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Biden-Harris Admin Claims FEMA Is Out of Money. Here’s Where the Money Went


By: Tristan Justice | October 03, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/10/03/biden-harris-admin-claims-fema-is-out-of-money-heres-where-the-money-went/

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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is pleading with lawmakers to send the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) more money after the disaster relief agency emptied the coffers to provide services for illegal immigrants.

“FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season,” Mayorkas told reporters on Air Force One Wednesday, with hurricane season running from June 1 through Nov. 30.

“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” he said, after Hurricane Helene brought devastation to the southeastern United States.

(PLEASE SEE https://mrb562.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=96067&action=edit FOR TESTIMONIALS OF WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING)

The storm crashed into Florida as a Category 4 hurricane last week and poured a record-breaking 40 trillion gallons of water across the South, washing away entire Appalachian towns. Ryan Cole, the assistant director for emergency services in Buncombe County where Asheville became isolated due to broken roads and no power or cell service, characterized the aftermath as “Biblical.”

“You’ve heard us say, ‘catastrophic devastation within our county.’ I would go a little bit further and say we have Biblical devastation through the county,” Cole said Sunday. “We’ve had Biblical flooding here, and it has been extremely significant.”

But while communities across southern Appalachia scramble to rebuild following the torrential downpour that killed roughly 200 people, federal relief efforts have come up short. One woman named Alyse Adams, who spoke to NBC News about her family stuck in the North Carolina mountains, said she’s been stunned by the slow response from the Biden-Harris administration.

“I don’t know how you did not have a formal press conference or something from either President Biden or Kamala Harris,” Adams said. “FEMA is not on the ground there at all. They are not in these cities, not in these towns, and not in these villages.”

While the emergency response agency is typically proactive, with pre-staged supplies ready for immediate rescue operations, that same support was clearly not available to the Appalachian towns where Hurricane Helene wrought havoc. Instead, the Biden-Harris administration restructured FEMA to provide services for illegal migrants with a new bureaucratic mandate to instill “equity as a foundation of emergency management.” Storm preparedness ranks as a third priority for the disaster relief task force under “lead[ing] whole of community in climate resilience.”

According to the government’s website, FEMA has spent more than $1 billion “to provide humanitarian services to noncitizen migrants following their release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)” under the “Shelter and Services Program” just within the last two years. The agency allocated nearly $364 million to the program in the fiscal year 2023 and $650 million for 2024.

“Over the last 4 years the Biden-Harris admin has steadily transformed FEMA — the agency responsible for responding to natural disasters like Hurricane Helene — into an illegal alien resettlement agency that emphasizes DEI over public safety,” reported America First Legal, a conservative non-profit. AFL published a series on online posts outlining where FEMA spent tax dollars meant to assist Americans in the aftermath of major storms and hurricanes.

“The Shelter and Services Program is designed to exclusively provide shelter and services to illegal aliens,” AFL reported, with millions in grants spent to groups primarily across the Southwest. AFL also highlighted the “Emergency Food and Shelter Program” as a “separate program” that has given $685 million “to fund illegal aliens.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office, FEMA gets most of its funding from supplemental appropriations bills passed by lawmakers following natural disasters. This hurricane season, however, has only brought two major storms to the U.S. that caused widespread devastation: Helene and Beryl, which hit Texas in June. Yet Mayorkas is now demanding more funding for FEMA after the administration diverted the agency’s resources for the continued migrant crisis under President Biden’s “border czar,” Kamala Harris.

“We have, of course, made a significant request of Congress with respect to stable funding for the Federal Emergency Management Administration, which should not be a political issue,” Mayorkas said Wednesday. “This is something that Americans need desperately.”

Americans in the washed-out towns of southern Appalachia also need the support of their federal government more than the illegal border crossers in California and Texas, desperately.


Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

Report: Flyers Urging Illegals to Vote for Biden Found in Left-Wing Group’s Office in Mexico


BY: BRIANNA LYMAN | APRIL 17, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/17/report-flyers-urging-illegals-to-vote-for-biden-found-in-left-wing-groups-office-in-mexico/

A flyer purportedly encouraging illegal immigrants to vote for Joe Biden

Flyers reportedly posted around a Resource Center Matamoros facility in Mexico encouraged illegal immigrants — who are not eligible to vote in the United States — to vote for President Joe Biden in November, according to The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. One of the organizations operating out of the Resource Center Matamoros (RCM) has ties to Biden’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose articles of impeachment the U.S. House of Representatives delivered to the Senate Tuesday afternoon.

The flyers, which the Oversight Project posted photos of on X, read “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” The Heritage Foundation said the flyers were first discovered by Muckraker but also confirmed to The Federalist that their own team had obtained a copy of one of the flyers “inside the RCM office.”

“The flyer in the X thread is a direct scan of the one our folks obtained on-site inside the RCM office,” a Heritage Foundation representative said. “The flyers were also posted all over the camp in the port-a-potties.”

Nevertheless, others have raised questions about the flyer, including Fox News’ Bill Melugin.

“I am extremely skeptical of this. The flier appears to be a word for word Google Translate copy & paste of a portion of the NGO’s English website, with ‘vote for Biden’ randomly added in at the end, when it does not appear on the site,” Melugin posted on X. “The translation is bad, then you have ‘bienvenidos’ spelled wrong and ‘todos con Biden’ added onto the flier with a Biden logo.”

Another social media user associated with a left-wing immigration group claimed to have spoken with the executive director of RCM and said the posters were “Totally fake” and “Made up by two posers.”

It is unclear whether RCM authorized the posting of the flyers, but the Heritage Foundation told The Federalist that because they found flyers in the RCM office, they have “every reason to believe” the flyer is from the organization. The Federalist reached out to RCM for more information but did not receive a response.

The flyers “appear to be handed out when illegal aliens use the RCM for assistance in coming to the USA,” according to the Oversight Project.

RCM says it is “a humanitarian organization that provides a safe space where refugees at the southern Texas-Mexico border can access legal and social support services.” Its “6-unit office complex” hosts the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which provides “legal assistance and assistance with obtaining formal documents for job search and integration into the city of Matamoros as [migrants] wait to access the asylum process in the US.”

RCM founder and executive director Gaby Zavala previously worked with La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE)– a left-wing organization that is partnered with the Open Society Institute, as pointed out by the Oversight Project. The Open Society Institute is funded by left-wing billionaire and mega-donor George Soros.

RCM also worked alongside Team Brownsville, a left-wing organization, and Angry Tias and Abeulas, which aims to help illegal immigrants cross the border, according to the Oversight Project.

Mayorkas — whose disastrous handling of the invasion at the southern border earned him impeachment by the House — was formerly on the board of HIAS and in his current role with the Biden administration has met with members of both Angry Tias and Abuelas as well as LUPE, according to Judicial Watch.

[READ NEXT: Not A Single Democrat Witness In Congress Agreed Only Citizens Should Vote In Federal Elections]

While illegal immigrants and other noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal elections, federal voter registration forms simply require each individual to check a box affirming he is a U.S. citizen. The lack of any requirement that new voters show documentary proof of citizenship prompted former President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday to announce Republican legislation that would demand such documentation from new registrants.

The federal government currently prohibits states from requiring potential voters to provide such proof to register to vote in federal elections. States may require proof of citizenship to register for statewide elections, as Arizona does. But even in Arizona, a voter who attempts to register to vote with the state form but fails to provide proof of citizenship must then be registered to vote on a federal-only form.

During the 2020 presidential election, 11,600 voters voted using a federal-only ballot, AZ Free News reported. President Joe Biden won the state by 10,457 votes.


Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.

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Group to Target GOP Senators Who Oppose Mayorkas Trial


By Brian Freeman    |   Monday, 08 April 2024 03:05 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/heritage-action-impeachment-trial-alejandro-mayorkas/2024/04/08/id/1160185/

Senate Republicans who said they intend to vote against a trial on the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will be targeted by Heritage Action, the conservative advocacy group told the Washington Examiner on Monday.

The group, the sister organization of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, said it will unleash a campaign to ensure that the Mayorkas trial proceeds this week.

“The border crisis, which was created and facilitated by this administration, is now the No. 1 concern of Americans,” Heritage Action Executive Vice President Ryan Walker said. “Lawmakers who claim that impeaching Secretary Mayorkas is a waste of time or the Senate is too busy to hold a trial are not only absurd, they’re massively out of touch with the voters who sent them to Washington.”

Heritage Action said it will declare any procedural motion that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer puts on the floor a “key vote” and that any Republican who votes with the Democrats will be put on blast, including in messaging to the organization’s 2 million grassroots supporters.

The vote to table the trial only requires a simple majority and has a one-vote threshold, making it critical that Republicans stay in line.

“Anyone who does Schumer’s bidding and votes to dismiss or table will be complicit in his cover-up and the border crisis itself,” Walker said. “Senators who would rather focus on the terrible bills Schumer has put forward instead of holding a trial for Mayorkas cannot be trusted by conservatives. Heritage Action stands with Americans demanding accountability and will key vote any procedural move put forth to sweep the charges against Mayorkas under the rug.”

House managers are set to deliver the two articles of impeachment to the Senate on Wednesday, almost two months after Mayorkas was impeached on charges of refusing to enforce the law and a breach of public trust.

That day Mayorkas is also scheduled to appear on Capitol Hill for a two congressional hearings connected to his department’s budget.

Impeachment proceedings are set to start in the Senate on Thursday.

Brian Freeman 

Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.

Dispatch From Eagle Pass: Biden Officials Won’t Enforce Laws But ‘Don’t Want Anyone Else To’ Either


BY: M.D. KITTLE | FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/13/dispatch-from-eagle-pass-biden-officials-wont-enforce-laws-but-dont-want-anyone-else-to-either/

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In his appearance Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” embattled U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas did what any failed political leader possessing little integrity and less self-awareness would do: He blamed others for his mistakes. Asked whether he bears any responsibility for the nightmare the Biden administration has wrought at the U.S. southern border and beyond, Mayorkas effectively said, don’t look at us

“It certainly is a crisis and we don’t bear responsibility for a broken system, and we’re dealing a tremendous amount within that broken system,” he told moderator Kristen Welker. 

Maybe the secretary should talk to the people living in and around the border towns, local law enforcement, and his own U.S. Border Patrol agents. 

Ira Mehlman and the folks from FAIR — the Federation for American Immigration Reform — did just that earlier this month. 

“Ask the people at the border in Texas. They think the blame belongs squarely with [the Biden administration],” the FAIR media director told me Monday morning on “Need to Know With Jeff Angelo” on NewsRadio 1040 in Des Moines. 

Earlier this month, Mehlman and his traveling companions saw the illegal immigration crisis firsthand at Eagle Pass, a south Texas city of about 28,000 people bordering Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the Rio Grande. As the Dallas Morning News explained, “Eagle Pass, with two small international bridges, features relatively gentle Rio Grande currents that invite migrant crossings. It became a focal point of Texas action in December when the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants over multiple weeks overwhelmed Border Patrol agents and city resources.”

The border town has become a hive of humanity, as its population swells from a wave of illegal aliens pouring over the border on promises of easy entry from President Joe Biden and his nearly impeached Homeland Security chief. U.S. Customs and Border Protection still has yet to post numbers for January apprehensions at the Southwest border, but December saw a new all-time monthly record with more than 300,000 migrant apprehensions. Eagle Pass and its Del Rio sector alone have recorded a whopping 152,252 encounters in the first three months of the federal fiscal year, beginning in October, according to the agency.  

Eagle Pass is now ground zero in a standoff between the state of Texas and the Biden administration, just as it is Exhibit A in the administration’s chaotic immigration policy. Gov. Greg Abbott, backed by several states, ordered state National Guard troops to stand guard at Eagle Pass’s gates and erect razor wire to check the invasion. A divided 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court order gave the administration the go-ahead to cut the wire, but Abbott is holding firm, arguing his state is under attack and the president is doing nothing to stop it. Abbott stands on his constitutional obligation to defend and protect his state, and the United States at large, from invasion.  

“The message from the Biden administration is: Not only don’t we want to enforce immigration laws, we don’t want anyone else to do it,” Mehlman said. 

The immigration reform activist says, from what he saw on his latest trip to Eagle Pass, Abbott’s strategy is working. And, from what’s he’s heard from law enforcement officials, there have been few attempts from federal authorities to remove the deterrents Texas has put in place. Abbott has said his Operation Lone Star has reduced illegal immigration numbers, a claim backed by a new Washington Examiner analysis. 

“The numbers show how the percentage of arrests in Texas versus other border states has shifted. In 2021, 69% of illegal immigrant arrests across the southern border occurred in Texas,” the publication reported on Monday.

“As Abbott stepped up security at the start of the Biden administration in 2021, arrests of illegal crossers began to fall and dropped to just 34% last month.”

“This is a manageable problem, as Gov. Abbott has now demonstrated. If you deter people from coming across you will see the results almost immediately,” Mehlman said. 

Mehlman does acknowledge, however, that the migrants are simply rerouting to Arizona and California, border states led by leftist governors committed to Biden’s open border policies. 

Shifting blame, Mayorkas insists Congress is the “only one who can fix” the five-alarm border fire that he and Biden have dumped gasoline on. The secretary conveniently omits the many Trump-era policies the president has reversed and the orders he could sign to turn the tide of the illegal immigration flood. My colleague Tristan Justice last week detailed the dozens of times Biden has gutted border security since he took the oath of office. 

The U.S. Senate’s bad joke of a border deal that died an ignominious death last week would have essentially codified the Biden administration’s awful policy to date. Mehlman and other critics say it would have exacerbated the crisis. He said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his top negotiator, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., “sold out” the House’s “good” version of the bill, creating a “lose-lose situation” for lawmakers serious about border security. 

Meanwhile, last week’s failed effort by House Republicans to impeach Mayorkas is regrouping. Speaker Mike Johnson appears to believe his fellow Republicans will have the numbers —narrowly — this time around as Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., is back to political business after undergoing cancer treatment during last week’s vote. 

Mehlman said Mayorkas deserves to be impeached. 

“He has undermined the enforcement of our immigration laws, he has violated his oath of office and he’s been derelict in his duty as secretary of Homeland Security,” the Federation for American Immigration Reform official said. 


Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.

Under The Senate’s Atrocious Border Bill, Everybody Gets Asylum


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | FEBRUARY 05, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/05/under-the-senates-atrocious-border-bill-everybody-gets-asylum/

immigration protester carry signs that say "asylum is a right"

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The Senate’s emergency appropriations bill released on Sunday won’t address the border crisis, and contrary to the accomplice media’s spin, the spending bill won’t “severely curtail asylum at the US southern border.”

The bill could have had the Senate reclaim the reins of lawmaking from the executive and judicial branches and clarify that widespread criminality in another country is not a basis for asylum in America. Instead, the 370-page bill, the “Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024,” includes funding for both Israel and Ukraine, plus decidedly insufficient provisions for addressing aliens and immigration.

The backers of the Senate bill seek to portray its provisions as, in the words of Joe Biden, the “toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades.” There is little that is “tough” in the bill, however, and what is can easily be sidestepped — either by the Biden administration or the throngs of illegal aliens invading from the south.

Consider, for instance, the “emergency authority” the bill would grant to the secretary of homeland security to “summarily remove” aliens. But that authority only arises if the number of encounters with aliens at the border averages 4,000 for seven consecutive days or more than 8,500 in any one day. 

Beyond the flood of aliens allowed to enter the United States without triggering the emergency authority, the statutory exemptions gut the secretary’s authority. Specifically, the bill provides that the border emergency authority cannot be used against “an unaccompanied alien child,” so every illegal alien who is under 18 — or can pass as someone who is under 18 — will be allowed in. 

Likewise, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can exempt aliens from the “border emergency authority” based on supposed “operational considerations.” An immigration officer can exempt other aliens for public health, humanitarian, and a smattering of other reasons. The president also has the power under the Senate bill to unilaterally suspend the secretary’s border emergency authority, meaning Biden can stop summary removals at will — at least temporarily.

The country has seen these types of exceptions swallow the rule since the Biden administration supplanted President Trump’s border policies, and there is no reason to believe things will be any different after nearly four years of an open border.

Empty Asylum Reform

The Senate bill’s claimed toughening of asylum procedures is similarly impotent. Most glaring is its provision stating that individuals seeking asylum will be “released from physical custody.” The sections and subsections that follow then detail the process for handling asylum claims. 

The supposed improvement here is that asylum decisions are to be completed expeditiously, within 90 days. But the Senate includes the squishy “to the maximum extent practicable” to that 90-day timetable. That’s assuming the alien, who recall is “noncustodial,” does not abscond. The bill also allows for aliens to seek review of negative decisions, meaning they’ll have a second opportunity to flee even if they appear for the first hearing.

That the Senate bill provides for the release of aliens pending a hearing renders any other tightening of the asylum process meaningless. What would have sent a message, however, would have been for the Senate to clarify that facing general violence, including gang violence, in a country of origin, is not a basis for asylum.

Congress previously defined the grounds for asylum as limited to those who are unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin “because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion…” The statutory “membership in a particular social group” language has led to claims for asylum premised on spousal abuse, threats by gang members, and individuals targeted because of their occupation. 

Attempts at Reform

Under the Trump administration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions sought to “return some semblance of meaning to the ‘membership in a particular social group’ category by holding that an applicant ‘must demonstrate: (1) membership in a group, which is composed of members who share a common immutable characteristic, is defined with particularity, and is socially distinct within the society in question; and (2) that membership in the group is a central reason for her persecution.’”

As Sessions explained in his decision interpreting the statutory language, “nothing in the text of the [Immigration and Nationality Act] supports the suggestion that Congress intended ‘membership in a particular social group’ to be ‘some omnibus catch-all’ for solving every ‘heart-rending situation.’” The former AG’s opinion further indicated that “victims of private criminal activity” will generally not qualify for asylum, absent “exceptional circumstances.”

Following Joe Biden’s election, his DOJ issued an opinion vacating Sessions’ opinion, suggesting asylum was more readily available for victims of private criminal activity. But rather than explain, Merrick Garland noted he would leave the question to rule-making. Such a fundamental question should not be left to unelected bureaucrats, however, especially given the unsustainable levels of asylum applications seen in the last few years. 

Asylum for All

Maybe Congress wants to open America to every citizen of the world who heralds from a country where the government cannot control crime — which is the conclusion that follows from the Biden administration’s all-inclusive reading of the statutory “membership in a particular social group” language. If so, Congress should say so. But if not, Congress should make clear that asylum provides a safe haven for those persecuted by their government because of their race, religion, sex, political views, or whatever other specific classifications our elected officials believe appropriate. 

The irony here is that the Biden administration’s reversal of the Trump policies has fortified the funding of cartels, gangs, and traffickers — so much so that those flooding our shores will now be able to honestly say their government cannot protect them. And if “non-gang members” qualifies as a “social group,” it will be asylum for all.

Is that what Congress believes is appropriate? We don’t know because the cowards prefer to leave it to the administrative state. The Senate bill proves that.


Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

House Republicans Reveal Mayorkas Impeachment Articles Amid Worst Border Numbers In History


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JANUARY 29, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/01/29/house-republicans-reveal-mayorkas-impeachment-articles-amid-worst-border-numbers-in-history/

Alejandro Mayorkas

House Republicans will proceed with impeachment charges against President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary this week. On Sunday, Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee unveiled two articles of impeachment against Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the administration’s efforts to actively undermine border security.

“These articles lay out a clear, compelling, and irrefutable case for Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment,” Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green of Tennessee said in a statement to The Federalist. “He has willfully and systemically refused to comply with immigration laws enacted by Congress. He has breached the public trust by knowingly making false statements to Congress and the American people, and obstructing congressional oversight of his department. These facts are beyond dispute, and the results of his lawless behavior have been disastrous for our country.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., introduced a resolution to impeach Mayorkas last year, but it was referred to the House Homeland Security Committee in November. Since then, House Republicans have held two hearings on the secretary’s impeachment in January. The embattled DHS chief was absent for each. In a statement, Green called Mayorkas’ refusal to testify “deeply troubling.”

“We have given him every opportunity to explain his handling of the crisis,” Green said in a statement earlier this month. “Unfortunately, this pattern of defying Congress has continued with his refusal to testify before this Committee specifically about his handling of this crisis and his failure to enforce America’s immigration laws. Apparently, accountability and transparency are not high on his priority list. The American people deserve better than this.”

On Sunday, Green proposed an amendment in the nature of a substitute, or new bill language, as the base text for the articles being formally introduced this week. Charges will include “Willful and Systemic Refusal to Comply With the Law” and “Breach of the Public Trust” stemming from the secretary’s failure to secure the border.

Republicans say Mayorkas has acted contrary to his obligation to provide border security with programs facilitating open migration such as the expansion of the CBP One App, which allows migrants to enter the country after scheduling an appointment with officials. According to the Washington Examiner, the app has also been abused by Central American cartels with virtual private networks (VPN) to smuggle people across the border.

Green said Mayorkas has “empowered and enriched cartels, mass fentanyl poisonings, surges of terror watchlist suspects, more criminal illegal aliens causing harm in our communities, and traumatized and exploited migrants.”

December set a new single-month record for border arrests, with more than 300,000 illegal aliens encountered by U.S. border officials. According to an October report from the House Judiciary Committee, an estimated 1.7 million more known “gotaways” have come in undetected since Biden took office, bringing the estimated number of illegal entries under this Democrat administration to roughly 10 million or more.

[RELATED: Hawley Blasts Mayorkas As Annual Unvetted Migrants Outnumber St. Louis, Kansas City ‘Combined’]

At the House Homeland Security Committee’s second and final impeachment hearing for Mayorkas last week, Republicans featured victims of the fentanyl crisis. Fentanyl seizures by federal border enforcement are up 860 percent since 2019, according to ABC News.

“In my humble opinion, Mr. Mayorkas’ border policy is partially responsible for my daughter’s death,” said Josephine Dunn, whose daughter died from fentanyl poisoning.

If Republicans are successful, Mayorkas would become the second presidential cabinet member to be impeached. William Belknap, who served as war secretary under President Ulysses S. Grant, was impeached in 1876 shortly after resigning over allegations of corruption. Belknap was ultimately acquitted by the Senate.


Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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Report: 6 Million Migrants Released Via Law Loophole


By Jim Morley    |   Tuesday, 23 January 2024 03:38 PM EST

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/joe-biden-alejandro-mayorkas-homeland-security/2024/01/23/id/1150675/

According to data released by a new report by the Congressional Budget Office and delineated by RedState.com, the Biden administration has used a parole loophole in immigration law to release over 6 million illegal immigrants into the U.S. since Joe Biden took office in January 2021. The number of illegal aliens entering the U.S. under Biden, equivalent to about the population of Tennessee, has increased each year of the Biden presidency.

“CBO estimates that, on net, the number of people immigrating to the United States was 1.2 million in 2021 and 2.7 million in 2022,” the report stated. 

Biden and Homeland Security head Alejandro Mayorkas have repeatedly stated that the U.S. southern border is secure. Yet, the newly released statement by the CBO documents the perpetual increase in illegal boarding crossing and the government’s catch-and-release protocol. 

But the CBO report read: “Customs and Border Protection officials are encountering more people attempting to enter the United States and are releasing more of them into the country with humanitarian parole or with a notice to appear before an immigration judge, and more people are illegally entering the country without encountering Customs and Boarder Protection officials.”

The CBO report said that the U.S. population “will increase from 342 million people in 2024 to 383 million people in 2054, growing by 0.4 percent per year,” with the overwhelming contributor to the increase coming from immigration of any kind and not domestic births.

“Over the next decade, net immigration accounts for about 70 percent of the overall increase in the size of the population, and the greater number of births than deaths accounts for the remaining 30 percent. After 2034, net immigration increasingly drives population growth, accounting for all population growth beginning in 2040,” the CBO report stated.

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The BorderLine: Memo from McAllen—A Look Inside the Mayorkas Migration Machine


By: Simon Hankinson / November 28, 2023

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/11/28/borderline-memo-mcallen-look-inside-mayorkas-migration-machine/

Rep. Bob Good speaks at a podium at a news conference with the U.S. Capitol in the background with a sign on the podium calling for the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
Since 2021, the Biden Department of Homeland Security has abandoned efforts to deter, detain, and deport illegal aliens in favor of letting in as many as possible. This continues to cost America, from our border towns to our biggest cities. Pictured: Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., speaks at a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol to call for the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Feb. 1. (Photo: Tom Williams, CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images)

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Simon Hankinson

Simon Hankinson, a former foreign service officer with the State Department, is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center.

The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues like human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.

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The Biden administration would have you believe that its purportedly “safe, orderly, and humane” immigration policy comes at no cost to you, the American citizen. But the truth is just another casualty of its open border agenda.  

Joe Biden has presided over an unprecedented degradation of U.S. sovereignty, as our laws no longer determine who gets in. Instead, aliens do—just by showing up. This loss of sovereignty at the border can literally apply to territory as well: Recently, the Texas Department of Public Safety had to move Mexican cartel gunmen off Fronton Island in the middle of the Rio Grande.  

Since January 2021, the Biden Department of Homeland Security has abandoned the effort to deter, detain, and deport illegal aliens in favor of letting in as many as Congress will fund. This “Mayorkas Migration Machine” (I named it after our feckless secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas) grinds away nationally and locally, from the border town of McAllen, Texas (which I just visited), to up north and our failing big cities. And the bills are coming due.  

In New York, the homeless shelters are full and city officials are running out of makeshift places to put the relentless stream of illegal aliens. Mayor Eric Adams has announced cuts to city services on which citizens rely—including police, education, and libraries—to pay to feed and house them, and the City Council seems likely to approve them.  

Chicago plans to build a giant tent camp to hold 2,000 of the illegal aliens waiting for free housing. This will cost over $30 million, on top of the $250 million the city already spent this year on illegal aliens, such as those who are housed in a K-12 school.

Locals are outraged—maybe because, according to Fox News, other migrant shelters in the city have been prone to “loitering, engaging in late-night partying, prostitution, littering, and even fighting with community members.” Chicago’s budget for 2024 is already half a billion in the red, but taxpayers, not illegal aliens, will pay this cost. When the city says “equity,” it means treating newly arrived aliens who’ve never paid taxes better than Chicagoans.

Massachusetts, a “sanctuary” state nicknamed “Taxachussetts” for its historically high taxes, finally capped its free housing of illegal aliens at 7,500 people. But they keep coming. Boston’s Logan Airport has been informally housing families flown from the border for months.

The airport’s manager gave the excuse that “they’re paying passengers”—but who’s paying? All of us are, through FEMA and numerous other government grants paid to nongovernmental organizations that transport, shelter, feed, advise, and provide other “wrap-around” services to illegal aliens coming to the U.S.   

Local Texans used to swim, boat, and recreate on the Rio Grande near McAllen. No longer. On a recent fact-finding mission, I visited the Hidalgo County water pumping station, which owns property on the river. Its employees have been shot at by cartel thugs on the other side.

The river was devoid of civilian traffic. Cartels battle each other for control of the Mexican side and the lucrative payoffs from illegal aliens crossing through their turf. Dead bodies—executed victims of the narco-traffic wars—regularly wash up on the banks. The water authority had to install a screen to keep the corpses out of their pumps.

Drug cartels have sabotaged Border Patrol boats by stringing cables underwater to destroy outboard engines and at head height to kill or injure American officers. The Border Patrol boats now use water-jet engines and are equipped with twin wires from the bow to the top of the command box to divert strung cables.  

At the airport in McAllen, I saw several families who appeared to be from Haiti camped out on the floor, waiting for their free flight north. Sources at the airport told me that 100 such people go through security and board flights every day with nothing more than their Notice to Appear—a letter from DHS telling them to go to immigration court at some point in the future—as identification. The Transportation Security Administration is required to accept this worthless document from foreigners, although you and I need a “Real ID” such as a state driver’s license or passport to board a plane.   

An airline employee told me that her early morning flight to Dallas is usually half full of women and children from the border. That plane holds about 160 people. That’s just for one flight, one airline, one border airport, one day.

On my early afternoon flight to Dallas, I sat across from two young men with neat clothes, Puma sneakers, and fashionable haircuts, both incessantly on their late-model phones. They had Haitian passports and the telltale folders of travel itineraries and documents given by nongovernmental organizations to released illegal aliens for their onward journeys further into the U.S.

Who were they? What did they do back in Haiti? 

I have no idea, and neither does DHS. Haiti’s government is feckless, and civil order has given way to high levels of murder, theft, and kidnapping. But although many poor Haitians are victims of all this, someone is doing the murdering, too. So how does DHS know the two guys on my plane and thousands more like them who they let in each week are average citizens or victims and not the perpetrators fleeing the consequences of their own crimes?

They don’t.  

Lacking any way to verify identities and check foreign criminal records in most cases, DHS is forced to trust the information provided by people who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by lying. It is a statistical certainty that some of the millions paroled in or released at the border will have committed acts at home that render them legally ineligible to be admitted into the United States. The high risk of this percentage of aliens re-offending is now borne by the American communities into which DHS is sending them.  

To take but one example, in July 2023, Border Patrol caught a 25-year old man entering the U.S. illegally in Hidalgo, gave him his Notice to Appear, and let him go. Three months later, Boston police arrested him for assaulting a member of his family—probably before he even made his first immigration court appearance. Did he have a criminal record in Haiti that could have warned DHS or Boston police that he had a history of violence? It’s too late to ask now.  

In recent testimony before the Senate, Mayorkas claimed that he had paroled into the U.S. over 240,000 aliens on a “case-by-case” rather than blanket basis. This is simply not credible. He’s just rolling the dice on the safety of the American people.

The cold hard truth is Biden’s policies have surrendered control of our borders to Mexican cartels and illegal aliens and foisted all the ensuing costs and risks onto our taxpayers.  

In Major Reversal, Biden Admin Now Seeks To Build Trump’s Border Wall


BY: JORDAN BOYD | OCTOBER 05, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/05/in-major-reversal-biden-admin-now-seeks-to-build-trumps-border-wall/

Trump’s border wall

President Joe Biden’s White House repeatedly insists that the invasion at the U.S. Southern border is “not a crisis” but waived 26 federal laws this week so that it can resume construction of former President Donald Trump’s border wall and curb the millions of illegal migrants inundating border officials.

Mere weeks after the Department of Defense was caught “quietly” auctioning off millions of dollars of barrier parts, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security announced plans to rebuild a portion of the fortification separating the U.S. and Mexico.

The border wall project, assigned to DHS in a 2019 appropriations bill, is expected to cover 17 miles in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas where many illegal border crossings occur.

The Biden administration’s decision to simply waive more than two dozen laws without scrutiny is a slap in the face to Republicans like Trump who had to jump through judiciary hoops every time he tried to secure the Southern border.

It’s also yet another major flip-flop for Biden who, even before he was elected, swore off of physical barriers as an effective illegal immigration deterrent.

“There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, No. 1,” he told NPR in August 2020.

On day one in the Oval Office, Biden scaled back several Trump-era border protections and halted Southern border wall construction. By April 2021, Biden’s DOD canceled the border wall construction contracts completely and diverted the funds to other Pentagon pet projects.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas previously told the House Homeland Security Committee under oath that he supported Biden’s decision to halt construction of the wall.

Millions of record-breaking illegal border crossings later, Mayorkas has changed his tune.

“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States,” Mayorkas wrote in his announcement waiving federal laws to restart barrier building.

The “acute and immediate need” Mayorkas refers to is the influx of illegal border crossers who have spent the last two years flooding underequipped regions and crowding already overpopulated cities.

Migrants rushed to the U.S.-Mexico border shortly after Biden was elected because he promised to abandon the border wall, ditch Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, and scale back ICE arrests and deportations.

August alone yielded 232,972 illegal border crosser arrests. Another surge in September means 2023 apprehensions are on track to outpace the nearly 2.4 million illegal border crossers arrested in the 2022 fiscal year. Those numbers don’t even include the estimated tens of thousands more “gotaways” who evade arrest every month.


Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Four Americans Kidnapped in Mexico as Border Violence Spirals Out of Control


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | MARCH 06, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/06/four-americans-kidnapped-in-mexico-as-border-violence-spirals-out-of-control/

Americans Kidnapped
Four Americans who went missing in Mexico last week were taken in a possible kidnapping, according to the FBI.

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Four Americans who went missing in Mexico last week were taken in a possible kidnapping, according to the FBI. The agency is seeking public help in locating the four Americans who disappeared on March 3 after they crossed the border from Brownsville, Texas.

“Four Americans crossed into Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico driving a white minivan with North Carolina license plates,” read a statement from the FBI published by Fox News. “Shortly after crossing into Mexico, unidentified gunmen fired upon the passengers in the vehicle. All four Americans were placed in a vehicle and taken from the scene by armed men.” The FBI did not name the four missing individuals.

The Americans “had traveled to the border city of Matamoros for medical procedures,” a U.S. official “citing receipts found in the vehicle” told CNN. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “offered a similar explanation.”

“The information we have is that they crossed the border to buy medicines in Mexico, there was a confrontation between groups and they were detained,” Obrador said, according to CNN. “The whole government is working on it.”

The region across the border from Brownsville is predominantly run by the Gulf drug cartel, a criminal syndicate and drug trafficking organization in constant conflict with warring factions.

Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said Monday American officials are working with Mexican law enforcement to bring the four missing citizens home. The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for the safe return of the missing Americans and the arrest of the captors. Tips can be submitted to https://tips.fbi.gov.

Kidnapping of Americans in Mexico is far from unprecedented. The State Department has warned Americans against trips to the Tamaulipas state since at least Oct. 22 with a level 4 travel advisory “due to crime and kidnapping.”

Last year, an American tourist had his foot hacked by a machete after being kidnapped by his taxi driver. In December 2021, six Mexican nationals from a trafficking group in Tijuana were indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury for kidnapping nine victims and murdering six. Three of those reportedly executed were American citizens. In 2013, an American named Shane Andersen was held for $20,000 ransom in Monterrey, Mexico.

Most kidnappings don’t pick up major press coverage. This week’s hostage situation, however, has already driven headlines across the major networks as the U.S. southern border with Mexico continues to spiral out of control.

CBS aired apparent footage of the kidnapping Monday morning.

Escalating violence across the international boundary has amplified pressure on Washington lawmakers to address the crisis.

In February, newly-elected Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made his first visit to the border as the leading figure in the lower chamber. McCarthy blasted the Biden administration’s lethargic response to the crisis at the border where a lack of law enforcement has opened the door to unchecked migration and a flood of narcotics pouring into American communities.

“We don’t even have operational control of it anymore,” McCarthy said at a section of the border wall in southeast Arizona.

Kevin McCarthy speaks at border press conference in Arizona

The Republican House speaker threatened to launch an impeachment inquiry into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the agency’s failure to secure the nation’s boundaries.

“You cannot tell us this border’s secure when now there is enough fentanyl in this country to kill every single American more than 20 times over,” McCarthy said.

[READ: It’s Kyrsten Sinema’s Turn To Tour The Border With Speaker McCarthy]

In January, cartel violence reached the doorstep of McCarthy’s own California House district where six, including a baby, were murdered in a “cartel-style execution.”


Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

Biden’s DHS Just Revealed How It Plans to Use Your Tax Dollars to Interfere in U.S. Elections


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | MARCH 01, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/01/bidens-dhs-just-revealed-how-it-plans-to-use-your-tax-dollars-to-interfere-in-u-s-elections/

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas speaks at “Conversation on Homeland Security” panel

In its latest attempt to interfere in the electoral process, the Biden administration announced on Monday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is planning to award millions of taxpayer dollars to local governments throughout the country for so-called “election security” purposes.

In an agency press release, the department revealed its plans to provide “more than $2 billion in funding for eight fiscal year 2023 preparedness grant programs,” which it claims are designed to “help state, local, tribal, and territorial officials prepare for, prevent, protect against, and respond to” so-called “acts of terrorism.” Under Joe Biden’s presidency, DHS has routinely identified targeting “domestic violent extremism” as its top priority. Of course, such proclamations are never in reference to violence carried out by leftist groups such as Antifa or Black Lives Matter, but rather right-of-center people and organizations that threaten the regime’s narratives and policy goals.

Included in the new DHS press release are six “national priority areas” for the 2023 grants, with one of the priorities being what the department calls “election security.” Under the directive, grant recipients such as the agency’s “Urban Area Security Initiative” are required to spend at least 3 percent of their total grant money on so-called “election security” efforts. As even the left-wing Bipartisan Policy Center admitted, federal funding for elections has never been conducted this way.

While the press release doesn’t specify what the agency means by “election security,”separate report detailing the specifics of the 2023 grant program lists several vague “core capabilities” of election security, including “cybersecurity,” “operational coordination,” and “long-term vulnerability reduction.” The document also lists numerous examples of potential projects local election offices could invest their grant money in, such as “online harassment and targeting prevention services” and “physical/site security measures — e.g., locks, shatter proof glass, alarms, access controls, etc.”

Furthermore, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has indicated these grants will be directed toward primarily urban areas, where voters routinely favor Democrat candidates over Republican ones. Recall how private funding from partisan actors such as Mark Zuckerberg was injected into government election offices primarily in the blue, urban areas of swing states, creating what amounted to a Democrat get-out-the-vote effort. As Mayorkas said:

This year, we are therefore expanding the reach of our more than $2 billion in funding by adding four additional urban areas as grant recipients: Austin, Texas; Honolulu, Hawaii; Jacksonville, Florida; and Nashville, Tennessee. This is in addition to the thirty-six urban areas we continue to support, bringing the total number of funded urban areas to 40.

The new directive is hardly the first example of Biden or his administration attempting to insert themselves into state and local election administration. In March 2021, Biden signed an executive order mandating that all federal agencies, and thus the partisan bureaucrats who staff them, “expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” If past is prologue, these efforts will be concentrated in Democrat hubs, but the plans have been obscured.

Efforts by government watchdog groups to obtain documents related to the order have been met with resistance by federal agencies, which worked relentlessly in the lead-up to the 2022 midterms to cover up how they intended to follow the president’s directive.

Further attempts to insert the federal government into the electoral process continued into Election Day, when the Department of Justice (DOJ) deployed attorneys from its Civil Rights Division to mostly blue and swing counties to monitor polling locations “for compliance with the federal voting rights laws.” Among the localities the agency surveilled were Democrat strongholds such as Fulton County, Georgia, and Wayne County, Michigan.

The DOJ’s sensationalized pledge to “prohibit [the] intimidation of voters” came at the same time legacy media outlets were publishing story after story warning that GOP poll watchers were plotting to disrupt local election precincts on Election Day. Like most other media-manufactured narratives, the tale never came true.


Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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McCarthy Begins to Build Case for Mayorkas Impeachment


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | FEBRUARY 17, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/17/mccarthy-begins-to-build-case-for-mayorkas-impeachment/

Kevin McCarthy speaks at border press conference in Arizona
‘This has got to stop,’ McCarthy said. ‘And it starts with the secretary of Homeland.’

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TUCSON, Ariz. — Kevin McCarthy began to build the case for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment this week with the California lawmaker’s first trip to the border as House speaker. Talking to reporters, with the southeast Arizona border wall serving as his backdrop, McCarthy outlined the myriad crises plaguing the nation due to unchecked migration and charged the DHS secretary with lying to the public.

“Our border, we don’t even have operational control of it anymore,” McCarthy said. “This is why I will continue to investigate what has gone wrong here and we will hold people accountable. And that includes Secretary Mayorkas.”

In an exclusive interview with The Federalist after the press conference, McCarthy offered no timeline for a potential impeachment inquiry and maintained that the process depends on what lawmakers find over the coming weeks.

“You never do impeachment for political purposes,” McCarthy said. “If something rises to that level,” he explained, “we will follow it wherever it goes.”

McCarthy led the congressional delegation with four GOP freshman, kicking off what will be a top priority for the new Republican majority under the second half of President Joe Biden’s term. Every House committee is expected to visit the southwest border in the ensuing months. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., already introduced an article of impeachment against the DHS chief on Feb. 1.

In November, McCarthy demanded that Mayorkas resign over the border crisis or face impeachment in the lower chamber once Republicans took over. Mayorkas has remained defiant while the cartels run rampant. A coalition of 21 attorneys general sent a letter to the Biden administration last week demanding that Mexican drug cartels be designated as terrorist organizations.

Days before the speaker’s border trip this week, DHS staffed up to face House impeachment proceedings, entering a multimillion-dollar contract with a liberal law firm that has a history of left-wing donations.

“You cannot tell us this is secure when more than 42 percent of gottaways come through here,” McCarthy said on Thursday. “You cannot tell us this border’s secure when now there is enough fentanyl in this country to kill every single American more than 20 times over.”

“This has got to stop,” the speaker added. “And it starts with the secretary of Homeland. Stop lying to the American public. Tell them the truth [about] what’s happening and change back the regulation that we had before so our border can be secure.”

The White House hit McCarthy’s border trip as a partisan publicity stunt with a Wednesday statement. “Solutions are what President Biden is focused on, and his is plan working,” said Ian Sams, a White House spokesman. “House Republicans would be wise to join him to work together to strengthen our immigration system and fund border security.”

Biden’s first border visit was a sanitized tour in January, with officials clearing the camps in El Paso before the president’s arrival. Biden proceeded to call on Congress to pass immigration reform at his annual State of the Union last week and claimed his border measures were working.

“We’ve launched a new border plan last month. Unlawful migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has come down 97 percent as a consequence of that,” Biden said. “But American border problems won’t be fixed until Congress acts.”

ACTS ON WHAT????????? Fund what???????? The Wall has been funded since Clinton. Finish the Wall. We’ve got the materials. Put it up.

Contrary to his claims the border is secure, data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows otherwise.

Law enforcement reported more than 156,000 migrant encounters in January. While lower than the record of nearly 252,000 encounters in December, 156,000 is still higher than the almost 155,000 in January last year and the 78,000 the same month in 2021 — and way higher than the less than 37,000 in FY 2020. In fact, it’s an all-time high for the coldest month of the year. Even bundled-up reporters shivered under cloudless skies in the high desert winds when lawmakers ran late on Thursday.

A Deadly Crisis

While the Biden administration tries to argue there’s nothing to see on the southern border, Alex Espinosa, the director of a funeral home 15 miles east of McCarthy’s press conference, says otherwise.

“During Trump’s administration, I picked up four border crossers,” Espinosa told The Federalist in his conference room overlooking the border wall. “Right now, I can’t even tell you how many. There’s more deaths. Way more deaths.”

Most, Espinosa said, die from exposure to the elements or fentanyl. He explained the numbers picked up “right after Biden won.”

“Never, never, never, ever have I seen it this bad,” Espinosa told The Federalist. “I’ve probably buried 40 kids.”

A reformed ex-convict himself, Espinosa, 61, served time behind bars for drug smuggling 30 years ago. He now hands out free Narcan, a medication known to save lives in the case of opioid overdose, at services, saying it has become a hot commodity. The local health department replenished his stockpile after it ran out during a single funeral for a recent 23-year-old who overdosed. His own son has also struggled with opioid addiction.

In Naco, a town on the border five miles south of Espinosa’s funeral home, locals were shy about the crisis. A ranch hand working in a field with a pair of day laborers from across the border offered only his first name, Greg, and said he often sees helicopter activity but described the overall area as tame. Another pair of women operating a local nonprofit in the community denied the area even faced issues.

Espinosa, however, who conducts the funerals for the border crisis victims, said locals often feel too intimidated to speak openly about the dangers their neighborhoods face. Despite his Mexican heritage, Espinosa has been tarred as a racist, and his truck was burned after he challenged the mayor of Douglas over the leader’s plans to declare the border town a sanctuary city.

“They need to finish the wall,” Espinosa said frankly, warning that until then, the area would not be safe to walk around at night.

McCarthy told The Federalist on Thursday at the conclusion of his congressional tour that DHS needs to complete the wall with modern technology as originally planned.

“You gotta finish this,” McCarthy said, pointing at the wall. “Finish the technology you haven’t hooked up — the lights, the sensors. There’s places in the wall that’s not done yet.”


Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

Republican States Move To Keep Major Trump-Era Border Policy Amid Surge In Illegal Immigration


By: JENNIE TAER, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER | November 22, 2022

Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/11/22/border-republicans-immigration-mayorkas/

AZ AG Mark Brnovich
Screenshot/Fox News

Over a dozen Republican states are urging a judge to keep Title 42, a major Trump-era border policy, according to court documents filed Monday. Arizona, Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming asked D.C. Judge Emmet Sullivan if they could intervene in the case in which Title 42, which has been used to expel over one million migrants to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, was overturned, according to the request. Sullivan ruled on Nov. 15 that the Biden administration must end the policy in late December, giving them time to prepare for an expected influx of illegal migrants at the southern border. (RELATED: ‘Even Worse’: Illegal Migrants Will Flood The US Border When One Major Trump-Era Policy Ends)

When Title 42 ends, that influx will directly impact the Republican states, they argued.

Because invalidation of the Title 42 Orders will directly harm the States, they now seek to intervene to offer a defense of the Title 42 policy so that its validity can be resolved on the merits, rather than through strategic surrender,” the Republican states wrote to Sullivan.

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The Republican states also argued against the Biden administration’s change of tune on the policy after it previously fought against their previous attempt to keep the police in place.

The States have sovereign and quasi-sovereign interests in controlling their borders, limiting the persons present within those borders, excluding persons carrying communicable diseases, and the enforcement of immigration law,” the filing said.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment.

Government Officials Have a Special Portal to Flag Facebook Posts for Censorship


By MICAELA BURROW, REPORTER | October 31, 2022

Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/10/31/dhs-portal-flag-disinformation-censor-facebook/

US-FACEBOOK
(Photo by CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images)

The Department of Homeland Security has left open a special feature that allows government officials to flag Facebook posts for misinformation after scrapping a controversial advisory board tasked with developing guidelines for social media censorship, the Intercept reported Monday.

DHS announced plans for a Disinformation Governance Board to “develop guidelines, standards, guardrails to ensure that the work that has been ongoing for nearly 10 years does not infringe on people’s free speech rights, rights of privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in May, according to The Hill. While DHS shuttered the initiative after an onslaught of bipartisan opposition decrying the potential censorship, the Intercept found through an analysis of public and leaked documents that government efforts to police tech companies goes on.

Those activities include a Facebook portal only accessible by government and law enforcement representatives to formally request the platform kill or label alleged misinformation, according to the Intercept. A leaked set of slides contains instructions on how to operate the system, and the URL to access the site — facebook.com/xtakedowns/login — was still active at the time of publication.

“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” a DHS official told a Microsoft representative in February, according to the Intercept. (RELATED: GOP Senators Release Documents Showing Biden Admin Lied About Disinfo Board)

The U.S. government has for years discussed the scope and scale of online content moderation the government should engage in, as well as how to compel social media platforms to flag or remove “misinformation,” “disinformation” and “malinformation,” the Intercept reported, citing meeting minutes and records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.

The department now considers rooting out misinformation online as a critical element of its overall mission, according to a draft of the 2022 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review reviewed by the Intercept.

While the document highlights counter-terrorism as DHS’s primary objective, it acknowledges that “misinformation and disinformation spread online” can exacerbate terrorist threats from “domestic violent extremists,” according to the Intercept. It calls for DHS to use advanced computer analytical software and hire experts “to better understand how threat actors use online platforms to introduce and spread toxic narratives intended to inspire or incite violence.”

However, DHS has defined the “critical infrastructure” threatened by domestic terrorists to encompass trust in government, public health and election security, according to the Intercept.

“No matter your political allegiances, all of us have good reason to be concerned about government efforts to pressure private social media platforms into reaching the government’s preferred decisions about what content we can see online,” Adam Goldstein, the vice president of research at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told the Intercept.

Agencies under DHS — Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Science and Technology Directorate and the Secret Service — all have directives to combat misinformation online, the Intercept reported, citing a DHS Inspector General report from August.

Meta and DHS did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

EXCLUSIVE for The Daily Caller: Migrant Caravans Are Preparing to Flood the US Border Ahead of Midterms, Senior Guatemalan Official Warns


By JENNIE TAER, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER | October 26, 2022

Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/10/26/caravans-immigration-border-guatemala/

dcnfinteriorministergua

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala — Guatemala’s interior minister has intelligence that large caravans of migrants will try to get to the U.S. in anticipation of the midterm elections, he said in an exclusive sit-down interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Migrants, who believe the midterm elections could end with Republicans taking back control of Congress, are heading to the U.S. border in large caravans, Guatemalan Interior Minister Napoleon Barrientos told the DCNF. The migrants think that they have a short window to make the trek because it may not be as easy to immigrate to the U.S. after the midterm elections, with Republican lawmakers promising to beef up border security and tighten oversight. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Afghan Migrants Say UN Workers Gave Them Directions To US Border)

Courtesy of Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei’s office

“We have information that caravans will be coming in the next few weeks, particularly before the date of November 8. So we’re doing operations in our borders to stop the flow migration,” Barrientos said.

Recent polling suggests that Republicans are likely to take back the House and stand a decent shot of winning the Senate as well. If Republicans take power, they are likely to push for stricter border policies that include finishing the construction of a border wall, increasing funding to federal border authorities and reinstating several Trump-era expulsion tools, though it’s unclear how successful these efforts will be.

Jennie Taer//Daily Caller News Foundation

“The information that these migrant caravans have is that after that date, policies will be hardened,” he said.

In preparation of the caravans’ arrivals, Guatemala is staging military drills with its partners in Mexico, Barrientos explained. But the country hasn’t had as much luck at its southern border with Honduras, where illegal migrants continue to cross and where bi-lateral cooperation has been difficult.

“For that reason, Guatemala plans different actions, up until that date, to keep our borders secure, and to stop irregular migration,” he said.

Government delegations from Mexico and Guatemala met at the port of entry on Friday in El Carmen to affirm their commitments to border security, the DCNF observed. Dozens of soldiers from both countries blocked the border entry in a strong show of force.

EXCLUSIVE: Here Are the Biden Admin‘s Proposed Charges Against Border Agents Accused Of ‘Whipping’ Migrants


Reported by JENNIE TAER, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER | July 08, 2022

Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/07/08/border-migrants-whipping-biden/

Pictures of the Year: A Picture and its Story
REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/File Photo

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has proposed two charges against the Border Patrol agents involved in the alleged “whipping” of migrants in Del Rio, Texas, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The first charge is for “poor judgment” for instructing noncitizens “to go back to Mexico, or words to that effect,” while the second is for “unsafe conduct” for maneuvering the agent’s horse “in a way that caused a noncitizen to fall backward into the Rio Grande River … thereby compromising the safety of the noncitizen, yourself, and your horse.”

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These proposals are not yet final, and CBP is expected to announce the results of its investigation into the agents as soon as Friday, according to people familiar with the matter not authorized to speak publicly. It’s unclear how many agents will be charged.

“You knew or should have known that using your horse to block a noncitizen from exiting the water at the boat ramp created an unsafe situation, particularly for the noncitizen, but also for you and your horse,” the charges read.

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“We consider that your misconduct received significant media attention and had a negative impact on the reputation of the Agency,” the charges added.

The alleged “whipping” took place in Del Rio, Texas on September 19, when thousands of Haitian migrants were present under the international bridge. The accused agents were on horseback and seen in images appearing to use their horses’ reins to steer and encircle the migrants so they would turn back. (RELATED: Horseback Border Patrol Agents Accused Of Whipping Migrants With Reins Reassigned To Desk Duties)

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Several Democratic politicians characterized the images as “whipping,” as well as some migrant advocacy groups and human rights organizations. The White House also repeatedly condemned the behavior of the agents that day.

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CBP sent out proposed disciplinary actions, an anonymous Department of Homeland Security source, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told the DCNF. An announcement on the results of the investigation is “imminent,” according to Fox News.

“From the beginning, they had been convicted by the White House and DHS, so we figured something was coming,” National Border Patrol Council President for the Del Rio border sector Jon Anfinsen previously told the DCNF.

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Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas promised to complete the investigation in “days, not weeks.” But, the results have yet to be shared nearly a year later.

“But for them to claim that it was going to be resolved in days and weeks was, frankly, a joke from the beginning to decide if these guys had done something wrong, despite no investigation having been done. So they’re trying to save face and propose some kind of discipline just so they can justify their claims from day one,” Anfinsen said.

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Neither CBP nor DHS responded to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

Today’s THREE Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Overwhelmed

A.F. BRANCO on November 17, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-overwhelmed/

Illegal immigrants along with MS-13, Drugs, crime, Human trafficking, and Covid pouring across the border have Biden building a wall around his house.

Biden Border Disaster
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Stranded

A.F. BRANCO on November 18, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-stranded-2/

Biden’s energy plan isn’t worth a crap, going from Trump’s energy independence to Biden begging OPEC for oil.

Biden Energy Plan
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Burning Man

A.F. BRANCO on November 19, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-burning-man-2/

Biden’s Spending bill will increase the already, Biden caused inflation substantially.

Biden Spending Bill
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.

Leaked Audio Reveals Mayorkas Admitting ‘We’re Going to Lose’ Border Crisis: Report


Reported By Dillon Burroughs | August 13, 2021

Read more at https://www.westernjournal.com/leaked-audio-reveals-mayorkas-admitting-going-lose-border-crisis-report/

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met with Border Patrol agents in Texas, reportedly stating “we’re going to lose” the border crisis in an audio recording leaked on Friday.

“A couple of days ago I was down in Mexico, and I said look, you know, if, if our borders are the first line of defense, we’re going to lose and this is unsustainable,” Mayorkas said, according to audio reportedly obtained by Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin.

“We can’t continue like this, our people in the field can’t continue and our system isn’t built for it,” he added.

“In July there were over 212,000 illegal immigrants who came into the country (and that’s not counting the ‘got-aways’ / only God knows how many we missed),” South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted.

“The men and women of the Border Patrol are heroes who are being asked to do the impossible.”

The leaked audio comes as it was reported authorities made 212,672 apprehensions at the southern border in July. The number marks a 13 percent increase over June and a 21-year high for a single-month total, according to U.S. News & World Report.

“The U.S. also saw a 24 percent uptick in the number of unaccompanied children at the southwest border as well as a nearly 50 percent jump in the number of families,” The Hill reported on Thursday.

The surge of illegal immigrants has led Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs to pursue the impeachment of Mayorkas. Biggs filed the articles of impeachment on Tuesday, tweeting, “I just filed articles of impeachment against Secretary Mayorkas.’

“His impeachment is well overdue and critical for the security of our nation.”

Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton agreed with Biggs, tweeting on Thursday, “Time for Secretary Mayorkas to go.”

Even so, the impeachment is unlikely to move forward in the Democrat-controlled House.

Dillon Burroughs, Breaking News/Media Reporter

Dillon Burroughs reports on breaking news for The Western Journal and is the author or co-author of numerous books.@dillonburroughs

Merrick Garland Creates Task Force To Combat Transnational Human Trafficking


Reported by SEBASTIAN HUGHES, CONTRIBUTOR | June 07, 2021

Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2021/06/07/merrick-garland-alejandro-mayorkas-guatemala-kamal-harris/

Attorney General Merrick Garland Announces Justice Department will begin Investigation Into The Practices of the Louisville Police Department

(Photo by Mandel Ngan-Pool/Getty Images)

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the creation of a task force Monday to combat transnational human trafficking in Central America. The task force, titled Joint Task Force Alpha, is intended to target the most frequent and egregious human smuggling offenders in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico, according to the announcement. Both the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will team up to address the issue.

The effort will use the expertise of numerous federal prosecutors stationed along the southwest border to assist its counterparts in the Northern Triangle and Mexico, according to the statement. The FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will also aid the task force.

“We will take action to identify smugglers and their associates to ensure that we enhance the security of the U.S. border,” said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, according to the statement.

US Vice-President Kamala Harris (L) and Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei deliver a joint press conference at the Culture Palace in Guatemala City on June 7, 2021. - Harris arrived in Guatemala Sunday, bringing a message of "hope" to a region hammered by Covid-19 and which is the source of most of the undocumented migrants seeking entry to the United States. (Photo by Johan ORDONEZ / AFP) (Photo by JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

US Vice-President Kamala Harris and Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei deliver a joint press conference at the Culture Palace in Guatemala City on June 7, 2021. – (Photo by JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

“We will work with local law enforcement to stop these crimes,” Vice President Kamala Harris said of the task force during a joint press conference with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei Monday. 

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered 178,622 people attempting to cross the border into the United States in April, a 3% rise from March, according to the agency. The Biden administration has also announced plans to provide $861 million in aid to Central American countries to spur economic growth in the region and stem the flow of migration.

In the past 10 years, Guatemala has received more than $1.6 billion in aid from the U.S., but poverty has only increased in the country. Guatemala leads the world in the number of unaccompanied minors attempting to enter the U.S. in 2021, with 18,372 encountered between January and March.

“Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border,” Harris said.

Harris will travel to Mexico City Tuesday to speak with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. They will similarly seek to address the issue of human smuggling and the lack of opportunity in the region, according to NPR.

Joe Biden’s DHS Nominee Is The Absolute Picture Of DC Political Corruption


Reported by Christopher Bedford DECEMBER 4, 2020

Alejandro “Al” Mayorkas is a left-wing Democrat with a history of doing favors for wealthy and politically connected people, including working to help suspected Chinese spies enter the country and convicted drug dealers get out of prison. Last time he was in power, he administered President Barack Obama’s most anti-congressional use of executive power to accomplish amnesty. He also earned zero votes from the Republican minority when applying for that job.

Some might suggest this makes Mayorkas just about the worst possible nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but not Joe Biden, who plans to put him in the post in 2021.

So why would Biden do it? The left wing of the party was promised a partnership in a Biden presidency, with Sen. Bernie Sanders claiming Biden personally told him he will “be the most progressive president since FDR.” So far, they’ve been disappointed, with nominees including a Clinton-mold liberal interventionist to the Department of State, and Janet Yellin (over, say, Elizabeth Warren) to Department of the Treasury.

And if Democrats succeed in Georgia to tie the Senate, a Vice President Kamala Harris can push Mayorkas across the finish line and earn the left a man on the inside. If they lose, the left gets a human sacrifice in their honor. Either way, the left gets a try, although it’s unlikely enough to satiate The Squad.

So who is Mayorkas, and why does the left seem to like him so much? In his role at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), he swiftly implemented  Obama’s extra-congressional amnesty order. His work with legal and illegal immigration advocates earned their praise, and at least two awards from outside immigrant groups. In his eventual role as deputy secretary of Homeland Security, he led the president’s Cuba delegation. Combine this resume with his Cuban-American heritage and he stands in stark contrast with President Donald Trump’s DHS.

Now, why won’t he gain any Republican support? In addition to his politics, he appears about as corrupt as modern D.C. gets.

99-page report prepared for the U.S. Senate by the DHS inspector general (IG) details the allegations against Mayorkas during his tenure at the head of the USCIS. While he denies the allegations and prefers to talk about the orphans he’s helped in his letter to the IG, the three cases detailed involve trying to give citizenship to politically connected, wealthy foreigners, at the behest of powerful Democrats.

I was praised for my leadership when I engaged with the poor and the needy,” he complained in a letter to the IG, maintaining that his influential Democrat buddies with direct access to him don’t deserve any less.

The meddling was allegedly on behalf of figures like Hillary Clinton’s now-deceased brother, Anthony Rodham, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, future Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, then-former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, and the then-mayor of Los Angeles. Unsurprisingly, Mayorkas says he can’t remember the substance of any of the private conversations he had with these players. Equally unsurprising: Every one of these outside players declined to speak with the IG.

The program in question, the EB-5 program, essentially trades U.S. citizenship for “job creation,” doling out the coveted passport to foreigners who can pull together $500,000 and demonstrate their money will create jobs in a specific area of the country. More than 80 percent of applicants come from China, The Daily Caller News Foundation reports, including those working with a casino represented by Reid’s son, Rory, and including the Chinese investors working with McAuliffe and Rodham.

The Chinese government doesn’t let its subjects go abroad without a promise to keep their party and loyalties in line, and Republicans have accused the Chinese Communist Party of specifically using the pay-to-play citizenship model to infiltrate the United States for low cost. Indeed, one of Rodham’s clients was a vice president of Huwaei, a company globally targeted for extensive connections to Chinese spying operations.

The three incidents of Mayorkas’s meddling were plenty sufficient to shock the IG, as were the number of people willing to report on his behavior.

“That so many individuals were willing to step forward and tell us what happened is evidence of deep resentment” stretching from the Washington office all the way to California, the IG report reads. These whistle-blowers included “current and retired career and non-career members of the Senior Executive Service, attorneys, all levels of supervisors, immigration officers, and those involved in fraud detection and national security.”

Mayorkas says he was just a good public servant trying to fix a broken system without regard to “the identity of the petitioners.” The agency, he said in justification for his abrasive attitude, “was failing in… administration of the EB-5 program, including failing to enforce the law, adhere to its own policies, promote sound policy, understand business facts and realities, correctly apply economic principles, and honor its own representations.”

Also, McAuliffe is a belligerent ass — and on that point Mayorkas is hysterically and believably adamant.

Mayorkas has a point about the bureaucratic difficulties in Washington, but according to a great number of interviews, his motives can’t be taken seriously. “Employees were afraid to speak up in meetings,” the report reads, “because if they had a different view, Mr. Mayorkas would ‘cut them up, take them apart, or put them in their place.’”

“Another high-ranking official,” it continues, “described going to a meeting with Mr. Mayorkas as feeling like ‘going into a lion’s den to justify our existence as a Christian… That scenario always comes to a predictable end.’”

“I fear,” one official emailed when the Reid deal began, “we are entering a whole new phase of yuck.”

It’s all in the IG report —  a report that helped earn Mayorkas 41 Republican nays, four abstains, and zero yays when  Obama nominated him for a promotion to the deputy secretary of Homeland Security — the department Biden now wants him to lead. Democrats were less concerned, voting unanimously for him with only his old friend Leader Reid sitting it out (a customary move when his vote is not needed).

The behavior detailed in the report isn’t a career standout: Favors for the powerful are no strange game to Mayorkas. As his term as President Bill Clinton’s attorney for Central California drew to a close, he used his power to become the most influential person in favor of commuting the sentence of Carlos Vignali, Jr., who was serving 15 years for trafficking massive amounts of cocaine.

“U.S. Attorney Alejandro Mayorkas provided critical support for the Vignali commutation that was inappropriate, given his position,” a 2002 House of Representatives report reads. “Mayorkas, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, was asked by Horacio Vignali to call the White House in support of his son’s clemency petition.”

“His call,” the report continues, “conveyed support for the Vignali commutation … despite his knowledge that the prosecutors responsible for the Vignali case opposed clemency.”

So why would he make the call? In short, Vignali Sr. was a major Democratic backer, who made donations to powerful politicians in Los Angeles.

Once again a Hillary Clinton brother — this time Hugh Rodham — joined in on the fun, earning $204,200 for “working part-time for two months gathering materials in support of Vignali’s case and making telephone calls to White House staff.” When his sister and brother in law pressured him to return the money, the congressional report reads, he returned just $50,000.

These are the circles Mayorkas runs in, and has for decades. Even the Hunter Biden-China trouble doesn’t seem enough to dissuade Joe Biden from wanting him to defend the homeland.

He was “smart, charismatic, and persuasive,” his old employees said. “Full of emotion, impulsive, volatile, and tenacious.” In other words, he does well in Washington — and so do his friends. That is, if Democrats win in Georgia.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Christopher Bedford is a senior editor at The Federalist, the vice chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, a board member at the National Journalism Center, and the author of The Art of the Donald. Follow him on Twitter.

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