Most illegal immigrants crossing the border are released into the United States.
In a recent meeting with federal officials that was broadcasted by Fox News journalist Bill Melugin, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reportedly “admitted that the current release rate for migrants caught crossing the border illegally is ‘above 85%.’”
BREAKING: Per three Border Patrol sources who were in the room, while meeting privately with agents in Eagle Pass, TX today, DHS Sec. Mayorkas admitted that the current release rate for migrants caught crossing the border illegally is “above 85%”. I’m awaiting comment from DHS.
Melugin added context in a later post, divulging his conversation with a DHS official on background, which did not amount to a denial of Mayorkas’ admission to Border Patrol agents. The Fox News reporter was able to share an official statement from the department, that read, “After the ending of Title 42 in May, through the end of the fiscal year, DHS removed or returned more noncitizens without a basis to remain in the United States than in any other five-month period in the last ten years. In fact, the majority of all Southwest Border migrant encounters throughout this Administration have been removed, returned, or expelled – the majority of them. We are doing everything we can, within a broken system, to incentivize noncitizens to use lawful pathways, to impose consequences on those who do not, and to reduce irregular migration.”
UPDATE: On background, a DHS official did not deny Mayorkas said this today, but said the context is that releases “ebb and flow”. They provided the following statement:
"After the ending of Title 42 in May, through the end of the fiscal year, DHS removed or returned more…
The crisis at America’s southern border has deteriorated out of control in the past year, after steadily expanding in the first two years of the Biden administration. In Fiscal Year 2021, which Biden inherited, there were 1,734,686 encounters at the Southwest Border. In FY 2022, there were 2,378,944 apprehensions, and then 2,475,669 in the just-completed fiscal year (2023) – a record number. Already in FY 2024, there have been 483,404 arrests of illegal immigrants – with December’s reported number of over ‘300,000’ encounters still outstanding from CBP’s official chart.
While these apprehension numbers are concerning, the figures do not represent the worst of the situation at the border. Almost two million ‘gotaways’ have been estimated to have entered the country since Biden took office in January 2021. Also, the amount of fentanyl seized at the border has increased over the years, leading to educated speculation that much more of this deadly drug is finding its way around law enforcement and into communities from coast to coast.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
The mayor of Glendale, Arizona is urging fellow mayors to proclaim January anti-human trafficking month .
“I was surprised to discover that only eleven cities have adopted an anti-human trafficking declaration in Arizona,” Mayor Jerry Weiers said in a news release. “As leaders in a border state, we are, or should be, fully aware that human trafficking is placing a great burden on our social service structures, but it is the plight of victims that should prompt us to act decisively.”
The United States has some of the highest rates globally for human trafficking, according to Weiers’ proclamation. More than 40 million men, women, and children are victims of human trafficking per year, according to the International Labor Organization.
More than half of the victims in active human trafficking cases in the U.S. involved children, according to the Human Trafficking Institute’s 2019 Federal Report.
Weiers joined Glendale’s City Council in proclaiming January Anti-Human Trafficking Awareness Month at the weekly council meeting on January 12.
“We all have an obligation to protect the vulnerable from predators,” Weiers said. “As a result, as part of the proclamation we passed, I urged our residents and partners to work together to eliminate trafficking from our community and support the efforts of front-line organizations and law enforcement in their battle against human trafficking and to take a stand and say not in our city.”
Weiers gave the proclamation to members of the Glendale Police Department and their partners in the faith and social service sectors, who are working on combating human trafficking nationwide.
“Not one person, agency, or organization can help combat this crime alone,” Stacey Sutherland of the Arizona Anti-Trafficking Network said.
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
America should deny demands from Mexico for billions of dollars in order to stop the flow of illegal immigration, according to U.S. Senate candidate Mark Lamb on Tuesday.
Lamb, a Republican and the current sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, criticized Mexican President Lopez Obrador’s list of demands which the United States would need to meet in exchange for Mexico to help slow illegal immigration across the southern border.
“I consider the demands made by Mexico as DOA – dead on arrival,” Lamb said. “The last time I looked, the Mexican President doesn’t get to set U.S. domestic and foreign policy. I call upon the entire Arizona Congressional delegation to unite and publicly reject these conditions imposed by Mexico.”
Obrador demanded the U.S. give $20 billion to Latin American and Caribbean countries; grant work visas to 10 million Hispanics who have worked in the U.S. for at least 10 years; and end sanctions against Venezuela and halt the blockade of Cuba.
Mexico is responsible for slowing illegal immigration into America, according to Lamb.
“As our southern neighbor, the responsibility is on them to do everything they can to work with us – without preconditions – to stop the hundreds of thousands of illegals crossing our mutual border,” Lamb said. “We shouldn’t take kindly to having a gun put to our head just to have Mexico do what’s right.”
Lamb said the Mexican president’s demands are an example of President Joe Biden’s “lost control of the border.”
Border Patrol encountered 2.5 million migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, topping the previous year’s record, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
“It’s bad enough that Biden doesn’t have a plan to stop the hundreds of thousands of illegals crossing the border and the fentanyl that comes with them, now Biden is allowing our nation to be held hostage by the President of Mexico,” Lamb continued.
Lamb is running for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s seat. He has said that if elected, he will work to secure the border with Trump-era policies.
“We’ve got to shut the border down, secure the border and we’ve got to restore the ‘Remain in Mexico’ program,” Lamb told Fox News.
“We’re gonna have a mass deportation situation on our hands and so we’ve got to get back to securing the border – first and foremost – which would stop the fentanyl,” Lamb continued to Fox News. “It would weaken the cartels and allow border patrol to get back to doing their jobs because right now they are completely handcuffed.”
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas “must be impeached immediately,” tweeted Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz.
Ciscomani said he met with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from Arizona to Texas, and they asked for policy changes to make it easier to minimize illegal crossings.
I met with BP from AZ to TX. Their top request is a policy change—consequences with the ability to detain & remove in order to deter. But he’s not interested in giving them tools to tackle the crisis. His actions only worsen the situation.
— Congressman Juan Ciscomani (@RepCiscomani) January 5, 2024
“Their top request is a policy change—consequences with the ability to detain & remove in order to deter,” Ciscomani said on Twitter. “But he’s[Mayorkas] not interested in giving them tools to tackle the crisis. His actions only worsen the situation.”
Ciscomani joined House Speaker Mike Johnson and more than 60 other House Republicans in a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas. The group met with CBP, attended a briefing with Texas Department of Public Safety, and joined a roundtable with local ranchers, business owners, and other local stakeholders, according to a news release.
Mayorkas told Bret Baier on Fox News that the Biden administration wants more money to process more illegal immigrants.
“Bret, the funds are needed to provide the Department of Homeland Security with more Border Patrol agents,” Mayorkas said. “The funds are needed to provide the Department of Homeland Security with more technology. The funds are needed to provide our department with more detention space to provide the Department of Justice with more immigration judges, so justice can be administered more swiftly.”
Border Patrol encountered 2.5 million migrants occurring in the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, topping the previous year’s record, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
The final month of the fiscal year saw 269,735 Border Patrol encounters at the Southwest border. This represents an 86% increase from encounters in June 2023.
“I believe in the American Dream that I’m living. But this [border crisis] is not it,” Ciscomani said at a press conference at the border. “With this crisis that Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas created, nobody wins – except the cartels. They are the ones deciding who gets across and who doesn’t. They are the ones who are trafficking people and drugs. They are the ones terrorizing their own citizens, with no regard for human life.”
“The men and women we met with today, those fighting on the frontlines for our safety, are doing so with little to no support from this administration,” Ciscomani continued. “They are trying to enforce policies that are at best outdated or at worst, designed to fail.”
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
A new wave of lawlessness is hitting America’s southern border.
Last week, Fox News reporter Bill Melugin shared a memo from the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector Intelligence Unit about “stolen/altered Guinea passports being encountered” in the region.
NEW: Per an internal alert sent out by Border Patrol’s Tucson, AZ sector intel unit, some illegal immigrants from Guinea are using fraudulent/altered passports to change their age & masquerade as unaccompanied minors in an effort to get into the U.S. The notice says agents have… pic.twitter.com/nV0vOmaEq4
The Border Patrol’s alert revealed the following information from intelligence gathered in the field:
Officials from the Guinean government may be advising people obtaining new passports they can change their age for them to have a better chance of entering the United States as minors. (most encounters are from adults claiming to be UAC’s)
Another migrant claimed an illicit group stole many blank passport books from the ministry in Conakry and has been selling and issuing the passports without the proper procedures.
It’s suspected that Guinean passports issued in Conakry after June of 2023 are most likely fraudulent or altered.
Melugin added that “hundreds of adult men from Guinea have been crossing illegally in the Tucson sector every day.”
The Fox News journalist also communicated a story from a couple of weeks ago, when he was in Lukeville, Arizona, and came across a Guinean man, who had just illegally entered the United States. Melugin posted that this man had told him that “he planned to go to Philadelphia” – likely based on an address that someone had procured for him.
When I was in Lukeville, AZ a couple weeks ago, I met this man from Guinea who had crossed illegally and said he was from the municipality of Conakry. He told me he planned to go to Philadelphia. When I asked him why, he didn’t know, and pulled out a piece of paper w/ address. pic.twitter.com/4zBNowQBsq
This week, Ali Bradley, a National Correspondent for NewsNation, reported that out of 806,000+ illegal immigrants who have crossed into the United States since October 1, almost 206,000 of those encounters have occurred in the Tucson Sector, where Lukeville lies. For a number of months, the Tucson Sector has led the country in apprehensions, leading to an unprecedented closure of the Lukeville Port of Entry in recent weeks. ‘Gotaways’ are not factored into the number of registered encounters from CBP.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
