Category: Immigration

More Caught Illegally Crossing Southern Border in 1 Year of Biden Than Entire Trump Presidency.

“Our top priority is to keep terrorists and their weapons from entering the United States.” So says the website of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The same webpage that makes this declaration includes a table that provides some relevant data for the fiscal years from 2017 to 2023. It lists how many individuals on the Terrorist Screening Dataset (commonly known as the “terrorist watchlist”) were encountered by the Border Patrol as they were trying to illegally sneak into the United States between the ports of entry on our southern border.

The Terrorist Screening Dataset, says the webpage, “originated as the consolidated terrorist watchlist to house information on known or suspected terrorists (KSTs) but has evolved over the last decade to include additional individuals who represent a potential threat to the United States, including known affiliates of watchlisted individuals.”

In fiscal year 2017, when Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, the Border Patrol encountered just two individuals on the terrorist watchlist trying to sneak across the southern border between the ports of entry. In fiscal year 2018, it encountered six. In fiscal year 2019, it encountered none; and, in fiscal year 2020, it encountered three.

In fiscal year 2021, the year President Joe Biden was inaugurated, there was a substantial shift in the trend. That year, the number of individuals on the terrorist watchlist that the Border Patrol encountered trying to sneak across the southern border increased fivefold to 15.

Then, in fiscal year 2022, it climbed to 98. So far in fiscal year 2023, which isn’t even half over yet, the Border Patrol has encountered 69 individuals on the terrorist watchlist trying to sneak across our southern border between the ports of entry.

How many on the terrorist watchlist have actually succeeded in illegally crossing our southern border into the United States? There is no way to know.

What we do know is that it only took 19 foreign terrorists who had made their way into the United States to hijack four domestic flights on Sept. 11, 2001.

While the Border Patrol managed to catch 98 on the terrorist watchlist trying to illegally cross our southern border between the ports of entry last year, is it possible there were 19 the Border Patrol did not catch?

There has also been a massive upward trend in the number of aliens the Border Patrol has “apprehended” or “encountered” as they tried to illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border between the ports of entry.

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New Biden Admin Program Will Hide Numbers of Illegal Immigrants Entering the Country.

If the Biden administration tells you illegal border crossings are down, don’t be fooled. Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) fellow Todd Bensman wrote a piece for Newsweek on Jan. 24 explaining how the new CBP One program doesn’t reduce the number of illegal migrants flooding the southern U.S. border; it simply “pre-approves” those migrants so Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Border Patrol can claim the numbers of illegal apprehensions and crossings are down. As Bensman said, “The illusion would impress Harry Houdini.”

December was the worst month ever in the border crisis, according to CBP statistics, but CBP seems eager to assure America on Biden’s behalf that the crisis is improving. “The American public will indeed see sharp declines in the monthly illegal apprehension statistics, starting with the January report which comes out next month,” Bensman said. But those declines are just a clever deception on the part of the Biden administration, not an increase of border security. Illegals will be entering America in numbers as large as ever. They will just be able to achieve a sort of legitimized status before entering through CBP One.

For our VIPs: Biden’s Big Lie About Border Security

The CBP One mobile app was launched back in October 2020, but, according to Bensman, it is being used in a new way. A new plan announced Jan. 5 tells the largest migrant groups, “up to 360,000 Haitians, Cubans, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans each year” (and only those groups), to apply for “humanitarian parole” from outside the United States on CBP One. The United Nations (UN), Mexico, and many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) help the illegal migrants find a U.S. sponsor, create a “plausible” sob story, and collect application documents while they wait. And just like that, there are “big reductions” in those illegal border crossing numbers, while the crossings continue as constant as ever. Bensman wrote:

“The illusion provides the perfect propaganda opportunity for Biden’s government: fraudulently claim border security success as though foreign nationals had gone home or settled in some other country…

Under the illusion is this hard fact: the CBP One process does not enforce any of the U.S. immigration laws that actually deter mass migration by detaining and deporting. It does nothing to reduce the historic volume of foreign nationals who are pouring in nonstop.

Instead, the program channels those migrants directly into American cities that will, in growing numbers, declare emergencies and demand federal bailouts to handle the influx. It does nothing to alleviate the transformative impacts of mass migration on civil society.“

If anything, Bensman predicted, the new program will probably tempt even more illegal migrants to America. Henceforth illegals won’t have to spend thousands of dollars being smuggled across the border by criminal cartels, and they will get a coveted U.S. work permit. There are already thousands lining up for the “pre-legalization” CBP One program, Bensman said. Expect that number to increase.

CBP Commissioner Troy Miller reportedly boasted that the CBP One program announcement caused border crossings of illegal Venezuelan migrants to go from 1,100 a day to 100 a day. And the program will supposedly allow “only” 30,000 Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans per month (the fact that that’s meant to be an improvement is terrifying). But that’s all lacking the critical context, which is that the Biden administration plans to claim it fixed the border crisis while continuing to allow illegal aliens to pour into America.

Biden Admin To Hike Fees On Legal Immigration To Fund Processing Of Illegal Migrants Who Claim Asylum

The Biden administration will increase the costs for legal immigrants to apply for permits, visas and green cards to help mitigate the backlog of asylum cases due to record surges of illegal immigration at the southern border, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced Tuesday.

The recent surge in illegal immigration has contributed to the years-long asylum backlogs, where applicants wait an average of 4.3 years nationwide to appear in court, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Under the proposed new rules, H-1B application fees for skilled workers will jump from $60 to $780, fees for non-agricultural workers will jump from $460 to $1080 and fees for green card applicants will jump from $1,140 to $1,540, USCIS said.

USCIS predicts the rule changes will bring in an average range of $5.2 billion and $6.4 billion each year in revenue, allowing for an additional $1.9 billion per year on average to support efforts to eliminate future backlogs, according to the agency.

“In addition to improving customer service operations and managing the incoming workload, USCIS must continue to fulfill our growing humanitarian mission, upholding fairness, integrity, and respect for all we serve,” USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou said in a statement Tuesday. “This proposed rule allows USCIS to more fully recover operating costs for the first time in six years and will support the Administration’s effort to rebuild the legal immigration system.”

In fiscal year 2022 alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered more than 2.3 million migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. With that, there are roughly 1.6 million asylum cases pending in immigration courts, according to TRAC.

“Asylum backlogs are not new (as TRAC has shown many times), since the number of people requesting the type of protection that asylum provides has typically exceeded the capacity of government agencies to process applications quickly and fairly. Yet in recent years, with political, economic, and environmental instability in places like Mexico, Venezuela, Haiti, Central America, Ukraine, and elsewhere, the United States has seen a growth in migrants’ needs that outpace even the growing number of Immigration Judges and asylum officers added by both Democratic and Republican administrations,” TRAC noted.

 

BREAKING: Supreme Court Keeps Immigration Rule Title 42 in Place Indefinitely

The Supreme Court stayed a trial judge’s ruling that would have ended Title 42 and has, for the time being, allowed the rule to remain in place. The court issued an unsigned 5-4 opinion that was a victory for the 19 states that had sued the federal government to keep Title 42 in place.

Title 42 is a 1940s-era rule that limits immigration and asylum seekers during a national health crisis. It was originally put in place by Donald Trump in March 2020 and severely restricted the number of people seeking asylum by expelling all but a fraction of those who showed up at the border.

Joe Biden eased the restrictions, but about 65% of all asylum seekers who showed up at the border were still expelled.

The stay says nothing about the lawsuit by GOP states seeking to keep Title 42 in place.

New York Times:

The court said that it would hear arguments in the case in February and that the stay would remain in place until it issued its ruling. The justices said they would only address the question of whether the 19 mainly Republican-led states that had sought the stay could pursue their challenge to the measure.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

The court’s order was a provisional victory for the 19 states that had sought to keep Title 42 in place, saying it was needed to prevent a surge of border crossings. “The failure to grant a stay will cause a crisis of unprecedented proportions at the border,” lawyers for the states wrote in an emergency application, adding that “daily illegal crossings may more than double.”

“We are deeply disappointed for all the desperate asylum seekers who will continue to suffer because of Title 42, but we will continue fighting to eventually end the policy,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which had been arguing to end Title 42′s use.

Associated Press:

The precise issue before the court is a complicated, largely procedural question of whether the states should be allowed to intervene in the lawsuit, which had pitted advocates for the migrants against the federal government. A similar group of states won a lower court order in a different court district preventing the end of the restrictions after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in April that it was ending use of the policy.

It will be until at least the summer before we get a definitive decision on whether the rule will stay or go. But there are hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers within a couple of hundred miles of the U.S. border, and pressure will build on Biden to find a way to allow them to enter the country.

This was just round one. Round Two promises to be a knockout for one side or the other.

 

SloJoe isn’t being negligent about the ‘border crisis’, he and the rest of the demoncraps want this.

The Data Is In: Democrats Embrace ‘Replacement Theory’ in Plot to Displace Republican Votes

In simple terms, “replacement theory” holds that welcoming immigration policies are part of a plan designed to undermine or “replace” the political power of conservatives in the U.S. Make no mistake: replacement theory is real — and the Democrat Party blatantly continues to embrace it at the southern border.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has in the past been all but burned at the stake by the rabid left for daring to discuss replacement theory on his program, including by Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which laughably describes itself as an “anti-hate” group, went after Carlson in early 2021:

In the days following Tucker Carlson’s vitriolic, xenophobic commentary about demographic change, most white supremacist reactions were supportive of the Fox News personality and praised him for railing against “white genocide.” Some suggested that Carlson is finally showing his true colors and fully embracing white nationalism.

Not to be outdone, CNN in April 2021 declared: “Racist ‘replacement theory’ has it all backward.”

White supremacist groups, conservative media personalities, and now Republicans in Congress are trying to inflame nativist feelings among conservative Whites by warning that liberals want immigrants to “replace” native-born Americans in the nation’s culture and the electorate.

But that racist “replacement theory” inverts the real consequence of immigration for its target audience of Whites uneasy about social and racial change: Many of the Whites most drawn to the far-right argument that new arrivals are displacing “real Americans” are among those with the most to lose if the nation reduces, much less eliminates, immigration in the decades ahead.

The verdict: Carlson was right, and “shockingly,” the left is lying.

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Buried in the ‘Bipartisan’ Immigration Bill Is an INSANE Provision That Republicans Have No Business Supporting

A few years ago, one of my closest friends went on a mission trip to Honduras with one of the missions our church supports there. He fell in love with a young woman who was helping the mission with their work, and he wound up making several trips back to spend time with her. (Talk about a long-distance relationship!)

Eventually, they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. She began the process of getting her visa to come to the U.S. They married in November 2019, and she continued the legal process to acquire her green card.

That process got ever more complicated during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it took her months longer than it normally would have because of lockdowns and the complications that the virus brought us.

I know she’s not alone, but at the same time, illegal immigrants are pouring across our southern border to the tune of tens of thousands a month. The month my friends got married, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency processed 51,857 encounters with illegal immigrants.

It’s no secret that our border is in crisis. Just read any of the reports from my Townhall colleague Julio Rosas if you don’t believe it. Federal inaction at every level has only exacerbated the problem. So when we hear of a good faith effort, especially a bipartisan one, it gets our attention.

Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are putting forth a bill in the lame-duck session of this Congress that’s simply bad. Over at Townhall, my colleague Matt Vespa explains just two of the major components of this bill:

“There is no funding to complete the border wall—that would make sense,” Matt writes. That’s bad enough, but another proposal in the bill creates a potential ripple effect that could become disastrous.

Matt writes that this bill “will permit some two million recipients of Obama’s unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to get on the citizenship track. The buried portion of this provision is that once these two million are through the process, they can sponsor extended family members so that two million-figure could be closer to seven million, and I’m being conservative in that estimate.”

Blanket forgiveness for two million people who arrived in this country illegally when they were children with a ripple effect that could more than triple that number? How can anyone from either party think that’s a good idea?

In a conversation, my PJ Media colleague Athena Thorne made a perceptive analogy.

She said this type of amnesty bill is akin to “If some squatters bring a kid into the house they’re squatting in and the kid gets comfortable, the kid gets to keep the house!” With that ripple effect, the whole family could get to make their home in a house they don’t have any rights to.

There’s a little bit of a trade-off, as the Washington Post reports: “It gives Republicans faster removal from the country of migrants who fail to qualify for asylum, a continued restriction on applications for the next year, and more border security.”

That’s all well and good, but that doesn’t make up for the millions of illegal immigrants who will suddenly become legal. This will allow millions of people who broke the law to jump the line ahead of those who have waited out the legal immigration process. These people already cut in line once when they made their way across the border — and they’ll get to bypass the process again? That’s not right.

One of the characteristics of this nation that people like to brag about is that we’re a “nation of immigrants.” That’s a nice thing to be proud of, but we’re also a nation of laws. We need to honor those laws, too. If an immigrant wants to become part of this “nation of immigrants,” he or she should abide by our laws, and that starts with coming to this country legally.

An immigration policy starts with enforcing the immigration laws that are already on the books before we try to enact more. A bill like the one Tillis and Sinema are proposing is worse than no immigration reform at all. We can only hope that it won’t get enough traction to pass.

Well, if you have a population you have problems controlling, since they were raised on the American values of liberty and freedom, and they won’t reliably vote to keep your party in power……replace them.

By the way, there are more than 11 million illegal aliens. That number has been used for a decade or more. With the number that have been coming in during that time, it’s probably 20 million.

By 2024, there will be 30 million. and that would mean 30 million more voters, and they will vote demoncrap. How do I know this? Because if illegals voted for Republicans, you would be able to see the wall from space, and Schumer would have been the one to have it built.

Texas Governor Declares Invasion at Border, Invokes Constitutional Powers in Historic Action

Frustrated by an unending crisis fueled by drug and human trafficking at the southern border, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday declared his state was under an invasion and invoked special powers granted under the U.S. and Texas constitutions.

Abbott’s decision came after three dozen counties in his state passed resolutions calling for the dramatic action. The Republican governor said the declaration allows him to send National Guard troops to the border, treat drug cartels as terrorist organizations and build his own border wall separate of the federal government

Abbott wrote in a letter to county officials the invocation of the constitutional powers was authorized by an executive order he signed back in July. His tweet Tuesday was the first time he publicly claimed he was invoking the invasion clauses of the U.S. and state constitutions.

Abbott previously garnered national headlines by busing thousands of illegal migrants to blue cities such as Chicago, New York and Washington D.C. But his new action Tuesday marked a major escalation that carries both political and legal consequences.

Abbott said his executive order had allowed him to:

  • Deploy the National Guard to the border to repel illegal immigrants, and the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest and return illegal entrants to their home countries;
  • Build a border wall in multiple counties;
  • Deploy gun boats to secure the border;
  • Designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations;
  • Enter into a compact with other states to secure the border;
  • Enter into agreements with foreign powers to enhance border security;
  • And provide resources for border counties to increase their efforts to respond to the border invasion.

Well, he’s a anti-gun (for the people) political hack, so nothing surprising here.

AG Garland ignores the importance of arms when congratulating newest citizens

The readers of Bearing Arms are no stranger to the fact that our Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as many of the three lettered agencies that fall under the supervision thereof, has become a machine to crush political opposition and push a radical progressive agenda. Just by trending what the DOJ prosecutes versus what they don’t, or what areas they focus on in their speeches and summits, people can figure out the DOJ under the Biden-Harris administration plays favorites on who/what gets prosecuted. Merrick Garland, who failed to meet the proper standards to sit on the High Court, congratulated the United States’s newest citizens the other day, and in doing so, he exposed some of his own personal history as well as neglected one of the most important civil liberties we have.

In the preamble of the Constitution, those Americans enumerated those hopes: to form a more perfect union; establish justice; ensure domestic tranquility; provide for the common defense; promote the general welfare …

And importantly – in their words – “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Like them, each of you has now made a commitment not only to this nation and your fellow Americans, but to the generations of Americans who will come after you.…

I come from a family of immigrants who fled religious persecution early in the 20th Century and sought refuge here in the United States. Some of my family entered right here, at Ellis Island. My grandmother was one of five children born in what is now Belarus. Three made it to the United States, including my grandmother who came through the Port of Baltimore. Two did not make it. Those two were killed in the Holocaust. If not for America, there is little doubt that the same would have happened to my grandmother. But this country took her in. And under the protection of our laws, she was able to live without fear of persecution.

I am also married to the daughter of an immigrant who came through the Port of New York in 1938. Shortly after Hitler’s army entered Austria that year, my wife’s mother escaped to the United States. Under the protection of our laws, she too, was able to live without fear of persecution.

That protection is what distinguishes America from so many other countries. The protection of law – the Rule of Law – is the foundation of our system of government. The Rule of Law means that the same laws apply to all of us, regardless of whether we are this country’s newest citizens or whether our [families] have been here for generations.

The Rule of Law means that the law treats each of us alike: there is not one rule for friends, another for foes; one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless; a rule for the rich, another for the poor; or different rules, depending upon one’s race or ethnicity or country of origin. The Rule of Law means that we are all protected in the exercise of our civil rights; in our freedom to worship and think as we please; and in the peaceful expression of our opinions, our beliefs, and our ideas.

Garland’s full remarks are worth a read. If our eyes were shut and we heard some of (not all) these words come from the mouth of a Regan or Trump, the rhetoric could be believable. However, these “encouraging” words are hissed out from the current Attorney General who’s complicit to allow the Second Amendment rights of the people be infringed.

Given Garland’s sharing of his personal and family’s history, and that of his wife’s, one would think that he’d be all too knowing that the atrocity of the Holocaust was able to occur in part because of a disarmed citizenry. Do we know for a fact that had the people been armed at that time that the Holocaust would have been averted? No, we don’t. But I’m willing to wage many would have rather tested the odds by fighting it out as an armed populace, instead of being led to slaughter. Regardless, we won’t ever know.

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So much for declaring the island a “sanctuary city” back in 2017.
Elitists gonna elitely virtue signal until it’s shoved in their face, then the hypocritical proggie/lob standard -NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard)- goes into effect

Massachusetts Governor Activates National Guard as Martha’s Vineyard Migrants Removed from Island.

Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker said Friday he is deploying up to 125 National Guard members in response to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sending a group of just 50 illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

“Our Administration has been working across state government to develop a plan to ensure these individuals will have access to the services they need going forward, and Joint Base Cape Cod is well equipped to serve these needs,” the governor said.

The national guardsmen will meet the immigrants at Joint Base Cape Cod on the mainland. Buses retrieved the group of Venezuelans from St. Andrews church in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard Friday morning, roughly 24 hours after they arrived on the island.

Biden Tries Again to Legalize Illegal Aliens Without Congressional Authorization

The Department of Homeland Security has finalized a rule that would grant legal status to 600,000 children of illegal aliens. The new directive would formalize the rule adapted in 2012 during the Obama administration and transform it into federal regulation. It would prevent deportations and grant work permits to those who came to the United States as children.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has been in legal limbo ever since a Texas judge ruled that the program was illegal in the early months of the Biden administration. The new rule going into effect October 31 would codify most of the eligibility rules: applicants must prove they arrived in the U.S. by age 16 and before June 2007, studied in a U.S. school or served in the military, and lack any serious criminal record.

The Texas case is likely to end up in the Supreme Court, where justices already ruled against Donald Trump’s bid to end the program, largely because of a technicality. But this case is based on far narrower Constitutional grounds; only Congress can declare large swaths of illegal aliens as legal. And that argument has a good chance of winning in the high court as it’s currently constituted.

CBS News:

Congress has long been unable to reach any kind of immigration deal that would garner enough bipartisan support to pass the Senate. Last year, the Senate parliamentarian rejected multiple efforts by Democrats to include immigration changes in their party-line social spending bill. And Republican leaders have expressed little interest in Democrats’ attempts at overhauling immigration policy.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has long pushed for a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, was quick to applaud the Department of Homeland Security’s issuing the rule. He noted that it provides “some stability to DACA recipients and make[s] it more difficult for a future administration to rescind DACA, which is a lawful exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”

The rule would only apply to DACA renewal requests as the government is blocked from approving any new applications. But the radical immigration advocates want Biden to go long and go big.

Politico:

But some immigrant advocates expressed frustration that the Biden administration did not go further in its final rule, opting to keep the same criteria from when the program was created in 2012.

“This final DACA rule fails to strengthen the program by not expanding it to include the majority of undocumented immigrant youth who are graduating from high school this year and not eligible for the program because of arbitrary cut-off dates,” said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, deputy director of federal advocacy for United We Dream.

“While Congress must pass permanent protections for all, President Biden cannot hide behind the courts or Congress. He can take bold action now,” she added.

The rule is still going to face challenges in court, so Biden isn’t hiding very well. He can’t. Congress has the authority to end this argument. But even those Republicans — like Donald Trump — who support DACA in one form or another realize what a loaded political issue it is and will never risk voting for it.

Most people agree that young children should not suffer from their parent’s immigration crimes. But a blanket amnesty would be uncalled for and would be hard to do anyway.

The last time it was this high was during another demoncrap administration? Sound like a plan, not a problem.

More than 2 million illegal border encounters so far in fiscal 2022.

More than 2 million people have been encountered or apprehended at the U.S. southern border in fiscal 2022 through June, according to official data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

It’s the largest number recorded in a fiscal year in U.S. history. They total 2,002,604 from over 150 countries.

In June, a record 207,416 people were apprehended, the highest number recorded in June in the history of the Department of Homeland Security.

The total includes those apprehended and encountered by U.S. Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations staff. They exclude gotaways first reported by The Center Square, which includes at least another 50,009 people.

The total for June, including gotaways, was 257,425, a record high for the month.

“Gotaways” is the official term used by Border Patrol to describe foreign nationals who enter the U.S. illegally and don’t surrender at ports of entry but intentionally seek to evade capture from law enforcement. They are currently in the U.S. and no one in law enforcement knows who or where they are.

The last time encounters were nearly this high was the last summer of the presidency of Bill Clinton. In June 2000, 117,469 people were encountered/apprehended at the southern border, excluding gotaways.

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Appeals court: illegal aliens not covered by the Second Amendment

Does the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” cover people who are in this country illegally? A three-judge panel on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals said “no” on Monday, ruling against a man who had lived in the United States for almost two decades before he was deported after being convicted on one count of possession of a firearm by an illegal alien.

Ignacio Jimenez-Shilon appealed that conviction, arguing (as he had at trial) that the federal law in question was a violation of his Second Amendment rights. The panel of judges, however, agreed with the lower court that ruled those in this country illegally don’t have a right under U.S. law to either keep or bear arms.

Jimenez’s argument to us is straightforward: (1) Even as an illegal alien, he lived in the United States for decades and was thus among “the people” whom the Second Amendment protects; and (2) as a consequence, he couldn’t be punished for exercising his individual right to possess a firearm.

But the inquiry isn’t as mechanical as Jimenez suggests. As we will explain, being a member of “the people” to whom the Second Amendment applies as a general matter is a necessary condition to enjoyment of the right to keep and bear arms, but it is not alone sufficient. The reason is that the Second Amendment’s text shows that it codified what the Heller Court called a “pre-existing right,” 554 U.S. at 592, 603—the right “to keep and bear Arms”— and that right’s particular history demonstrates that it extended (and thus extends) to some categories of individuals, but not others. Accordingly, as the Supreme Court put it in Heller, certain groups of people—even those who might be among “the people”—may be “disqualified from” possessing arms without violating the Second Amendment.

Illegal aliens, according to the judges, are among those “certain groups of people” who can be disqualified, because both the law and historical precedent in this country have made it clear that  “aliens could not surreptitiously enter a foreign nation in violation of the immigration prerogatives of the sovereign and expect to receive all the rights and protections of the citizenry. Nor can they do so today.”

In order to reach that decision the panel explored several Supreme Court precedents as well as some Founding-era history, which they say points to the idea that the right of the people to keep and bear arms was analogous to the rights of citizens to do so.

To take one example, the Federalist Papers explained that one of the bulwarks of personal liberty was the prospect of “citizens with arms in their hands.” The Federalist No. 46, at 296 (James Madison) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961).

“If the representatives of the people” were to “betray their constituents,” Hamilton proclaimed, then it would be the natural right of the “citizens” to “rush tumultuously to arms.” The Federalist No. 28, at 176 (Alexander Hamilton); see also, e.g., 3 Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1890, at 746 (1833) (“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers” and “enable[s] the people to resist and triumph over them.”).

Yet when the Constitution was submitted for ratification, many feared that the lack of an express guarantee of the right to bear arms would lead to an erosion of liberty—particularly because the new charter empowered Congress to call forth the militia and raise an army and navy. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 598.

Thus, several proposals quickly emerged in the States urging the adoption of an amendment explicitly prohibiting Congress from disarming “citizens.” See Charles, Armed in America, supra, at 94; The Complete Bill of Rights, supra, at 275 (documenting the Massachusetts proposal that Congress be barred from “prevent[ing] the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms,” as well as the New Hampshire proposal that “Congress shall never disarm any Citizen unless such as are or have been in Actual Rebellion”).

One of the most interesting aspects of this case was the concurring opinion authored by Judge Kevin Newsom, who was appointed to the Eleventh Circuit by Donald Trump in 2017. As UCLA law professor Eugene Voloch pointed out at Reason, Newsom took the opportunity to discuss the current use of “tiered scrutiny” to determine the constitutionality of laws dealing with the Second Amendment.

Judge Newsom also adds a separate concurrence, in which he questions the use of strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, and similar tests both as to the Second Amendment and as to other constitutional rights, such as the First Amendment. Allowing constitutional rights to be overcome by compelling or substantial government interests, he argues, “elevates the normative views of ‘we the judges’ over ‘We the People’ through an ill-defined balancing test.” And, turning to the First Amendment, he adds:

It’s not just that the [First Amendment strict scrutiny / intermediate scrutiny] doctrine is exhausting—although it certainly is that. It’s that the doctrine is judge-empowering and, I fear, freedom-diluting. If we, as judges, conclude—as I’ve said we should—that Second Amendment rights shouldn’t be casually balanced away by reference to manipulable means-ends balancing tests, we might need to start asking the bigger question: On what basis can we do exactly that when dealing with other, equally fundamental rights?

There’s a lot of speculation among Supreme Court watchers that the upcoming decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association will specifically reject the current tiered-scrutiny approach adopted by lower courts in the wake of Heller in favor of a “text, history, and tradition” test that, in the words of attorney and scholar Joseph Greenlee, “focuses on the Second Amendment’s text, using history and tradition to inform its original meaning.” It sounds like Newsom thinks that a similar approach would be valuable for the First Amendment too, though it remains to be seen if SCOTUS will actually adopt that test for Second Amendment cases going forward.

Interesting little tidbit for our friends 7 times ‘south of the border’, but I’d say they are likely already aware of it.

Biden Is Deporting Venezuelans to Colombia

Record numbers of Venezuelan migrants have crossed into the United States from Mexico in recent months, hoping to apply for asylum. U.S. immigration authorities reported 24,819 Venezuelan border crossers in December 2021, compared to just 200 one year prior.

Despite the compelling case many Venezuelans have for seeking refuge in the U.S., the Biden administration is denying many of them that opportunity. Instead it is quietly deporting them to Colombia—a policy that resembles a controversial Trump administration practice.

Citing 42 USC 265, a public health provision that was also invoked by President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden thus far has expelled more than 1 million migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, preventing Venezuelans and many others from applying for asylum. Colombia will be a deportation destination for Venezuelans who have previously lived there, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Trump, no champion of immigration, offered Venezuelan nationals protection from deportation in one of the final moves of his presidency. But he also “deported an unknown number of Venezuelans through a third country,” the Associated Press reported in October 2020.

Candidate Biden criticized Trump for the deportations, saying in October 2020 that “it’s abundantly clear he has no regard for the suffering of the Venezuelan people.” Yet President Biden is also deporting Venezuelans to third countries.

Beyond this inconsistency lies an even more nonsensical one. In March 2021, Biden’s DHS announced an 18-month “temporary protected status” for Venezuelans already present in the U.S. That designation, which protects migrants from expulsion, is reserved for people fleeing an “ongoing armed conflict,” “an environmental disaster, or an epidemic,” or “other extraordinary and temporary conditions.” The designation applies to 320,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. but excludes newcomers, despite the Biden administration’s explicit recognition that America should be a safe haven.

Colombia, despite its own political and economic challenges, has welcomed the 2 million Venezuelan refugees who have traveled there as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro drives the country into the ground. Colombia has even created a path to citizenship for its Venezuelan migrant population. But the U.S. is far better situated than Colombia to host Venezuelans, more than 5.4 million of whom have left their country since 2014 in what amounts to the second-worst refugee crisis in the world, topped only by the huge Syrian exodus.

Biden’s decision to send away refugees who are eager to become Americans belies his avowed “regard for the suffering of the Venezuelan people.”

Brother of Texas Synagogue Terrorist Reveals Akram Had a Criminal Record, Questions Why He Was Given a Visa

The brother of Malik Faisal Akram, the UK citizen who was shot and killed after an 11-hour hostage standoff at a synagogue in Texas, has claimed that his brother had a previous criminal record.

Gulbar Akram, the brother of terrorist Malik Faisal Akram, who took four hostages at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas on Saturday, has revealed that his brother had a criminal record in comments to UK media, raising questions about how he was allowed into the United States……………..