Border

JD Vance Was Right: Cheap Foreign Labor Is an “Addiction”

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 12:12:55 -0500

JD Vance pointed out in a speech that cheap foreign labor has become a “drug” for our economy. This hurts American workers through the wage and job competition resulting from mass migration and, as the vice president argued, also discourages innovation. To read the rest of the article click here

The post JD Vance Was Right: Cheap Foreign Labor Is an “Addiction” appeared first on ImmigrationReform.com.

Washington State Sheriff Rips Sanctuary Policies That ‘Shield Repeat Offenders’

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 15:04:15 -0500

Criminal organizations and human traffickers are using liberal cities’ and states’ sanctuary policies to their advantage, says Sheriff Dale Wagner of Adams County, Washington.

“While proponents claim sanctuary policies protect vulnerable populations, they also shield repeat offenders who exploit the system,” Wagner said in testimony Wednesday before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement.

Wednesday’s hearing, “Sanctuary Jurisdictions: Magnet for Migrants, Cover for Criminals,” was aimed at assessing the implications of sanctuary policies on American communities.

“Instead of recognizing and respecting the wish and will of the American people to see their communities made safe again and their borders made secure again, the Democrats continue to obstruct the enforcement of our immigration laws,” said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., chairman of the subcommittee.

McClintock accused Democrats of returning to “antebellum days” and a view that states or cities “can simply defy and nullify federal law.”

In Washington state, for example, “when a rural county sheriff’s office had the audacity to cooperate with federal officials to remove dangerous illegals from their streets, the state’s woke Democratic attorney general sued them,” McClintock said, referring to Wagner’s Adams County.

In March, Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown filed a lawsuit against Adams County, claiming the county violated the state’s sanctuary policies.

“This lawsuit is not about justice or protecting communities,” Wagner told the members of the subcommittee, “it’s about enforcing a political agenda that restricts law enforcement’s ability to cooperate with federal authorities.”

Washington—one of 13 self-declared sanctuary states across the country, according to the Center for Immigration Studies—passed the Keep Washington Working Act in 2019. The act restricts the extent to which state and local law enforcement can cooperate with federal law enforcement to enforce immigration laws.

“These sanctuary policies prohibit law enforcement from working with federal immigration agencies, such as [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and Border Patrol,” Wagner said. “Even when individuals in custody have committed serious crimes beyond immigration violations, we are barred from notifying federal agencies or authorities upon their release.”

When local and state law enforcement are not allowed to notify federal authorities of the criminal illegal aliens in their custody, “repeat offenders, drug traffickers and violent criminals” are released back onto the streets and “remain in our communities instead of facing appropriate legal action,” the sheriff said.

“Sanctuary policies force us to rearrest individuals who could have been transferred to federal custody,” Wagner told the subcommittee. “This strains our jails, wastes tax money, and puts residents at unnecessary risk. The solution is not to pit state and federal authorities against one another, but to ensure public safety remains a top priority for everyone.”

President Donald Trump and border czar Tom Homan have been critical of the sanctuary policies that are restricting the Trump administration’s efforts to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens.

After Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox said in February the city would not enforce ICE detainer requests, Homan pledged to go to Boston and bring “hell with me.” In March, Homan made good on his promise, overseeing the arrest of 370 illegal aliens in Massachusetts.

In addition to Washington, states that have sanctuary policies also include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, and Vermont, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank devoted to researching immigration policy.

The post Washington State Sheriff Rips Sanctuary Policies That ‘Shield Repeat Offenders’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Treasury Report Exposes How Fentanyl Traffickers Exploit Financial System

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 14:04:37 -0500

The fentanyl trade—which claimed tens of thousands of American lives in 2024 alone—is a multibillion-dollar business supported by sophisticated money laundering schemes, a new report from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed Wednesday.

Bessent released the report amid President Donald Trump’s push to use tariffs as a weapon against foreign nations’ reputed abuses of their financial relationship with the United States.

The president previously declared a national emergency involving the Mexican fentanyl trade in order to levy tariffs against the country.

Today, under my direction, @FinCENnews published a first-of-its-kind report on fentanyl, which continues to claim innocent American lives every single day.

President Trump is committed to cutting off the flow of these deadly drugs into America – with Mexico and China identified…
— Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) April 9, 2025

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the Treasury, compiled the report, which focuses on Bank Secrecy Act reports, or BSAs, on transactions suspected of supporting the fentanyl trade—1,246 of them between January and December 2024 alone.

All told, those transactions add up to $1.4 billion.

A new report details how the U.S. financial system is often hijacked by drug-trafficking organizations. (www.fincen.gov)

FinCEN indicates in the report that Mexico and China are the two top foreign players in the American fentanyl trade.

Foreign actors facilitate the fentanyl trade by a variety of means.

Chinese suppliers of chemicals needed to produce fentanyl, for example, use e-commerce to accept payment for their goods.

Mexican drug cartels use “front companies, money mules, and U.S. intermediaries” to procure these chemicals, the report adds.

The report also reveals how much of the fentanyl trade occurs between dealer and seller. Fentanyl deals occur “primarily in cash and peer-to-peer … transfers,” it says.

Some of those transactions were only discovered due to “drug-related euphemisms” in their payment memos, which were then flagged by the filer of a BSA report.

Sinaloa and Jalisco, which are cartel strongholds, are the top Mexican sources of suspicious transactions. (www.fincen.gov)

The report goes on to detail complex Chinese money laundering schemes, which often involve “electronics, such as cellular phones, and vaping/e-cigarette devices.”

On a more granular level, maps showing the origins of these transactions underscore the likelihood of cartel connections.

The Mexican states of Jalisco and Sinaloa, which are hotbeds of cartel activity, are the top sources of Mexico-based fentanyl transactions, as are Mexican border towns.

The post Treasury Report Exposes How Fentanyl Traffickers Exploit Financial System appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Trump DHS to Fine Illegals Ordered Deported $998 For Each Day Overstayed

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 12:24:25 -0500

Illegal immigrants overstaying their deportation day will have to pay a fine of $998 per day after their official removal date.

The Trump administration is enforcing a 1996 Clinton administration-era law. Though on the books, the law was enforced for the first time in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term, Reuters reported.

The Department of Homeland Security is also considering seizing property of immigrants who don’t pay the fine, according to emails and documents obtained by Reuters.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Reuters in a statement that illegal immigrants can “self-deport and leave the country now,” and inform the government on a Customs and Border Protection app, known as CPB Home under the Trump administration and formerly as CPB One under the Biden administration.

“If they don’t, they will face the consequences,” McLaughlin said. “This includes a fine of $998 per day for every day that the illegal alien overstayed their final deportation order.”

Reuters reported that a March 31 email shows the White House National Security Council and Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, pressed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to enforce the fines.

The next day, a CBP memo argued for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to take on the task instead, anticipating that CBP would need about 1,000 new paralegal specialists. The agency currently has 313 paralegals, according to the emails reported by Reuters.

The post Trump DHS to Fine Illegals Ordered Deported $998 For Each Day Overstayed appeared first on The Daily Signal.

House Committee Pursues Missing Biden Administration Parole Documents

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 07:50:14 -0500

The letter follows repeated failures by the Biden administration to satisfy multiple requests and two related subpoenas. DHS now has a new opportunity, following four years of obstruction of oversight, to partner with the Committee on Homeland Security to uphold accountability and submit all requested documents by April 23. To read the rest of the [...]

The post House Committee Pursues Missing Biden Administration Parole Documents appeared first on ImmigrationReform.com.

DOGE Exposed Our Immigration Asylum Disaster. That Was the Tip of the Iceberg

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 07:00:00 -0500

Elon Musk, Antonio Gracias, and the Department of Government Efficiency team recently exposed how rampant immigration fraud and government corruption became under the Joe Biden administration.

Specifically, they showed how aliens “getting” asylum can receive work authorization and, with it, an automatic Social Security number, which enables them to obtain driver’s licenses, commit voter fraud, and receive other benefits.

This already sounds alarming. But the truth is even worse.

Under current U.S. regulations, asylum applicants can apply for a work authorization document with the Department of Homeland Security five months after their asylum application is filed (rather than five months after it’s granted). There’s no filing fee for asylum applications—meaning there is literally no cost involved in applying.

This creates a huge incentive for inadmissible aliens to file fraudulent asylum applications to gain U.S. work authorization.

And while adjudicating the asylum application can take DHS or the Justice Department years to complete, DHS prioritizes granting employment authorization applications, averaging mere months to complete such applications.

In other words, individuals can fraudulently apply for asylum and then receive work authorization shortly after, safe in the knowledge that their asylum application may not be decided for years.

Asylum was created to protect the persecuted. But this system means it’s more prone to be exploited by inadmissible aliens as a way to get work authorizations, Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, and other government benefits.

As a result, the system is being flooded. Under the Biden administration, so many employment documents were issued to immigration parolees (without congressional authorization), asylum applicants, and other temporary aliens that DHS could not keep up with renewing the authorizations.

To “solve” the problem, Biden’s DHS finalized a rule in December 2024 to permanently increase the automatic extension period for expiring employment authorization from six months to 18 months.

That is, DHS chose to automatically extend work authorization without ever considering whether the aliens should continue to have it.

According to one chart (shown by DOGE’s Gracias at a recent Wisconsin town hall), 270,000 new aliens were issued Social Security numbers in fiscal year 2021. That number rose to 590,000 in fiscal year 2022, 964,000 in fiscal year 2023, and approximately 2.1 million in fiscal year 2024.

According to Gracias, the Social Security Administration automatically mails aliens Social Security numbers—without requiring them to prove their identity or complete an interview. Gracias says, “The defaults in the system from Social Security to all the benefit programs have been set to max inclusion, max pay for these people. And minimum collection.”

During its investigations, DOGE found 1.3 million aliens who were already receiving Medicaid. It also found among the millions a subset who were registered to vote—and some who did indeed vote.

All this is the result of broad administrative state abuse of alien work authorization—something Congress needs to end by reclaiming its own constitutional authority and by returning asylum (our nation’s second-most important immigration benefit, after U.S. citizenship) back to its intended role of protecting people from persecution.

Specifically, Congress should legislate the principle that immigration benefit applicants (including those receiving asylum) may not receive work authorization until the underlying benefit (e.g., asylum) is granted, not just filed. While waiting for their applications to be adjudicated, applicants should fund their stay in the U.S. via a sponsor responsible for their financial well-being.

Congress should also enact anti-fraud asylum measures, which would significantly decrease the number of fraudulent asylum applications—and, by extension, would decrease the yearslong wait for DHS and DOJ to adjudicate legitimate asylum applications.

DOGE can also step in and examine immigration benefit applications at DHS and DOJ to identify fraudulent applications and remove them from the 9.4 million and nearly 3.7 million respective agency backlogs. This would decrease the processing times for the remaining valid applications and restore integrity to our lawful immigration process.

Finally, DOGE should set automatic notifications across the benefits lifecycle so that when a non-citizen is denied an immigration benefit, downstream systems and parties are likewise notified to terminate their respective benefits.

Under this system, if an alien’s asylum application or employment authorization application were denied or terminated, the alien’s employer, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, and the alien’s state(s) of residence would be notified to ensure the alien was no longer working, receiving benefits or voting—and, ultimately, that he was removed from the country.

By acting now, DOGE and Congress can decrease the deportable alien population, ensure U.S. taxpayer benefits go to Americans first, and incentivize better compliance with our generous immigration laws.

Originally published by Fox News

The post DOGE Exposed Our Immigration Asylum Disaster. That Was the Tip of the Iceberg appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Justices Hand Trump National Security Win That Protects Public From Illegal Alien Criminals

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 17:58:13 -0500

On Monday night, a 5-to-4 majority of the Supreme Court not only dissolved the controversial temporary restraining orders issued by Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, but the high court, in essence, took the case away from him.

So much for any pending action by Boasberg to hold the government in contempt for deporting to El Salvador the gangbangers of Tren de Aragua (TdA), a vicious Venezuelan drug cartel that has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

On March 14, President Donald Trump issued Proclamation No. 10903 invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to detain and remove Venezuelan nationals who are members of TdA.

The Alien Enemies Act allows removal from the United States of foreign citizens of a nation with which the U.S. has a “declared war” or that threatens or perpetrates an “invasion or predatory incursion” of this country. This challenge was brought by five detained individuals and a class of all others in U.S. custody who are in that category.

Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order preventing the removal of the five named individuals and another restraining order preventing the removal of the class.

In a per curium decision (a decision that doesn’t reveal who wrote it), Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas vacated those two temporary restraining orders issued by Boasberg.

SCOTUS Tren de Aragua Download

This lawsuit was filed under the Administrative Procedure Act late on a Friday night by the ACLU. Boasberg held a hearing the next day when the military flights, taking the detainees to a prison in El Salvador, were already in the air.

The Justice Department asserted that Boasberg’s orders were issued too late to be given effect after the aliens were already out of the country and en route to El Salvador. But the judge was apparently considering contempt charges and other possible penalties against administration officials for supposedly disobeying his orders to turn the planes around and fly back to the United States.

After a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a split opinion refused to stay Boasberg’s orders, Trump’s Justice Department filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. The court did not reach the underlying substantive legal issues about the meaning and application of the Alien Enemies Act, but dissolved the restraining orders on jurisdictional grounds.

The court pointed to a 1948 case, Ludecke v. Watkins, which involved the removal of a German alien under the Alien Enemies Act. Under the holding of that case, said the court, the act is a statute that largely “precludes judicial review.”

As a result, individuals detained under the Alien Enemies Act must bring their own legal actions asking for a writ of habeas corpus challenging the legality of their detention. Habeas claims, the court said, must be brought in the judicial district where the aliens are detained; in this case, that means Texas.

The ACLU chose not to follow that approach, but instead opted to challenge the application of Trump’s action to all of these aliens. Indeed, it dropped the only cognizable claim when it dismissed the challengers’ habeas claims. As a result, Boasberg lacked jurisdiction over this case because it was not properly filed in his district.

That means that Boasberg has no power to issue any more orders in this case and has no power to hold the administration in contempt or impose any other penalties for supposedly disobeying his orders that should never have been issued in the first place.

Moreover, because habeas actions challenge the actual detention of actual individuals, they have to be individually asserted. No judge can certify a “class action” for a group in a habeas action.

Any Venezuelan members of TdA who want to contest the use of the Alien Enemies Act against them will each have to file a habeas action in the Lone Star State or wherever else they are being held.

The Supreme Court did specify two due process elements in this and similar cases. The court said that the government must give the plaintiffs and any other aliens targeted under the Alien Enemies Act notice “that they are subject to removal under the Act.” And the government must do so “within a reasonable time and in such manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”

To no one’s surprise, Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined in full by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson and in part by Amy Coney Barrett.

Sotomayor wrote that her colleagues’ “decision to intervene in this litigation is as inexplicable as it is dangerous.” Sotomayor lambasted the president for invoking the Alien Enemies Act, noting that there is no declared war with TdA and that it is not a “foreign nation.”

That, of course, ignores the fact that Trump based his proclamation on the second provision of the act that refers not to a state of war, but to an “invasion or predatory incursion.” And she dismissed the extensive language in the proclamation describing TdA as an agent of the Venezuelan government, a narco-terrorist regime that is a “hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States” through TdA.

Both Sotomayor and Kagan criticized the majority for deciding this issue without first going through the judicial process of full briefing and oral argument. Yet that is exactly what Boasberg did, attempting to block implementation of Trump’s Alien Enemies Act proclamation and ordering an extraordinary remedy almost immediately without going through any of those steps.

Despite the Supreme Court’s holding, and in what can only be termed as an act of defiance, Boasberg issued an order on Tuesday telling the ACLU to inform him by April 16 whether it still has a basis to proceed on its demand for a preliminary injunction in his court.

That seems remarkable, given the fact that the Supreme Court told him he does not have jurisdiction over this matter and that the only possible remedy for the ACLU’s clients are via habeas petitions filed in Texas, where they are detained.

The bottom line here is that there is no longer a case in place where a judge can try to order the Trump administration to engage in discussions with a foreign government to return all of the dangerous TdA gang members who are no longer in this country, and no longer in our communities and neighborhoods.

Individuals who are detained as suspected TdA members and who want to challenge their detention must file habeas petitions in the jurisdiction where they are located if they want to try to fight their deportation.

Good luck with that. The view of Texas judges may be a bit more skeptical of such claims than judges in the District of Columbia.

The post Justices Hand Trump National Security Win That Protects Public From Illegal Alien Criminals appeared first on The Daily Signal.

How Significant Is 100,000 Deportations?

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 16:48:26 -0500

Since taking office, the Trump administration reports that ICE has deported 100,000 illegal aliens. The effort is not only removing illegal aliens from the country, it is taking burdensome expenses to American taxpayers off the books. ICE deportations are only one part of this effort. Even greater reductions in the illegal alien population will require [...]

The post How Significant Is 100,000 Deportations? appeared first on ImmigrationReform.com.

WATCH: What’s Changed at the Southern Border Under Trump

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 14:40:20 -0500

Since President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office on Jan. 20, the number of illegal aliens crossing the southern border has plummeted.

Not only did Border Patrol’s March southern border encounters fall to an all-time low of just over 7,000, the number of unaccompanied children arriving at the border is lower now than it has ever been on record.

The post WATCH: What’s Changed at the Southern Border Under Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.

EXCLUSIVE: Arizona Lawmaker Introduces Resolution Supporting Trump’s Removal of Venezuelan Gang Members

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 14:18:37 -0500

A border state congressman has introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to recognize and declare members and affiliates of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as “alien enemies” under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and the criminal organization itself as a “terrorist organization perpetrating an invasion of the United States directly and at the direction of a foreign government.”

“Tren de Aragua is a foreign terrorist organization, and their members can no longer be permitted to wreak havoc on U.S. soil,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told The Daily Signal.

“The Alien Enemies Act gives the president of the United States the authority to detain and deport aliens from foreign adversarial nations, and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that authority yesterday,” he said.

“Members of the violent gang Tren de Aragua illegally invaded the United States during Joe Biden’s four-year open-border campaign, and President Trump is acting well within his authority to protect our homeland,” Biggs said, adding:

Congress must stand behind President [Donald] Trump as he works to fulfill the demands of the American people to secure our border and restore safety to our communities.

Biggs’ measure would make clear in law that the president “is exercising his constitutional and legal authority to repel an invasion of alien enemies by apprehending, restraining, securing, and removing members and affiliates of Tren de Aragua from the United States of America.”

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 states that the president has the authority under the conditions of declared war or “any invasion or predatory incursion” to apprehend and remove “males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized.”

The Arizona lawmaker’s legislation contends that James Madison’s comments at the Virginia Ratifying Convention for the Constitution and definitions for “invasion” from Webster’s dictionaries in 1806 and 1828 clearly show that actions by non-state actors would be encompassed within the term.

According to Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., cracking down on Tren de Aragua is a long time coming.

“For years, murderous gangs, including Tren de Aragua, inflicted terror on our communities with no repercussions,” Biggs’ fellow Arizona Republican lawmaker said.

“Thankfully, President Trump and his team continue to make historic progress towards ending this era of tragic lawlessness. I’m grateful for Rep. Andy Biggs’ leadership, and I’m proud to support his commonsense legislation to recognize these criminals as alien enemies,” Crane added.

Biggs’ measure would greatly bolster the president’s argument that he can remove members of Tren de Aragua who are in the United States illegally. If it makes it out of the House, it will then have to pass in the U.S. Senate, where it would need 60 votes to overcome a possible Democrat filibuster.

But getting bipartisan support for the measure may be less difficult than one might initially think: Twelve Democrats in the Senate voted in favor of the Laken Riley Act, another bill targeting criminal illegal aliens who may have committed crimes aside from entering the country unlawfully.

The Trump administration is currently in court over whether it lawfully deported hundreds of illegal migrants who were accused by the Trump administration of being members of Tren de Aragua and MS-13.

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg is expected to rule this week on whether members of the Trump administration are in contempt of court because they ignored his verbal order to bring back three planes carrying hundreds of illegal migrants to El Salvador.

Boasberg, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelan illegal aliens under the Alien Enemies Act. The Trump administration lost in its appeal of Boasberg’s order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. But on Monday the administration was granted a narrow win on jurisdictional grounds by the Supreme Court. The high court ruled that the administration can continue the deportations of illegal aliens from Venezuela for the time being and said that the illegal immigrants’ lawyers should have filed their complaint in Texas, rather than Washington, D.C., because Texas is where aliens targeted for deportation are being detained.

Reacting on Truth Social, the president characterized the Supreme Court ruling as upholding “the rule of law in our nation.”

The post EXCLUSIVE: Arizona Lawmaker Introduces Resolution Supporting Trump’s Removal of Venezuelan Gang Members appeared first on The Daily Signal.