In some of the Mexican towns playing host to a “caravan” of more than 1,200 Central American migrants heading to the U.S. border, the welcome mat has been rolled out despite President Donald Trump’s call for Mexican authorities to stop them.
Local officials have offered lodging in town squares and empty warehouses or arranged transport for the migrants, participants in a journey organized by the immigrant advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras. The officials have conscripted buses, cars, ambulances and police trucks. But the help may not be entirely altruistic.
“The authorities want us to leave their cities,” said Rodrigo Abeja, an organizer from Pueblo Sin Fronteras. “They’ve been helping us, in part to speed the massive group out of their jurisdictions.”
At some point this spring, the caravan’s 2,000-mile (3,200-km) journey that began at Tapachula near the Guatemalan border on March 25 will end at the U.S. border, where some of its members will apply for asylum, while others will attempt to sneak into the United States.
Abeja said there was a lot of pressure from authorities to stop the caravan “because of Donald Trump’s reaction.” The Mexican government issued a statement late on Monday saying it was committed to “legal and orderly” migration.
The government said the caravan had been taking place since 2010 and was largely made up of Central Americans entering Mexico who had not met the necessary legal requirements.
“For this reason, participants in this (caravan) are subject to an administrative migratory procedure, while 400 have already been repatriated to their countries of origin, in strict accordance with the law and respecting their human rights,” it said.
Those without permission to stay in Mexico or who had failed to request it through the proper channels could expect to be returned to their homelands, a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
‘DOING LITTLE’
Trump railed on Twitter against the caravan on Monday, accusing Mexico of “doing very little, if not NOTHING” to stop the flow of immigrants crossing the U.S. border illegally. “They must stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA,” he concluded.
Mexico’s interior minister Alfonso Navarrete did not directly address the caravan, but he wrote on Twitter that he spoke to the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday, and that the two had “agreed to analyze the best ways to attend to the flows of migrants in accordance with the laws of each country.”
Mexico must walk a delicate line with the United States because the countries are in the midst of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) along with Canada.
At the same time, Mexican left-wing presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has an 18-point lead ahead of the July 1 election, according to a poll published on Monday.
A Lopez Obrador victory could usher in a Mexican government less accommodating toward the United States on both trade and immigration issues.
Mexican Senator Angelica de la Pena, who presides over the Senate’s human rights commission, told Reuters that Mexico should protect migrants’ rights despite the pressure from Trump.
Former President Vicente Fox called for Mexican officials to take a stand against Trump’s attacks. Trump keeps “blackmailing, offending and denigrating Mexico and Mexicans,” he wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Under Mexican law, Central Americans who enter Mexico legally are generally allowed to move freely through the country, even if their goal is to cross illegally into the United States.
‘WE’RE SUFFERING’
Migrants in the caravan cite a variety of reasons for joining it. Its members are disproportionately from Honduras, which has high levels of violence and has been rocked by political upheaval in recent months following the re-election of U.S.-backed president, Juan Orlando Hernández, in an intensely disputed election.
Maria Elena Colindres Ortega, a member of the caravan and, until January, a member of Congress in Honduras, said she is fleeing the political upheaval at home. “We’ve had to live through a fraudulent electoral process,” she said. “We’re suffering a progressive militarization and lack of institutions, and … they’re criminalizing those who protested.”
Colindres Ortega, who opposed the ruling party in Honduras, said she spiraled into debt after serving without pay for the last 18 months of her four-year term. She decided to head north after a fellow congressman from her party put out word on Facebook that a caravan of migrants was gathering in southern Mexico, leaving home with a small bag with necessities and photos of her children.
Pueblo Sin Fronteras has helped coordinate migrant caravans for the past several years, although previously they had a maximum of several hundred participants. During the journey members of the organization instruct the migrants about their rights.
“We accompany at least those who want to request asylum,” said Alex Mensing, Pueblo Sin Fronteras’ program director. “We help prepare them for the detention process and asylum process before they cross the border, because it’s so difficult for people to have success if they don’t have the information.”
Typically, Central Americans have not fared well with U.S. asylum claims, particularly those from Honduras. A Reuters analysis of immigration court data found that Hondurans who come before the court receive deportation orders in more than 83 percent of cases, the highest rate of any nationality. Hondurans also face deportation in Mexico, where immigration data shows that 5,000 Hondurans were deported from Mexico in February alone, the highest number since May 2016.
Manuel Padilla, chief of the border patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, one of the busiest crossing points on the U.S. Mexico border, said in an interview with Reuters that he worries the caravan could “generate interest for other groups to do the same thing,” but he was not terribly nervous about coping with the group currently traveling.
“Not to be flippant,” Padilla said, “but it’s similar numbers to what we are seeing every day pretty much.”
(This version of the story corrects spelling to Manuel from Maunel in penultimate paragraph
Don’t Tell Me She Does Not Look Like The Cat People From A Stephen King Movie
They are twins damit!
Once again Liberals have no concern for the welfare of Americans. Having the deputies shot and killed is better than deporting an illegal.’
Seniorita Hernandez doesn’t want to comply with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement? Surprise, surprise. Stop allowing multi-national third world people and advocates to populate the ranks of our administrations! Doing so is national suicide.
Sheriffs are supposed to enforce the law, that is their job. I assume that this sheriff took an oath to that effect after she was elected. Now she refuses to sign a letter pledging to enforce the law. Is this not grounds for impeachment? A sheriff does not have the right to decide which laws to enforce and which ones to ignore. This sheriff is the one making a political statement, not the governor.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced in January that Texas would fund $23 million in grants to purchase new vests for approximately 450 law enforcement agencies around the state. KXAN-TV reports:
Travis County did not apply for the grant because one condition from the governor’s office required the agency to “sign a letter confirming compliance with ICE detainer requests both now and during the grant term of at least one year,” according to Travis County Commissioner’s Court records.
The recommendations from the state said, “It is anticipated the number of fatal shootings will be reduced by equipping more officers with type III & IV body armor.”
Intentionally putting another’s life in jeopardy for political purposes most definitely is deserving of a long prison sentence – she has arguably committed an act of domestic terrorism, by its very definition.
Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez refuses to give her deputies rifle-resistance vests funded by the state because she would have to commit to holding arrested illegal aliens for deportation.
This Democrat sheriff is putting the lives of criminals over the lives of police. pic.twitter.com/A09XKwcYOZ
If Sheriff Hernandez loses an officer whose life could have been saved by one of these vests, I hope there is a special place in HeII for her. I also hope there is someone in the officer’s family willing to send her there prematurely.
She is playing politics with these men’s lives. But then again, it is not unlike her Washington counterparts who lets the Government shut down over the DACA illegal immigrants. These Democrats are firmly in it for the manufacture of immigrant voters.
SOUND OFF in the comment section what you think about this decision by this Texas sheriff and how will if affect their community.
While speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) argued that if Republicans don’t do anything on DACA, the program ends, “and a lot of these young people start getting deported,” it would “destroy” the Republican Party. He further stated that doing nothing on DACA is not “even a viable option.”
This is Lindsey at swim lessons.
This Is Lindsey The Cat Man Getting A Butt Tattoo Of John mcCain.
This is Lindsey being thanked by John. Lindsey and John sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I_N-G
Graham said, “If we did nothing, and just ended DACA, and did nothing else and a lot of these young people start getting deported, then that would destroy the party. So, I don’t think that’s even a viable option. The options are to…punt it down the road, deal with it later. Or the president, engage again and see where the sweet spot’s at. And it’s pretty clear to me, that after those four votes, you know where the sweet spot’s at, which is border security for DACA.”
I’m glad to see arrest, now build the wall and secure the border.
Federal deportation officers staged one of the biggest enforcement actions in years against businesses in Los Angeles this week, arresting 212 people and serving audit notices to 122 businesses who will have to prove they aren’t hiring illegal immigrants.
Nearly all of those arrested were convicted criminals, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE said it targeted Los Angeles because it’s a sanctuary city, meaning it refuses to fully cooperate with federal authorities on deportations from within its jails.
They do the jobs Americans will not right?
That means agents and officers have to go out into the community, said Thomas D. Homan, the agency’s deputy director.
“Fewer jail arrests mean more arrests on the street, and that also requires more resources, which is why we are forced to send additional resources to those areas to meet operational needs and officer safety,” Mr. Homan said. “Consistent with our public safety mission, 88 percent of those arrested during this operation were convicted criminals.”
The actions and notices came even as Congress was debating — and failing to pass — legislation that would have legalized about a sixth of the illegal immigrant population in the U.S.
ICE said some of those nabbed will be prosecuted for illegal entry or re-entry after a previous deportation, while others whose cases aren’t prosecuted will face deportation.
Perhaps more striking that the arrests, however, is the renewed focus on business that employ illegal immigrants.
The 122 notices come on top of 77 notices served on businesses in northern California earlier this year.
ICE said California’s sanctuary city status notwithstanding, businesses are still required to follow federal law, which demands they conduct verification checks before hiring employees.
Democrats in Congress had objected to ICE’s attempts to enforce immigration laws at businesses.
In a Jan. 31 letter, 17 of the chamber’s more liberal lawmakers said they were “troubled” by the justifications ICE had cited for the previous round of business enforcement.
“ICE officers have a mission to promote homeland security and public safety, not to act as an arm of the government designed to intimidate and harass business owners, their employees or their patrons, and certainly not to use raids as a threat of ‘what’s to come,’” said the Democrats, led by Rep. Karen Bass, California Democrat.
Why are we debating this because the facts are we are losing money on illegal immigrants.
Introduction
A continually growing population of illegal aliens, along with the federal government’s ineffective efforts to secure our borders, present significant national security and public safety threats to the United States. They also have a severely negative impact on the nation’s taxpayers at the local, state, and national levels. Illegal immigration costs Americans billions of dollars each year. Illegal aliens are net consumers of taxpayer-funded services and the limited taxes paid by some segments of the illegal alien population are, in no way, significant enough to offset the growing financial burdens imposed on U.S. taxpayers by massive numbers of uninvited guests. This study examines the fiscal impact of illegal aliens as reflected in both federal and state budgets.
The Number of Illegal Immigrants in the US
Estimating the fiscal burden of illegal immigration on the U.S. taxpayer depends on the size and characteristics of the illegal alien population. FAIR defines “illegal alien” as anyone who entered the United States without authorization and anyone who unlawfully remains once his/her authorization has expired. Unfortunately, the U.S. government has no central database containing information on the citizenship status of everyone lawfully present in the United States. The overall problem of estimating the illegal alien population is further complicated by the fact that the majority of available sources on immigration status rely on self-reported data. Given that illegal aliens have a motive to lie about their immigration status, in order to avoid discovery, the accuracy of these statistics is dubious, at best. All of the foregoing issues make it very difficult to assess the current illegal alien population of the United States.
However, FAIR now estimates that there are approximately 12.5 million illegal alien residents. This number uses FAIR’s previous estimates but adjusts for suspected changes in levels of unlawful migration, based on information available from the Department of Homeland Security, data available from other federal and state government agencies, and other research studies completed by reliable think tanks, universities, and other research organizations.
The Cost of Illegal Immigration to the United States
At the federal, state, and local levels, taxpayers shell out approximately $134.9 billion to cover the costs incurred by the presence of more than 12.5 million illegal aliens, and about 4.2 million citizen children of illegal aliens. That amounts to a tax burden of approximately $8,075 per illegal alien family member and a total of $115,894,597,664. The total cost of illegal immigration to U.S. taxpayers is both staggering and crippling. In 2013, FAIR estimated the total cost to be approximately $113 billion. So, in under four years, the cost has risen nearly $3 billion. This is a disturbing and unsustainable trend. The sections below will break down and further explain these numbers at the federal, state, and local levels.
Total Governmental Expenditures on Illegal Aliens
Total Tax Contributions by Illegal Aliens
Total Economic Impact of Illegal Immigration
Federal
The Federal government spends a net amount of $45.8 billion on illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children. This amount includes expenditures for public education, medical care, justice enforcement initiatives, welfare programs and other miscellaneous costs. It also factors in the meager amount illegal aliens pay to the federal government in income, social security, Medicare and excise taxes.
FEDERAL SPENDING
The approximately $46 billion in federal expenditures attributable to illegal aliens is staggering. Assuming an illegal alien population of approximately 12.5 million illegal aliens and 4.2 million U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, that amounts to roughly $2,746 per illegal alien, per year. For the sake of comparison, the average American college student receives only $4,800 in federal student loans each year.
FAIR maintains that every concerned American citizen should be asking our government why, in a time of increasing costs and shrinking resources, is it spending such large amounts of money on individuals who have no right, nor authorization, to be in the United States? This is an especially important question in view of the fact that the illegal alien beneficiaries of American taxpayer largess offset very little of the enormous costs of their presence by the payment of taxes. Meanwhile, average Americans pay approximately 30% of their income in taxes.
Taxes collected from illegal aliens offset fiscal outlays and, therefore must be included in any examination of the cost of illegal immigration. However, illegal alien apologists frequently cite the allegedly large tax payments made by illegal aliens as a justification for their unlawful presence, and as a basis for offering them permanent legal status through a new amnesty, similar to the one enacted in 1986. That argument is nothing more than a red herring.
FAIR believes that most studies grossly overestimate both the taxes actually collected from illegal aliens and, more importantly, the amount of taxes actually paid by illegal aliens (i.e., the amount of money collected from illegal aliens and actually kept by the federal government). This belief is based on a number of factors: Since the 1990’s, the United States has focused on apprehending and removing criminal aliens. The majority of illegal aliens seeking employment in the United States have lived in an environment where they have little fear of deportation, even if discovered. This has created an environment where most illegal aliens are both able and willing to file tax returns. Because the vast majority of illegal aliens hold low-paying jobs, those who are subject to wage deductions actually wind up receiving a complete refund of all taxes paid, plus net payments made on the basis of tax credits.
As a result, illegal aliens actually profit from filing a tax return and, therefore, have a strong interest in doing so.
An Oregon jury convicted a previously deported Mexican national of sexually assaulting a nine-year-old girl. The convicted child-rapist has a history of crimes in the U.S.
The little girl’s mother told law enforcement officials in Clackamas County last year that a man broke into their 9 and 5-year-old daughters’ bedroom. The man came through the window of their apartment at night on February 25 and sexually assaulted their daughter. Although he escaped through a window, law enforcement officials were able to find his fingerprints, KATU2 in Portland, Oregon reported.
Breitbart Texas reported that federal officers arrested 48-year-old Santiago Flores-Martinez when he was trying to cross back into Mexico in late April. The port’s Anti-Terrorism Contraband Enforcement Team (A-TCET) apprehended the Mexican national at the San Ysidro port of entry. San Ysidro is a district within the City of San Diego and is on the California-Mexico border near Tijuana.
Officials identified Flores-Martinez when they retrieved biometric information on him via the “Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System” (IAFIS).
Police began searching for the accused child rapist on April 25.
Fox 12 Oregon reported the jury found Flores-Martinez guilty on charges that include first-degree sex abuse, attempted rape, burglary, and coercion. His sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin on Monday.
The convicted child rapist has used the aliases “Felipe Coeto” and “Isidro Ramos Flores.”
The previously deported Mexican national has a criminal record in the U.S. that dates back to 1994. Immigration officers deported him in 2001 after serving two years in prison in Oregon.
Clackamas County is located just southeast of Portland, Oregon. The county is listed by the Center for Immigration Studies as being a sanctuary jurisdiction that has policies prohibiting local law enforcement officials from cooperating with federal immigration officers.
