The federal government says delays are bound to occur with impending construction on Arizona’s second-busiest border entry point.
The 16-acre San Luis I Land Port of Entry, established in 1984, will undergo another series of renovations beginning June 20 to improve its operations and infrastructure. Construction on this leg of the project will last approximately four to five months per Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The forthcoming construction is part of a greater $356 million expansion and modernization project which pledges to make San Luis I Land Port of Entry an “eco-friendly gateway” as the “first fully electric, net-zero energy land port of entry” in the country. Construction work on the port of entry began in 2023 and is scheduled to conclude in the spring of 2029.
The port expansion and modernization project was announced in 2024 under former President Joe Biden as a major “green expansion” initiative for his Investing in America agenda. Nearly $100 million of the total project funding came from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) subsidies for “low-embodied carbon construction materials and emerging and sustainable technologies.”
IRA funds also went to 37 other land port of entry projects. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) both endorsed the project and its net-zero approach.
The IRA appropriated $3.4 billion for GSA to institute net-zero emissions infrastructure reforms in federal facilities across America by 2045.
The General Services Administration (GSA) has stated in its public project summary for the port of entry that the current infrastructure has proven inadequate to handle traffic volumes and CBP mission requirements.
“The modernization and expansion project will improve efficiencies and traffic flows, reduce wait times, increase CBP processing capacity and operational security by effectively deploying the latest technology to identify high risk activity and shipments and combat drug trafficking,” stated the GSA.
In March, the GSA announced the San Luis I Land Port of Entry opened 16 new northbound vehicle lanes, doubling the previous capacity, covered with two shade canopies spanning 16,000 square feet.
The expansion and modernization project also includes a secondary vehicle processing area, additional pedestrian inspection lanes, and a new administrative facility. It further expands southbound privately owned vehicle operations with upgraded primary and secondary inspection and processing buildings, as well as expanded employee parking.
Last July, the Office of the Inspector General notified the GSA that contractors who hadn’t undergone the required security screening had worked on the port of entry expansion and modernization project.
Travelers seeking passage through the San Luis I Land Port of Entry should review border wait times on the CBP website or the mobile app, Border Wait Times.
The San Luis I Land Port of Entry encounters three million drivers and 2.5 million pedestrians annually, per GSA data.
The GSA awarded the design-build contract for the expansion and modernization effort to Hensel Phelps Construction Company in 2022, which is based out of Colorado and one of the biggest general contractors and construction managers nationwide.
Community stakeholder and civic leader briefings on the port of entry occurred in the spring of 2024.
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A federal appeals court rejected Republican lawmakers’ effort to undo a million-acre monument near the Grand Canyon.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld former President Joe Biden’s designation of the monument. Biden issued a proclamation establishing the monument on land surrounding the Grand Canyon National Park. The former president justified its creation as a means of conservation and deference to Native American tribe history.
The acreage is now referred to as the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument.
The monument name comes from two of the Native American tribes who lived in the region: the Havasupai (Baaj Nwaavjo, meaning “where Indigenous peoples roam,” and I’tah Kukveni meaning “our ancestral foot prints”).
The designation further shielded the acreage from mining operations, first prohibited in 2012 under a Department of Interior (DOI) ban lasting until at least 2032.
Today marks a historic step in preserving the majesty of the Grand Canyon.
First among American landmarks. Sacred to Tribal Nations. Revered by every American.
— President Biden Archived (@POTUS46Archive) August 8, 2023
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service jointly manage the monument.
The initial announcement prompted lawmakers to call Biden’s proclamation a “dictator-style land grab” and “government overreach” that had the potential to impact national security.
Arizona legislative leaders, State Treasurer Kimberly Yee, Mohave County, and the towns of Colorado City and Fredonia sued to reverse the designation in 2024.
The three local governments argued the monument would hurt the potential of future tax revenues, pending the DOI ban lapsing after 2032. Colorado City also argued the water supply coming from an aquifer under the monument could be infringed if federal actors decided to restrict it.
Arizona lawmakers and the state treasurer argued the monument designation limited their ability to sell, lease, set royalty rates, and set values for the land. They also argued the designation forced them to divert resources to address the effects of the monument.
As to the ban on uranium mining, all against the designation claimed economic harm would occur due to the potential for higher energy prices in the future.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected all of those arguments in a ruling issued on Wednesday. The judges found their claims to be speculative.
Apart from the physical land management provided by BLM, the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument is overseen by a Monument Advisory Committee (MAC).
The MAC, established in the fall of 2024, has 15 members:
Luke Thompson, Arizona Game and Fishing Department representative;
Jason Chavez, Gov. Katie Hobbs’ tribal affairs director;
Patrice Horstman, Coconino County Board of Supervisors member;
Angelita Bulletts, BLM district manager and Paiute tribal member;
Bennett Wakayuta, Hualapai tribal member;
Lena Fowler, Coconino County Board of Supervisors member and Navajo tribal member;
Forrest Radarian, a high school science teacher representing outdoor recreations;
Amanda Podmore, a conservationist with Grand Canyon Trust;
James “Jim” Unmacht, executive director of Arizona Sportsmen for Wildlife Conservation;
Kathryn Leonard, state historic preservation officer with Arizona State Parks and Trails;
Clare Aslan, associate professor and director of Northern Arizona University’s school of earth and sustainability;
Sherre Finicum, a rancher;
Clarinda Vail, mayor of the town of Tusayan; and
Members of the public Dale Barlow and Lydia Breunig.
Their terms are set to expire in 2027 or 2028. It doesn’t appear that the MAC has conducted any meetings.
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More is coming to light about the handling of unaccompanied alien children under President Joe Biden’s administration.
Approximately 450,000 unaccompanied alien children were smuggled into the country under the Biden administration and placed with sponsors.
On Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that an investigation into the Biden administration found that they paid individuals to act as sponsors for unaccompanied alien children, with the knowledge that those individuals were traffickers.
“So, under that administration, we not only had children that were in this country as a part of a [government] program, [but the] government was paying individuals that were knowingly trafficking them and abusing them. That has stopped,” said Noem.
Noem said their agency has located about 145,000 unaccompanied alien children. Last December, that number was just over 129,000.
Throughout mid-to-late 2024, the Biden administration denied claims that their administration had lost track of over 300,000 unaccompanied alien children. These claims stemmed from a DHS report issued in August 2024. Officials at the time said the lack of knowledge concerning these children’s whereabouts didn’t mean the children were missing.
Last March, the Trump administration announced the discovery of a backlog of over 65,000 reports regarding unaccompanied alien children who came into the country under the Biden administration. By July, HHS processed over 59,000 of those reports; over 4,000 investigative leads on crime emerged from these reports, including for fraud and human trafficking.
Last November, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) issued a report on Biden administration data from 2021 and 2022 revealing Health and Human Services (HHS) lost contact and couldn’t determine the safety status of nearly half of all unaccompanied alien children transferred into sponsor custody. CIS is engaged in multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against HHS to obtain more data on these unaccompanied alien minors under the Biden administration.
That same month, ICE launched an initiative to partner with state and local law enforcement to conduct welfare checks on unaccompanied alien children. DHS asserts that “many” of these unaccompanied alien children were placed with smugglers and sex traffickers acting as sponsors.
Last summer, Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ02) participated in a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on the Biden administration’s hotline for unaccompanied alien children. Testimony revealed the Biden administration assigned one staffer to man the hotline. There was no information to be found about the number of hours that lone staffer worked.
Ali Hopper, president and founder of GUARD Against Trafficking, alleged in her testimony that from August 2023 to January 2025, 65,000 calls alleging neglect and abuse went unanswered on that hotline.
Approximately one dozen pregnant unaccompanied alien children have been housed in one Texas facility dedicated to their case type since last summer. At least half became pregnant as a result of rape, according to unnamed officials who contacted Texas Public Radio. The youngest among those children are 13.
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Another illegal alien who entered the country under President Joe Biden has taken lives.
30-year-old Bekzhan Beishekeev, a Kyrgyzstani national, killed four Amish men when he drove the wrong way into oncoming traffic in Indiana on Tuesday. The victims were identified as Henry Eicher, 50 and his sons Menno, 25, and Paul, 19; and Simon Girod, 23.
The driver of the struck vehicle, 55-year-old Donald Stipp, remains in the hospital. Stipp’s daughter-in-law launched a GoFundMe to cover Stipp’s medical expenses and recovery.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed reports that Beishekeev entered the U.S. illegally in December 2023 at the Nogales port of entry. Beishekeev used the CBP One app, which effectively allowed illegal aliens to enter the country and work for two years without vetting.
As with millions of others before him, the Biden administration exercised their “catch-and-release” policy on Beishekeev, freeing him on parole.
The White House issued a statement calling the deaths a “preventable tragedy” that illustrated the need to continue mass deportations and end sanctuary city policies.
THIS IS OUR WHY ⬇️
Illegal alien Beishekeev swerved into oncoming traffic, tragically killing four Americans. He entered the U.S. illegally via the Biden-era CBP One app & obtained a commercial driver's license in Pennsylvania.
The Trump administration revoked legal status for illegal aliens who relied on the CBP One app to delay their immigration proceedings. Over 900,000 illegal aliens entered the country using the app.
The state of Pennsylvania awarded Beishekeev a non-domiciled CDL last July, with an expiration date of June 2029. Beishekeev’s license reflected a home address in Philadelphia.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro declined to directly address the incident.
A spokesperson for Shapiro said that Beishekeev provided proof of identity and legal presence verified by the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, as per Pennsylvania law. Shapiro’s office said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was to blame for not catching Beishekeev’s legal status upon assuming the agency.
“The individual in question had legal status in Kristi Noem’s database when the license was issued in July 2025 and still shows as eligible to receive a license as of today,” said Shapiro spokesman Alex Peterson. “Kristi Noem should focus on minding the shop in her own agency, as her incompetence and operational failures seem to be matching the scale of her moral failures as the Secretary of Homeland Security.”
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin responded that Shapiro’s administration bore responsibility for granting CDLs to CBP One parolees.
“Not only was Bekzhan Beishekeev released into our country by the Biden administration using the CBP One app, but he was also given a commercial driver’s license by Governor Shapiro’s Pennsylvania,” said McLaughlin. “It is incredibly dangerous for illegal aliens, who often don’t know our traffic laws or even English, to be operating semi-trucks on America’s roads. These sanctuary governors must stop giving illegal aliens commercial driver’s licenses before another American gets killed.”
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun said the blame was with Democratic leaders rejecting immigration law.
“Hoosiers should be able to get to work in the morning without fear of needlessly losing their lives because of Democrats’ refusal to enforce the law,” said Braun. “With open and unchecked borders, millions of illegal immigrants flooded our communities, making every state a border state. Complicit democrats have put our safety at risk—and that has come at the price of innocent lives.”
My thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of those who were tragically killed yesterday in Jay County. Hoosiers should be able to get to work in the morning without fear of needlessly losing their lives because of democrats’ refusal to enforce the law. With open and…
Per reporting from Freight Waves, Beishekeev drove for a “chameleon carrier network” with officers bearing Kyrgyzstani names.
Chameleon carrier networks operate as separate-on-paper using different Department of Transportation (DOT) vehicle identification numbers, yet they rely on the same drivers, equipment, and management so as to continue operations when one or more within their network gets shut down.
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Writing at Axios, energy writer Amy Harder says “The climate agenda’s fall from grace over the past year has been stunning — in speed, scale and scope.” Harder quotes oil historian and S&P Global vice-chairman Dan Yergin as saying, “There’s no handwaving about how ‘We want to cooperate on climate.’ It’s, ‘We’re slamming the door on that issue.’ We’ve gone from over-indexing it to zero-indexing it.”
Polling has never shown climate change as being an issue of primary concern to American voters. Americans have consistently been more worried about issues that impact their daily lives today than about warnings from modern-day P.T. Barnums like U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres about some nebulous “highway to hell” and “the age of global boiling. The issue had been slowly losing its effectiveness during the Biden years even as that administration tried to memorialize the movement’s objectives in policy.
Even Democrat politicians have quit talking about the so-called “climate emergency” which used to be a central plank in their talking points list. When was the last time you heard New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, co-author with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of the “Green New Deal” introduced in 2019, talk about the supposed need to force ordinary citizens to give up their cars, flying, and vacations and spend trillions on a nationwide network of high-speed rails to save the planet? When was the last time you heard any Democrat utter the phrase “Green New Deal,” for that matter? It simply doesn’t happen anymore.
One of the motivators for the political abandonment of the climate scam by Democrats came from a pre-election analysis from the center-left Searchlight Institute last November. That memo advised Democrat candidates to avoid using the term “climate change” entirely, and to focus on the supposed cost savings to be obtained by switching to green energy solutions. Never mind that such cost savings are a myth: The truth doesn’t matter. What matters is the ability to influence voters with the message.
Therein lies the central existential threat to the movement’s survival in the coming years.
For decades, liberal politicians and climate advocates were able to advance the climate alarm agenda by creating, well, alarm among the public that the world is going to end if we don’t stop putting too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Always the messaging had a deadline claiming, “We only have X number of years to stop burning fossil fuels before it’s too late!” Over the past 40 years, that deadline to act has given the term “moving the goalposts” a new green meaning.
AOC claimed the drop-dead date was only 12 years in the future as she rolled out her ambition to control everyone’s daily lives in the name of climate alarm in 2019. But the very next year, in 2020, child activist Greta Thunberg moved the goalposts to a mere five years. But wait: Just a year later, Joe Biden read a script from his teleprompter that set the deadline at 10 years. It’s all so darn confusing.
No doubt, these politicians and activists wish they could erase their past claims from everyone’s memory. Their trouble is, the Internet is forever.
Advocates were even successful in convincing Barack Obama’s EPA to dummy up an Endangerment Finding declaring that carbon dioxide is in fact a “pollutant” that must be regulated under the Clean Air Act in order to save the planet. Never mind that CO2, otherwise known as plant food, the foundational basis for all life on Planet Earth: The truth doesn’t matter.
Now, it appears that the movement is inheriting the wages of decades of deception with a sudden and stunning fall from grace. It could not happen to a more deserving bunch of people.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
