Your Government waste billions every year on failed companies and no one is held accountable.
Senate Democrats have shown their willingness to shut down the government in lieu of spending nearly $6 billion on a border wall, but compare that price tag to some of the other expenditures the government funds.
House Republicans passed a stopgap funding bill on Thursday that included $5.7 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. However, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed to kill any funding measure appropriating for a wall’s construction.
Schumer has referred to the wall as “expensive and ineffective,” but just how expensive is it relative to recent expenditures?
The Environmental and Protection Agency (EPA) was appropriated a $5.7 billion budget in 2018, down from the roughly $8 billion annual budget it has received since the mid-1990s. Inline with the agency’s mission statement, nearly 90 percent of the budget is used to provide grants safeguarding clear air, land and water, according to National Geographic.
A Government Accountability Office report uncovered that while the EPA’s budget has been remaining relatively stable, the amount of employees on the public relations staff has been spiking. In less than a decade, the agency increased its public relations staff by 16 percent with more than 140 employees dedicated to pushing the EPA’s message.
The government also footed the bill for nearly half of the country’s most expensive infrastructure project, which was concentrated in one city alone. After the ‘Big Dig’, a megaproject that rerouted Boston’s primary thoroughfare, was plagued by financial mismanagement and design flaws, the Federal Highway Administration stepped in and provided what amounted to about $7 billion in grants, reported The Boston Globe.
The project was completed in 2010 with a total ticket price of $15 billion.
And while the federal government has spent billions of dollars on one city’s project, it has also spent billions of dollars on individual companies.
According to a 2014 Special Inspector General report, American taxpayers took an $11.2 billion loss on its bailout of General Motors (GM). After the automaker declared bankruptcy in 2009, the government invested $49.5 billion in the company with a 61 percent equity share. Overtime, GM’s stock price dropped, and despite selling back shares, the U.S. government took billion dollar losses.
While a 2017 internal report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) forecasts that a wall would ultimately cost approximately $21.6 billion to complete, the Federation For American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates that the fiscal burden of illegal immigration on the American taxpayers is approximately $115.8 billion annually.
“We would save Billions of Dollars if the Democrats would give us the votes to build the Wall,” Trump tweeted in early December. “Either way, people will NOT be allowed into our Country illegally! We will close the entire Southern Border if necessary. Also, STOP THE DRUGS!”
Trump administration to release hundreds of immigrant families from detention
But with border nonprofits already stretched to capacity, many families will probably end up dropped off en masse at bus stations.
Hundreds, or even thousands, of migrant families are set to be released from government detention along the US-Mexico border over the next several days. But while the mass release of families may cheer critics of the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrant families, the government’s new plan will probably lead to hundreds of families getting dropped off en masse at bus stations — literally out in the cold.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency that’s generally responsible for immigrant detention, has already started mass releases of hundreds of families a day.
But in a break with standard policy, US Border Patrol has developed a plan to release some families directly if they’ve been held for more than a few days — instead of holding all families for ICE to pick up.
Plans for Border Patrol to release families directly were confirmed to Vox by two officials with knowledge of the mass-release operation. The sources said that releases from both ICE and Border Patrol could start as soon as Thursday and are expected to last for a few days — with hundreds of families a day set to be released in the Rio Grande Valley and around El Paso.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, Katie Waldman, did not confirm any plan to release families directly from Border Patrol custody.
However, in a statement, Waldman partly blamed a 2015 ruling extending legal protections to children who arrived with parents in the US — including requiring Border Patrol to keep them in custody for no more than 72 hours — for causing the current “immigration crisis”, saying it “incentivizes illegal alien adults to put their children in the hands of smugglers and traffickers” and “rewards parents for bringing their children with them to the United States.”
Releasing families who’ve entered the US without papers from detention is the exact outcome the Trump administration has spent all of 2018 deriding as “catch and release,” and which it has rolled out a series of policy initiatives — “zero tolerance” prosecution and widespread family separation, regulatory efforts to keep families in detention until they’re deported, the “asylum ban” now blocked in the courts, a not-yet-implemented plan to force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico — to prevent.
But the system for apprehending and detaining children and families is in crisis — and the consequences have been deadly.
Two children have died in the past month in Border Patrol custody in New Mexico, the area of the border where the US government has been most overwhelmed by unprecedented numbers of families crossing into the country. Felipe Alonzo-Gomez, who died in a New Mexico hospital just after midnight on Christmas Day, had been in Border Patrol custody for six days — a violation of both agency policy and the Flores settlement that governs the treatment of children in immigration custody — and had been shuffled among four different facilities.
Amid growing scrutiny of Border Patrol detention conditions, the new release plan may seem welcome to Trump critics. But that raises the question of where all those newly released families will go; who will help them adjust to life in the United States; and how they will get to where they need to go while awaiting their immigration court hearings.
Normally, local nonprofits take care of families after release at the border. But it’s not at all clear that local nonprofits have the capacity to care for hundreds more families — the lead nonprofit in El Paso, Annunciation House, was stretched beyond capacity even before ICE started releasing hundreds of families in the area earlier this week. And in some sectors, the government doesn’t even have a relationship with a local nonprofit that it can notify before dropping off families.
That means families who have no knowledge of the US might be getting dumped en masse at bus stations in the middle of winter, many without winter clothing and all without guidance about what to do next.
Officials and nonprofits alike at the border are being asked to do something they have never had to do before: take care of tens of thousands of migrant families coming in a month, often in large groups and often in remote areas. President Trump’s constant stoking of panic about immigrants coming into the US to commit crimes has overshadowed a real crisis at the border over the past several months — a crisis of resources. Unprecedented numbers of families are coming into the US without papers, and no one has the capacity to deal with them humanely.
How in the HELL is this the USA’s problem. Close the damn border and send their asses back to the hell hole they came from.
CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico (AP) — Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, a growing throng of Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S. border early Sunday in southern Mexico.
Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking toward the Mexican town of Tapachula, 10 abreast in a line stretching approximately a mile.
This Is A Damn Invasion.
Kate Linthicum
✔@katelinthicum
I’m only just realizing the massive scale of this caravan as they march north into Mexico. It’s several thousand people. Just look.
Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, a growing caravan of Central American migrants on Sunday resumed their advance towards the US border in southern Mexico.
Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking.
It was not immediately clear where the additional travelers had materialized from since about 2,000 gathered on the Mexican side Saturday night. They seemed likely to be people who had been waiting on the bridge over the Suchiate River or in the Guatemalan town of Tecun Uman and who decided to cross during the night.
At dawn there were still an estimated 1,500 migrants on the Guatemalan side hoping to enter legally.
They marched on through Mexico like a rag tag army of the poor, shouting triumphantly slogans like “Si se pudo!” or “Yes, we could!”
As they passed through Mexican villages on the outskirts of Ciudad Hidalgo, they drew applause, cheers and donations of food and clothing from Mexicans.
Maria Teresa Orellana, a resident of the neighborhood of Lorenzo handed out free sandals to the migrants as they passed. “It’s solidarity,” she said. “They’re our brothers.”
Olivin Castellanos, 58, a truck driver and mason from Villanueva, Honduras, said he took a raft across the river after Mexico blocked the bridge. “No one will stop us, only God,” he said. “We knocked down the door and we continue walking.” He wants to reach the U.S. to work. “I can do this,” he said, pointing to the asphalt under his feet. “I’ve made highways.”
The migrants, who said they gave up trying to enter Mexico legally because the asylum application process was too slow, gathered Saturday at a park in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo. They voted by a show of hands to continue north en masse, then marched to the bridge crossing the Suchiate River and urged those still on it to come join them.
The decision to re-form the migrant caravan capped a day in which Mexican authorities again refused mass entry to migrants on the bridge, instead accepting small groups for asylum processing and giving out 45-day visitor permits to some. Authorities handed out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at U.S. border posts when dealing with large numbers of migrants.
But many became impatient and circumventing the border gate, crossing the river on rafts, by swimming or by wading in full view of the hundreds of Mexican police manning the blockade on the bridge. Some paid locals the equivalent of $1.25 to ferry them across the muddy waters. They were not detained on reaching the Mexican bank.
Sairy Bueso, a 24-year old Honduran mother of two, was another migrant who abandoned the bridge and crossed into Mexico via the river. She clutched her 2-year-old daughter Dayani, who had recently had a heart operation, as she got off a raft.
“The girl suffered greatly because of all the people crowded” on the bridge, Bueso said. “There are risks that we must take for the good of our children.”
In addition to those who crossed the river, immigration agents processed migrants in small groups and then bused them to an open-air, metal-roof fairground in Tapachula, where the Red Cross set up small blue tents on the concrete floor.
Mexico’s Interior Department said it had received 640 refugee requests by Hondurans at the border crossing. It released photos of migrants getting off buses at a shelter and receiving food and medical attention.
At least half a dozen migrants fainted in the crush.
Some tore open a fence on the Guatemala side of the bridge and threw two young children, perhaps age 6 or 7, and their mother into the muddy waters about 40 feet below. They were rafted to safety in on the Mexican bank.
Mexican workers handed food and bottled water to the migrants on the bridge. Through the bars, a doctor gave medical attention to a woman who feared her young son was running a fever.
Sustenance also came from Guatemalan locals — for Carlos Martinez, a 24-year-old from Santa Barbara, Honduras, the plate of chicken with rice was the first bite to eat he’d had all day.
“It is a blessing that they have given us food,” Martinez said. “It gives me courage to keep waiting, as long as I can.”
Migrants cited widespread poverty and gang violence in Honduras, one of the world’s deadliest nations by homicide rate, as their reasons for joining the caravan.
Juan Carlos Mercado, 20, from Santa Barbara, Honduras, says corruption and a lack of jobs in Honduras has stymied him. “We just want to move ahead with our lives,” he said Sunday. He said he’d do any kind of work.
The caravan elicited a series of angry tweets and warnings from Trump early in the week, but Mexico’s initial handling of the migrants at its southern border seemed to have satisfied him more recently.
“So as of this moment, I thank Mexico,” Trump said Friday at an event in Scottsdale, Arizona. “I hope they continue. But as of this moment, I thank Mexico. If that doesn’t work out, we’re calling up the military — not the Guard.”
“They’re not coming into this country,” Trump added.
“The Mexican Government is fully engaged in finding a solution that encourages safe, secure, and orderly migration,” State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Saturday, “and both the United States and Mexico continue to work with Central American governments to address the economic, security, and governance drivers of illegal immigration.”
After an emergency meeting in Guatemala, presidents Hernandez of Honduras and Jimmy Morales of Guatemala said an estimated 5,400 migrants had entered Guatemala since the caravan was announced a week ago, and about 2,000 Hondurans have returned voluntarily.
Morales said a Honduran migrant died in the town of Villa Nueva, 20 miles from Guatemala City, when he fell from a truck.
The Department of Homeland Security is warning employees of an increased level of threat to their safety with a series of violent acts taken against them and their children due to the current debate over immigration policy.
In a letter sent to employees, the department said there is a “heightened threat against DHS employees,” according to ABC Radio.
“This assessment is based on specific and credible threats that have been levied against certain DHS employees and a sharp increase in the overall number of general threats against DHS employees,” Claire Grady, acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security, said in the letter.
Threats seem to have advanced well beyond mere talk. The department reported that one official living in Washington, D.C., found a decapitated and burnt animal carcass on his porch.
The threats come as some elected Democrat officials have engaged in extreme rhetoric against those with whom they disagree politically.
California Democrat Maxine Waters, for instance, urged followers to attack Trump administration officials and their children at their homes and public places like restaurants.
Democrat acolytes seem to have taken such suggestions to heart and have stepped up pressure on Republicans in a multitude of venues, including in private life. In the last few days, Trump Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was refused service in a Virginia restaurant, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was chased out of a D.C. Mexican restaurant, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was harassed in a Movie theater.
Last year a Democrat operative who had worked for Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders went on a shooting rampage at a Virginia baseball park in an effort to kill Republican members of Congress. Several were wounded, including House Majority Whip, Republican Steve Scalise, who has been seriously and permanently crippled by the wounds.
This Is Insane To Protect Illegals More Than Americans
About half of all Americans now live under sanctuary policies that shield illegal immigrants from law enforcement, according to the latest tally of jurisdictions that the Federation for American Immigration Reform is releasing Thursday.
FAIR calculates there were 564 states and municipalities that refuse some level of cooperation with federal immigration authorities as of April 1, up more than 200 since President Trump took office and up more than 500 compared with a decade ago. There were just 40 sanctuaries when President Obama took office.
Entire states such as California, Illinois and New York are now sanctuaries, as well as major cities and counties such as Fairfax, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties and the District of Columbia in the capital region, according to the list.
Combined, the sanctuaries on FAIR’s list cover 49 percent of the country’s population, The Washington Times calculated.
“This is just an astounding and a dramatic surge of sanctuary jurisdictions,” said Bob Dane, executive director at FAIR. “They’ve doubled in just two years, and if you game that out, if the exponential growth continues, it’s not going to be long before it’s accurate to say the U.S. is a sanctuary country.”
While there is no official definition of sanctuaries, FAIR counted any jurisdiction that bans police or other officials from asking about immigration status, forbids communication with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or refuses to hold likely deportees for pickup by ICE.
Illegal Immigrants Do The Jobs Americans Will Not.
Authorities in California have a suspect in custody after an explosive device detonated inside of a Sam’s Club in California on Thursday afternoon.
Hugo Gonzalez, 49, of Fontana, was identified as the man suspected of detonating the device, the Ontario Police Department tweeted, noting it’s believed he acted alone and a motive remains unclear.
Law enforcement was dispatched to the Sam’s Club store in Ontario after it was reported around 2 p.m. that someone heard a “popping sound,” KABC reported.
“Responded to a possible fire structure at [Sam’s Club],” the Ontario Police Department tweeted earlier Thursday. “It has been determined the suspect detonated a small explosive device in the store.”
Ontario Police Dept.
✔@OntarioPD
Responded to a possible fire structure at 951 N Milliken Ave. It has been determined the suspect detonated a small explosive device in the store. Ontario PD and Ontario Fire are on scene.
A follow-up tweet stated, “There appears to be no structural damage or any injuries at this point,” and noted that “All employees and customers are accounted for.”
Ontario Police Dept.
✔@OntarioPD
Responded to a possible fire structure at 951 N Milliken Ave. It has been determined the suspect detonated a small explosive device in the store. Ontario PD and Ontario Fire are on scene.
Ontario Police Dept.
✔@OntarioPD
There appears to be no structural damage or any injuries at this point. All employees and customers are accounted for. Updates to follow.
Miles from the store, Gonzalez was pulled over and detained, police said. Within his car, investigators found “[additional] materials” that were “similar to those used in the devices” found inside Sam’s Club.
Police are now investigating an apartment in Fontana, “which is believed to be associated w/Gonzalez.”
Within the vehicle Gonzalez was driving, investigators located add’l materials similar to those used in the devices found which were found in the store. Police are currently @ an apartment in the 16500 block on Arrow Blvd. in Fontana, which is believed to be associated w/Gonzalez
Ontario Police Dept.
✔@OntarioPD
Gonzalez is currently in custody and is being interviewed by investigators. At this time, a motive for the incident is unclear. We will provide more information as it becomes available.
