District of Columbia | November 11, 2021
Feds ponder how much to pay illegal immigrants in compensation
District of Columbia | November 11, 2021
Members of Congress who die in office customarily have a year’s salary, currently $174,000, as a payout to their survivors.
Families of U.S. service members who die on active duty get a $100,000 death gratuity.
Japanese Americans, forced out of their homes and into internment camps for more than two years during World War II, collected $20,000 payments four decades later. That’s worth about $46,000 in today’s dollars… (Excerpts from the Washington Times)
District of Columbia | November 5, 2021
White House: Illegal Immigrants Could Get Government Payouts
District of Columbia | November 5, 2021
Illegal immigrants who were separated from family members by U.S. border agents could get money from the government in a potential lawsuit settlement, the White House said Thursday. Directly rebutting President Joe Biden’s comments a day prior, White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters the reported payments could happen. “If it saves taxpayer dollars and puts the disastrous history of the previous administration’s use of zero tolerance and family separation behind us, the president is perfectly comfortable with the Department of Justice settling with the individuals and families who are currently in litigation with the U.S. government,” she said during a briefing in Washington…. (Excerpts from the Epoch Times)
District of Columbia | November 5, 2021
Border Patrol released 283,000 migrants into US over past year, 95,000 untracked
District of Columbia | November 5, 2021
More than 283,000 migrants who illegally crossed the border from Mexico this past year were let into the United States, despite the Biden administration’s claims that it was immediately turning away adults and families, the Washington Examiner has learned.
The extremely high number of releases at the southern border, based on unreleased Border Patrol data shared with the Washington Examiner by Rep. Henry Cuellar, means that one-in-six of the 1.66 million people who walked across between land ports of entry were let go directly by the Border Patrol between Oct. 1, 2020, and Sept. 30.
The releases in question are separate from instances in which hundreds of thousands of other migrants were also released into the U.S. by other government entities, including the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement and Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement.“The Mexican president and the Guatemalan president are saying that the [Biden] administration has given the impression of open borders,” said Cuellar, a Democrat whose district sits on the Texas-Mexico border. “You can imagine what’s the word on the street over there, and that’s why we keep getting people coming in.” Border Patrol agents are so overwhelmed with the volume of illegal immigrants showing up this year that they started releasing migrants out of the back doors of their stations without providing them legal documents that mandate they appear before an immigration judge about their unlawful entry or asylum claim… (Excerpt from the Washington Examiner)
District of Columbia | October 18, 2021
Activists Walk Out on Meeting With Biden Admin Over Remain in Mexico Program
District of Columbia | October 18, 2021
Dozens of immigration activists allegedly walked out of a virtual meeting with Biden administration officials on Saturday morning in protest over the White House’s plan to restart the Trump era “Remain in Mexico” program, Politico reports.
The advocates read a statement accusing the administration of “playing politics with human lives” ahead of a virtual meeting with multiple officials, including people from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the White House Domestic Policy Council’s Esther Olavarria.
Activists allegedly said they could no longer “come into these conversations in good conscience.”
“We have sadly reached a turning point,” they said, before most of them exited the video meeting, Politico reported.
“I cannot stand one more meeting of them pretending,” Ariana Saludares, a 40-year old advocate from the New Mexico-based Colores United, told Politico. “They give us accolades on the outside, but on the inside, we’re having to take out the metaphoric knives from our back,” she said…. (Excerpts from the Epoch Times)
District of Columbia | October 12, 2021
Biden Exempts Some Crimes by Illegal Immigrants as Basis for Deportation
District of Columbia | October 12, 2021
Federal immigration officials no longer will view unlawful entry into the country as the sole basis for detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, under a new Biden administration policy. The policy will limit deportation to what immigration officials call aggravated felons, such as violent gang members and others who commit violent crimes. Critics of President Joe Biden’s new policy as stated by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas note that it will allow those who commit domestic violence, drunk drivers, and others convicted of crimes to stay in America—amid an ongoing border crisis…. (Excerpts from the Daily Signal)
District of Columbia, Texas | October 7, 2021
U.S. knew in July thousands of Haitians were prepping for journey to U.S. border, officials say
District of Columbia, Texas | October 7, 2021
Two officials said progressives in the Biden administration blocked a plan to start deportations to Haiti before the migrant surge in Del Rio, Texas.
The U.S. knew in July that thousands of Haitians were heading to the U.S. border, but a failure to share intelligence and an internal debate over whether to increase deportations left immigration officials ill-equipped to handle the 28,000 who converged on a Texas bridge last month, three U.S. officials said.
The officials said the Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged the failures internally and has made them part of its discussions to be better prepared for any future surge.
Two of the officials said that the debate over starting deportations before the migrant surge in Del Rio, Texas, was a political battle between progressives and others at DHS and that the progressives won, delaying deportation flights.
Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis all had information as far back as July that indicated that large groups of Haitians were making their way north from South and Central America to the U.S. border, the three officials said. But the intelligence was not shared widely enough within DHS and across agencies to indicate the size or speed of the group of migrants or that they would all arrive in one location. In an interview Sept. 20 in Del Rio, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “I don’t think we expected the rapidity of the increase that occurred.”… (Excerpts from NBC News)