen de Aragua (TdA), a Venezuelan gang operating in New York and Georgia, the two states he would live in before murdering Riley.
Even with the rising concerns of public safety and resources illegal immigrants impose, the Biden administration has made more public resources available to them.
In November, DACA recipients (also called “Dreamers”) will qualify for Affordable Care Act health care. American taxpayers will be on the hook for nearly 600,000 DACA recipients, nearly 21,000 of which reside in Arizona.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Mar 5, 2024 | News
By Daniel Stefanksi |
The Tucson Border Sector continues to be one of the nation’s most active crossing zones as the weather shifts to a more favorable climate for migrants journeying to the United States.
On March 1, John R. Modlin, the Chief Patrol Agent of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, posted that there had been 11,800 apprehensions of illegal aliens in his region over the past week. He also noted that there were 195 federal criminal cases, 28 human smuggling cases, and 4 significant arrests during that time period.
This follows a similar report from Chief Modlin at the end of February, when he shared that there were 12,200 apprehensions over a week’s time.
Chief Modlin also revealed that Border Patrol agents had “detected, tracked, and apprehended 16 migrants dressed in camouflage in a remote area near Douglas, AZ.” This was a reminder to onlookers that, while many of the reported apprehensions are illegal aliens who essentially wait for Border Patrol to process them, there are many others who are attempting to make their way around law enforcement and into the heart of the country.
On Saturday, Fox News reporter Bill Melugin wrote that “numbers [are] slowly ticking back up at the southern border moving into March.” He added information from his sources at CBP that “there were just over 7,000 migrant encounters [Friday] led by Tucson sector with 1,800+ apprehensions.”
Although Chief Modlin provides regular updates on generic numbers at the border, including criminals and other dangerous individuals who are caught by law enforcement, much is still unknown to officials about the identities of many of the people who are apprehended. NewsNation National Correspondent Ali Bradley recently posted that the United States government does not “have access to most criminal databases – nearly 170 nationalities have been encountered at the border but if the host nation doesn’t alert the U.S. the reality is, we likely won’t know if they have any history.”
Bradley added a reminder from former Yuma Border Patrol Chief Chris Clem, who recently said, “If the fingerprints come back with no record matches, if the pictures come back with no record matches, then we’re having to do this based on what they tell us…Border Patrol agents are in the people business. So, we can kind of oftentimes smell a rat. But it’s one of those things where there is an opportunity for somebody to get through that shouldn’t.”
Arizona legislative Republicans have been hard at work this session – just as they were last year – to come up with solutions to help combat the crisis at the border and the security and humanitarian issues that are growing for communities across the state. However, most – if not all, of the Republicans’ proposals will be vetoed by Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs, who, although expressing interest in solving the issue and pointing blame at federal officials, has not been willing to sign legislation that would help the state and local law enforcement gain any more control over this very serious situation.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Daniel Stefanski | Dec 19, 2023 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Another week brought another near-record number of apprehensions in the Tucson Sector of the southern border.
Late last week, John Modlin, the Chief Patrol Agent of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, announced that his agents had encountered 18,400 illegal aliens over the past seven days. The new number from Chief Modlin clocked in at just 500 fewer migrants than the previous week, which was regarded as historic for the sector.
The revelation from Chief Modlin came just one day following Governor Katie Hobbs’ announcement that she was mobilizing members of Arizona’s National Guard to the border near Lukeville. Hobbs made sure to point fingers at the federal government in her news alert, saying, “The crisis at the border is unacceptable. We need the federal government to step up, do its job, and bring security and stability to the border. I will continue to work with anyone who can help us bring an end to this mess.”
Ali Bradley, a National Correspondent for NewsNation, shared a prediction that largely due to the record-number of apprehensions occurring in the Tucson sector, the total arrests for December across the entire southern border “is on track to blow November encounter numbers out of the water.”
In the Arizona Senate Republicans’ latest Week in Review, Senate President Warren Petersen addressed the crisis at the border, saying, “Every week, we continue to have human smugglers, murders, rapists, drug dealers, child sex traffickers, and terrorists entering our state, as record-breaking numbers of illegals cross our border. Biden has sent a message to the entire world that our southern border is wide open, and this is the consequence. Meanwhile, the closure of the Lukeville Port of Entry continues to impact trade, tourism, and the daily lives of Arizonans who live in these rural parts of the state. We need resources and funding sent to the border now, and we call on President Biden to act immediately. The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that the border is the responsibility of the Federal Government, therefore our hands are tied in many areas when it comes to the border.”
Petersen also highlighted an area where the legislature and governor could take action together to help mitigate the crisis, writing, “But, if the Federal Government isn’t going to step up or enforce existing law, then we need a law allowing states to enforce immigration policy and deport those entering Arizona illegally.”
Despite Hobbs’ efforts to be perceived as taking the border crisis seriously, she is unlikely to work with Petersen and his Republican colleagues on such a proposed law.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
