Tag: illegal immigrants

Reps. Tenney, Stefanik demand Biden answer for NY migrant surge

Two top Republican congresswomen from New York are demanding that the Biden administration answer questions about secretly transporting migrants across the US — after dozens of Colombian immigrants recently arrived in the small upstate community of Watertown.

“We write following reports that your administration is actively settling migrants in Upstate New York communities,” upstate Reps. Claudia Tenney and Elise Stefanik — the number three Republican in the US House of Representatives — wrote in a Wednesday letter obtained by The Post.

GOP Congressmen Nick Langworthy, Michael Lawler and Marc Molinaro also signed the message.

The lawmakers cited a shocking Post report that over 30 migrants have been living in the city of Jamestown, located in rural Chautauqua County, since late last year.

Most of the migrants traveled to Jamestown on their own after learning about the safety of the city from fellow border-crossers in El Paso, Texas, several had previously told The Post.

But leaders of the city — which only has a reported population of 28,393 people — are worried that the influx of immigrants will quickly overwhelm Jamestown’s local services and infrastructure, especially because neither the migrants nor the city has received additional state or federal aid.

Over 30 migrants have been living in Jamestown, a city in Upstate New York, since late last year.
Dan Cappellazzo
Migrant children play in their Jamestown home.
Several Colombian migrants said they landed in Jamestown after learning about its safety from fellow border-crossers in El Paso.
Dan Cappellazzo


Advertisement

Jamestown leaders worry that the small city doesn’t have the resources to support the migrant population.
Dan Cappellazzo


Advertisement

“[W]e wish to express our outrage at the secrecy with which your administration has and continues to carry out these national relocation operations,” the lawmakers wrote. “This unprecedented influx of migrants into the United States is an obvious sign of your administration’s failed policies at the Southern Border.”

Tenney and Stefanik submitted a list of six demands:

  • The number of illegal migrants that were apprehended at the Southern border and relocated to New York by the government since January 2021;
  • A full list of which New York counties and municipalities the migrants were sent to and which areas can expect migrants to be sent to in the future;
  • Documentation proving executive branch agencies notified New York those counties, municipalities and local law enforcement that migrants would be coming, or an explanation of why the government chose not to do so;
  • Information on how the White House is monitoring the status and locations of the migrants they’ve relocated since January 2021;
  • The whereabouts of every migrant that has been relocated by the government to New York State since January 2021; and
  • A promise that the Biden administration will commit to notifying Tenney and Stefanik’s offices and local officials whenever illegal migrants are relocated to the state.

The pols requested a response from the White House by the end of the month and threatened to take action against the administration if they failed to do so, “including but not limited to withholding additional federal funding.”

“Rather than shifting the burden to the small communities we represent, that are not equipped to handle the influx, the answer is to secure the border,” they said.

Rep. Claudia Tenney penned the letter demanding information from the Biden administration over the migrant influx in New York State.
Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
Rep. Elise Stefanik had sent the White House a letter last year demanding that the government stop sending migrants to the Empire State.
AP


Advertisement

The pols threatened to hold President Biden accountable if he doesn’t reply to their requests.
AFP via Getty Images


Advertisement

“Already, your current policies have created a humanitarian and national security catastrophe which undermines the rule of law and empowers human traffickers and criminal gangs.”

The White House did not return an immediate request for comment.

The missive comes almost exactly one year after Stefanik submitted a letter to Biden demanding that he stop sending migrants to New York.

The crisis has only accelerated in the past year, especially in New York City.

At least 41,000 migrants have arrived in the Big Apple from the southern border since the spring, according to City Hall.

Mayor Eric Adams has said that housing and providing services to incoming migrants may cost the Big Apple as much as $2 billion as the city planned to open a sixth emergency shelter in Midtown for migrants.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Migrants plead with El Paso cops as they’re rounded up for Biden visit: video

Gripping video captures the moment migrants in El Paso pray in vain as cops rounded them up outside a local church shelter ahead of President Biden’s first visit to the Mexican border on Sunday.

“Cover us, Father, in the name of Jesus,” a man is heard praying loudly in Spanish as cops and US customs agents rounded up as many as 150 immigrants in the Texas border city, a report by NBC News shows.

“They come seeking your salvation, sir,” the man says. “They are looking for a better future. They’re respecting the law, sir.

“We respect the law and they’re doing their job,” he says. “But, father, you have the power to protect them… We pray for them, father, in the name of Jesus.”

City police and US Customs and Border Protection officers swept through the Texas city in the days before Biden’s arrival on Sunday, clearing immigrants from a shelter at Sacred Heart Church and outside a local bus station, the outlet reported.

Cops and US customs officers rounded up immigrants in El Paso this week in anticipation of President Joe Biden’s first trip to the Mexican border on Sunday.
James Keivom

El Paso has taken the brunt of the record number of immigrants crossing into the US in recent weeks, with as many as 2,500 a day flowing into the city in mid-December.

Well-meaning shelters like the one at the church have been forced to turn away many immigrants as they overflow, with the migrants turning to tent cities instead.

The move to round up the migrants came as Biden made his first trip to the beleaguered border on Sunday — for a brief three-hour visit before heading to Mexico.

President Joe Biden made his first visit to the US border since taking office on Sunday, visiting El Paso and a local shelter before heading on to Mexico for a summit.
AP

In a statement, the federal agency’s El Paso office issued a statement defending the sudden roundup of the migrants.

“CBP, which is responsible for securing the US border between ports of entry, uses a layered approach that includes patrolling the border itself, nearby areas and neighborhoods and conducting checkpoints,” the statement said.

“In response to migrants evading apprehension in the El Paso area, the United States Border Patrol increased the number of agents patrolling the area.”

A record number of immigrants have settled on the streets of El Paso after crossing the US border with Mexico creating a migrant crisis in the Texas border city.
Getty Images

Meanwhile, the union representing border patrol workers issued a scathing statement, declaring it is “beyond frustrated” with Biden’s lack of action to stem the flow of migrants.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Border Patrol arrests migrants near church in effort to clear up El Paso

US Border Patrol rounded up illegal migrants camped out on streets near a Catholic church in El Paso, Texas on Tuesday, the agency confirmed to The Post.

Federal agents continued checking migrants on the streets of the border town throughout Wednesday and took any who were not authorized asylum seekers into custody.

An eyewitness said: “They were asking people across from the church where many of them are staying for documents. If they produced them, they let them go. If not, they took them in.”

Sources said dozens were arrested by border agents and most likely expelled to Mexico.

As The Post has documented, around 60 migrants slipped over the border in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and others freely admitted to The Post they snuck into the country and had been sleeping on the streets near Sacred Heart Church for days.

Discarded belongings following US Border Patrol’s raid on migrants sleeping on the streets of El Paso.
James Keivom for NY Post
A migrant family’s makeshift home of sheets and blankets, with all their possessions piled up next to it
James Keivom for NY Post

As Border Patrol continued taking migrants into custody Wednesday, church volunteers hurriedly ushered people onto its property and out of the reach from agents, as houses of worship are considered off limits. 

“I need you to take your child, and come with me,” said a volunteer to a group of migrants, adding, “There are more vans coming to take you away.”

A pregnant migrant woman sobbed as she rushed to squeeze into a long, narrow gated area with others who are in the US illegally.

Migrants line the sidewalk outside Sacred Heart church in El Paso, Texas.
James Keivom for NY Post

“There’s no space left inside the church — it’s filled with women and children, so we’re just standing out here and could be deported at anytime. All we can do is run if they try to get us,” a Venezuelan migrant, who only wanted to be identified as Johnny because he is in the US illegally, told The Post.

El Paso has seen an increase in migrant crossings since the last week of December when Title 42 was extended, allowing the US to keep asylum-seekers from certain countries out of the US.

The Post witnessed a number of migrants missing from spots where they had been sleeping near the house of worship Wednesday morning. A Honduran couple with several young children were gone, their few belongings discarded on the sidewalk.

Sacred Heart Catholic Church opened its doors to migrants at the end of December.
James Keivom for NY Post
Migrant tents in the El Paso streets, with their inhabitants wrapped up against the cold
James Keivom for NY Post

Other migrants told The Post “immigration officials” plucked people off the streets at night as they were sleeping Tuesday night.

A statement from Border Patrol said patrolling the neighborhood is part of its regular enforcement strategy.

“In response to migrants evading apprehension, the United States Border Patrol has increased the number of agents patrolling the area,” the agency told The Post.

An alley between the church and its gym has become a place where many have camped out
James Keivom for NY Post

Border Patrol checkpoints have become another focal point, as illegal immigrants are increasingly trying to leave West Texas by riding further into the country aboard commercial buses.

At least 16 commercial buses with 178 immigrants were stopped this weekend alone. Hundreds more have been apprehended at checkpoints in recent days.

The sixth largest city in Texas declared a state of emergency in December after being overwhelmed with migrants, both illegal and legal, who are escaping failing states south of Mexico since August.

Those with nowhere to go hunkered down for another long night on the streets Wednesday, with many unsure if they would still be in the US by morning.



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

El Paso’s migrant state of emergency a taste of what nation faces as Biden shrugs at border crisis

Oscar Leeser, the Democratic mayor of El Paso, has bent over backward not to “embarrass” the head of his party, President Joe Biden. 

As migrants poured across the border, unmetered and unvetted, he quietly grappled with the strain on the city’s resources. He provided the shelter and food the federal government wouldn’t. He struck private deals with Mayor Eric Adams to alleviate the crush, busing some people to New York. 

Even as the City Council begged him to point out what was happening, he refused. He insisted he’d been told by the Biden administration that if he was patient, they would help. This went on for months.

On Saturday, Leeser’s patience finally broke.

He declared a state of emergency, admitting what had been obvious for nearly two years: The border is out of control, and President Biden isn’t doing anything about it.

Actually, it’s even worse than that. Biden actively has punished Democrats like Leeser and Adams, giving them hardly any aid, refusing to acknowledge what’s happening, deflecting any blame. In other words, he gaslighted them. An astounding 53,000 people crossed the border into El Paso in October alone. Asked if he would visit the border, Biden said “there are more important things going on.” 

Adams reached his breaking point a week before Leeser, imploring, “No one has helped us. No one. We have not gotten a dime from anyone. That has to stop. We need help.”

Migrants crossing the Rio Grande river into El Paso from Mexico on December 18, 2022.
James Keivom for New York Post

Leeser: “We have hundreds and hundreds on the street and that’s not the way we treat our people.”

Meanwhile, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said on Thursday: “What Americans should know is that the president has done the work to deal with what we’re seeing at the border since day one” — a complete and total lie.

She threw in a few weak jabs at the usual suspects — ex-President Donald Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — which no one is buying. How can Republicans be to blame for a border that Biden has controlled for two years? Biden JUST. DOESN’T. CARE.

In two days the health directive used to turn back some border-crossers, Title 42, will lapse. In El Paso, it’s expected that 6,000 will cross per day, double what it has been. Biden will be in Delaware, reminiscing about the time he invented Christmas and his uncle won the Nobel Peace Prize. And nothing will be done to actually enforce our immigration laws. The taxpayers of El Paso and New York City will shoulder a burden for which no one voted. 

Oscar Leeser has declared a state of emergency for his city. Who will declare one for the nation?

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Biden worsening ‘root causes’, gov’t agencies failed Paul Pelosi and other commentary

Border watch: Biden Is Worsening ‘Root Causes’

“Critics with regional expertise say Biden administration policies . . . have severely worsened” poverty, crime and political instability in Mexico and the Southern Triangle — his administration’s alleged “root causes” of immigration, reports RealClearInvestigations’ James Varney. How? “The torrent of people moving across the region has delivered billions of dollars to the coffers of human smuggling rings and the drug cartels.” Reports also suggest “more than two-thirds of those making the trek had been victimized by criminals and nearly one-third of the women had been sexually assaulted.” That’s why one expert sees the surge in traffic as something close to an international crime and places “a lot of blood on the hands” of Team Biden “for opening the Southern border on purpose.”

Iconoclast: Dems’ ‘Pro-Democracy’ Morass

Democrats’ message — that only one party in this election is committed to democracy (theirs), and thus there’s only one real choice — “makes little sense,” even if you reject their agenda and record on issues like inflation, crime and immigration, Josh Barro rants at Very Serious. That message “amounts to telling voters that they have already lost their democracy,” and if you insist to voters they “have no choice but you, you had better make yourself a palatable choice — otherwise, they are liable to defy you and choose what you claimed was unthinkable.” Yet “Democrats have not governed” that way. So: “You can see from [Dems’] actions that they are not actually serious about the arguments they’re making now, and I for one am sick of the disingenuous speechifying.”

Libertarian: GOP Should Govern Like Adults

If Republicans win the House and Senate, they’ll face “enormous challenges”: recession, inflation, debt and deficits “as far as the eye could see” — and more, warns Veronique de Rugy at Reason. How can they address them? First, make inflation a “top priority”: Congress and the White House “must trim government spending,” with Republicans avoiding “bloated ‘family friendly’ programs” like child tax credits and paid leave — which studies show “make the lives of families harder.” They should also resist the urge to “pressure [Federal Reserve] chairman Jerome Powell to stop jacking up” interest rates. Oh, and “govern like adults” — and not seek “revenge” by launching probes against Democratic foes. “Investigating the Dems is not on the top of most voters’ concerns this election season.”

From the right: Gov’t Agencies Failed Paul Pelosi

President Biden’s depiction of the assault on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, “ignores the multiple ways that government agencies who have the responsibility to prevent, deter, or quickly intervene in crimes such as this failed in their duties,” huffs National Review’s Jim Geraghty. The intruder who “attacked Paul Pelosi overstayed his visa and had resided illegally in the U.S. for many years.” Pelosi might have been spared the assault “if there were better enforcement of immigration laws,” had his attacker “been deported back to Canada years ago,” if the city and state had better “intervention for those with severe mental-health issues” and if US Capitol Police had “been watching the surveillance monitors.” Government agencies clearly “failed in their responsibility to protect the public.”

Eye on elex: Blake Masters’ Final Sprint

“Less than one week from Election Day,” notes the Washington Examiner’s Selena Zito, “36-year-old venture capitalist-turned-candidate” Blake Masters “has gone from a long shot at best to within the margin of error” against incumbent Dem Sen. Mark Kelly in Arizona. Why? “Democrats’ failure to recognize earlier how angry voters are about the economy, crime, and the border.” Plus, his age: “I’m a whole generation behind, and I actually know what it’s like to be raising a family under current conditions,” notes Masters. Zito adds that Masters has now joined “dynamo” gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake “on the stump,” and it’s helping his numbers. So the race is being closely watched: “If he flips this seat, Masters will almost certainly enter a Republican majority in the upper chamber.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

White House urged Texas officials not to declare migrant emergency: Sources

The White House pressured the Democratic mayor of El Paso, Texas, to not declare a state of emergency over the city’s migrant crisis due to fear it would make President Biden look bad, The Post has learned.

At least three of the El Paso City Council’s eight mayors have urged Mayor Oscar Leeser to issue an emergency declaration in response to the thousands of migrants who’ve filled the city’s shelters and are being housed in local hotels, sources familiar with the matter said.

But Leeser admitted during a private phone conversation last month that he’d been directed otherwise by the Biden administration, one of the officials told The Post.

“He told me the White House asked him not to,” Councilmember Claudia Rodriguez said.

Councilmember Claudia Rodriguez shared that they were advised by the White House.

Rodriguez also said Leeser has repeatedly assured her that he’d declare a state of emergency “if things got worse” — without saying what that meant.

US Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Texas), whose district covers rural areas and border towns near El Paso, also said he heard similar accounts from other city officials.

“It is a sleight of hand what the administration is doing — pressuring the local government to not issue a declaration of emergency, to say as if everything is going OK,” he said.

Gonzalez also alleged that the White House has done “the same thing in other parts of my district,” which have also seen huge numbers of migrants seeking refuge.

Leeser declined to speak with The Post but said in a prepared statement, “I don’t bow to pressure from any side.”

At one point over 2,100 migrants were crossing the border at El Paso.
New York Post

“I make decisions based on current circumstances and in the best interest of the citizens of El Paso,” the statement said.

Leeser also praised the federal government for providing his city with “critical” assistance.

The White House pressured El Paso’s mayor to not declare a state of emergency over the city’s migrant crisis.
New York Post
Congressman Tony Gonzalez shares it was not the first time they’ve received pressure regarding migrants seeking refuge.
Congressman Tony Gonzalez

At a Sept. 27 City Council meeting, Mayor Leeser also addressed the issue, saying Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) had urged him not to declare a State of Emergency, adding: “The White House has asked, at this point, for us not to do that and they’ll continue to work with us and continue to give us … money through [the] Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

Figures posted on El Paso’s official website show the city has received only $2 million in federal reimbursements toward the $8 million it has spent dealing with the migrant crisis.

The total cost could end up being much more, with ElPasomatters.org reporting in September the city was spending as much as $300,000 a day to shelter, feed and transport asylum-seeking immigrants.

At least three of the El Paso City Council’s eight mayors have urged Mayor Oscar Leeser to issue an emergency declaration.
City of El Paso

In May, The Post first reported how officials in El Paso were considering declaring a state of emergency ahead of the expected ending of pandemic-related expulsions of border-crossers under Title 42 of the federal Public Health Services Act.

The move would have made the city and county eligible for state and federal funding to open additional shelters for housing migrants.

But the following day, El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego said that “the mayor and I backed off,” telling The Post that “we found out that there’s very little difference between the funding we’re getting now and the funding that we would get if it went up to the governor and the governor sent it to President Biden.”

At the time, about 700 migrants a day were arriving in El Paso.

But that number topped 2,100 a day last week before dropping down to around 1,600 a day, according to the latest information posted Monday on the city’s website.

Between April and mid-September more than 62,000 migrants had crossed the border at El Paso alone.

El Paso has relocated more than 10,000 migrants by bus to New York City since August, with Lesser revealing at a public meeting last month that he got a green light to do so from Mayor Eric Adams.

The increase of migrants has been an ongoing issue for the El Paso community.
New York Post
El Paso has relocated more than 10,000 migrants by bus to New York City since August.
New York Post
Between April and mid-September more than 62,000 migrants had crossed the border at El Paso alone.
New York Post
The city has received only $2 million in federal reimbursements toward the $8 million it has spent dealing with the migrant crisis.
New York Post

Adams has denied that assertion and publicly called on Leeser to end the program earlier this month, saying “New York cannot accommodate the number of buses that we have coming here to our city.”

The Oct. 7 appeal came the same day Hizzoner declared a state of emergency in the Big Apple over its migrant crisis.

But the buses have continued rolling to the city from El Paso, most recently on Sunday.

Leeser has said that most of the migrants flooding El Paso come from Venezuela.

In recent days, migrants have been able to simply walk across the dried-up Rio Grande, surrender to US Customs and Border Protection officials and get released after saying they intend to seek political asylum.

Last week, the US and Mexican governments announced a deal under which Venezuelans who cross into the US would be sent back to Mexico.

But border sources told The Post that the agreement was only being enforced in a small number of cases.

The White House didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Exit mobile version