U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehend about two dozen illegal immigrants in Penitas, Texas, on March 11, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Immigration & Border Security

By Charlotte Cuthbertson March 23, 2021 Updated: March 29, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

The family-unit holding cells smell like urine and vomit. Fights break out in the unaccompanied-minor cells. Scabies, lice, the flu, and COVID-19 run rampant.

Up to 80 individuals are squeezed into each 24- by 30-foot cell, and there aren’t enough mattresses for everyone. Sheets of plastic divide the rooms.

“Any diseases that are in there, it’s being kept in there, like a petri dish. The smell is overwhelming,” a Border Patrol agent said, describing the conditions in a facility in south Texas. The agent, Carlos (not his real name), spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity, for fear of repercussions.

Border Patrol agents on the front lines are getting so frustrated that they’re now risking their livelihoods to reveal what’s really going on in the illegal immigrant processing facilities.

One or two agents are left to control 300 to 500 people during a shift. No agent wants to report physical or sexual assaults between the aliens because they’ll get blamed for “letting it happen.” They’re also forced to separate a child from an extended family member because he or she is not a biological parent.

The number of unaccompanied minors—children under 18 who arrive without a parent—is buckling the system. The law requires Border Patrol to prioritize unaccompanied minors and transfer them to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours.

“We’re getting them out of here as quickly as possible, but we are so overwhelmed right now,” Carlos said. “It used to be easy to get them out in 72 hours. Not anymore. They’re staying here for 10, 12 days. It’s horrible.”

So far this fiscal year (from Oct. 1, 2020), Border Patrol has apprehended more than 29,000 unaccompanied children crossing the border illegally. In all of fiscal 2020, just over 33,000 were apprehended, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics.

This year’s numbers are on a trajectory to surpass the 2019 crisis numbers, when 80,634 minors were apprehended.

CBP declined to provide the number of unaccompanied minors currently being held. “In general, CBP does not provide daily in-custody numbers, as they are considered operationally sensitive because CBP’s in-custody numbers fluctuate on a constant basis,” CBP spokesman Nate Peeters wrote in an email to The Epoch Times on March 23.

Health and Human Services confirmed on March 23 that its Office of Refugee Resettlement is holding approximately 11,350 children.

CBP and Health and Human Services have opened several extra facilities to deal with the influx, with the latest being the San Diego Convention Center.

Carlos confirmed that the majority of unaccompanied minors coming across the border already have parents or family members in the United States.

“Everybody that shows up here—even if it’s a 3-year-old kid with no one around—they all have an address on them. And they’ll give it to you: ‘Here’s my address; this is where you are sending me,’” Carlos said.

“And that’s what we do. This is the way we are being played.”

Most of the unaccompanied minors come from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

“We’re dealing with a different culture who’s not afraid to send all their kids under the age of five, knowing they’re going to get raped, knowing they’re going to get killed,” Carlos said. “You talk to the adults or the teenagers and they’ll tell you, ‘They raped three or four girls, and they kicked them off the trains.’ They’re going to die.”

Two-thirds of migrants traveling through Mexico report experiencing violence during the journey, including abduction, theft, extortion, torture, and rape, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has been providing medical and mental health care for migrants and refugees in Mexico since 2012.

Almost 1 in 3 women surveyed by MSF said they had been sexually abused during their journey—60 percent through rape.

Families Released

A new directive from the Biden administration is allowing for family units to be released into the interior of the United States without a notice to appear—the paperwork that states the date an illegal immigrant must turn up in court to plead their case.

“There’s no repercussions. I’m not even going to give you a court date. You don’t even have to show up at court if you don’t want to. It’d be nice, but you don’t have to. That word gets out immediately. And I mean overnight,” Carlos said.

He said it’s now common knowledge that if you bring a child, you’ll be quickly released into the United States. They’re being transported all over the country, but popular destinations include Houston, New York, and California, as well as Maryland and Washington, D.C.

“They’ll put them in a hotel for a couple of days until their flight is ready to fly them to where they are going. That’s tax dollars,” Carlos said.

“There’s no end in sight. The people that we’re apprehending are warning us of the larger caravans that are on their way.”

He said President Joe Biden’s rollback of the Trump administration’s border policies is the direct cause of the surge.

“One hundred and ten percent. They were already ready before Biden was even in office. They knew that the doors were going to be open. And now we’ve got a point where we cannot stop it,” he said.

The administration hasn’t allowed media to access the processing facilities and, according to agents, it’s even requiring that agents in the field move illegal aliens they apprehend onto private land to process them.

“Keep trying until you find us on a public road. But we’ve been instructed to move all the traffic onto ranches to make sure there’s no public eye,” an agent said.

“Biden’s strict on that. Trump was a different story. This administration is a no-go on media, I’m guessing because they don’t want to let the word out on what’s going on here on the border—to make him look good.”

Carlos said the agency has stopped dropping illegal immigrants off directly at bus stations now. “We were given strict orders from Washington, D.C., that that ceases—it’s drawing too much attention,” he said.

Now they drop the illegal immigrants nearby or at a local NGO facility near the bus station, he said.

The administration hasn’t yet called the current situation a crisis, and Biden said on March 21 that he’ll visit the border “at some point.”

‘Our Defenses Are Down’

Morale among Border Patrol agents has plummeted, Carlos said. “The attrition rate right now is ridiculous,” he said. “We don’t want to work for the Border Patrol anymore. It’s not the Border Patrol.”

During the Trump era, agents felt “empowered” to do their jobs, he said. “Whatever deals he made, everything was working just fine. Now we’ve got this trash.”

As agents get moved to deal with the increase in family units and unaccompanied minors, the smuggling organizations and cartels move drugs and other individuals through other, unpatrolled areas.

“Our manpower is being depleted because we need to go babysit these people, move them as fast as possible to release them into the country,” Carlos said. “It’s ridiculous. We have no backup. We’re losing more than we’re catching. And it’s no secret.

“Our defenses are down. So if there’s anybody that we should be worried about, they know this is the time to come in. They know it.”

President Donald Trump (L) and President-elect Joe Biden in file photographs. (AP Photo; Getty Images) Donald Trump

By Jack Phillips March 31, 2021 Updated: April 1, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Former President Donald Trump, in a statement Wednesday, responded to the White House infrastructure bill—which would introduce new taxes—and said it is “among the largest self-inflicted economic wounds in history.”

“If this monstrosity is allowed to pass, the result will be more Americans out of work, more families shattered, more factories abandoned, more industries wrecked, and more Main Streets boarded up and closed down—just like it was before I took over the presidency 4 years ago,” the former president said in a statement, adding that the plan will “implement the largest tax hike in American history.”

Trump, in a statement reminiscent of 2016 campaign speeches, said the measure would only serve “China and other large segments of the world” and said would make America lose “the economic war with China.”

With the infrastructure plan’s tax rates, “if you create jobs in America, and hire American workers, you will pay MORE in taxes—but if you close down your factories in Ohio and Michigan, fire U.S. workers, and move all your production to Beijing and Shanghai, you will pay LESS,” Trump said. “It is the exact OPPOSITE of putting America First—it is putting America LAST!”

“Companies that send American jobs to China should not be rewarded by Joe Biden’s Tax Bill, they should be punished so that they keep those jobs right here in America, where they belong,” he added.

Throughout his campaigns and presidency, Trump often emphasized job creation measures, low unemployment rates, and increases in the Dow Jones—while saying that high taxes and regulations would further prompt companies to move their operations and factories to China, Mexico, and other countries.

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden started promoting a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which besides aiming to fix roads and bridges also features an expansive climate change and social welfare agenda, with the White House calling it “the moment to reimagine and rebuild a new economy.”

“Every dollar spent on rebuilding our infrastructure during the Biden administration will be used to prevent, reduce, and withstand the impacts of the climate crisis,” the White House said.

Biden aims to put corporate America on the hook for the tab, which is expected to grow to a combined $4 trillion once he rolls out the second part of his economic plan in April.

Biden has proposed several changes to the tax code, including raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from the current 21 percent—the level that the Trump administration brought it down to from 35 percent.

The proposal was also panned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the largest lobbying groups in the United States, which said the higher tax proposal is too much.

A mural of George Floyd is seen in George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, Minn., on Feb. 8, 2021. (Jim Mone/AP Photo) US News

By Tom Ozimek April 1, 2021 Updated: April 1, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

A self-described key witness to the death of George Floyd—a longtime friend who was in the car with Floyd when police approached him—said through a lawyer that, if forced to testify about the incident, he’ll invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and remain silent.

Morries Lester Hall, who in a June 2020 interview with The New York Times called himself “a key witness to the cops murdering George Floyd” and said he was “going to be his voice” going forward, has asked the court to squash a subpoena calling on him to testify in the trial against Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of murder.

Hall made his request via notice filed by the Hennepin County Public Defender’s Office (pdf) on Wednesday.

“Mr. Morries Lester Hall, through undersigned counsel, hereby provides notice to all parties in this matter that if called to testify he will invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination,” said a notice filed by Assistant Public Defender Adrienne Cousins. “Therefore, counsel for Mr. Hall respectfully moves this court to quash the subpoena … and release Mr. Hall from any obligations therein.”

It is unclear why Hall doesn’t want to testify at the trial.

Floyd and Hall were both from Houston, Texas, and met through a Minneapolis pastor, Hall told The New York Times in the interview. Hall said he and Floyd had been in touch every day since 2016 and he considered Floyd a “confidant and mentor.”

Hall was in the passenger’s seat of the vehicle Floyd was in when he was approached by Minneapolis police officers on suspicion of using a fake $20 bill at nearby Cup Foods. One soundless clip captured by a Cup Foods security camera showed Floyd dressed in a black tank top approaching a cashier, making cheerful conversation, and putting his arm around a woman.

Christopher Martin, a 19-year-old cashier at Cup Foods who testified at Chauvin’s trial on Wednesday, said Floyd used the apparently counterfeit bill to pay for cigarettes. During his testimony, Martin said he felt moments of guilt since then, wondering if he could have changed how that day unfolded.

“I thought if I would not have taken the bill, this would have been avoided,” he said.

Floyd died after resisting arrest, with the incident—caught on video showing Chauvin detaining Floyd by pressing his knee against his neck—sparking a spate of protests and riots last summer.

In video footage shown to jurors on Wednesday, Chauvin could be heard telling a bystander why he restrained Floyd the way he did.

“I had to control this guy because he’s a sizable guy,” Chauvin said. “It looks like he’s probably on something.”

Martin, the cashier, told the jury that they chatted about sports but Floyd was slow to find his words, and Martin concluded Floyd was under the influence of drugs.

“He seemed very friendly, approachable, he was talkative,” Martin recalled. “But he did seem high.”

Chauvin’s defense attorney has made the argument that Floyd’s drug use—combined with his heart disease and high blood pressure, as well as the adrenaline flowing through his body—caused his death from a heart rhythm disturbance.

Prosecutors said Floyd’s use of opioid painkillers and the fentanyl found in his blood at autopsy is irrelevant.

On Monday, prosecutor Jerry Blackwell showed the video to jurors, telling them that Chauvin “didn’t let up” even after a handcuffed Floyd said multiple times that he couldn’t breathe.

Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, countered by arguing that Floyd was resisting arrest and Chauvin arrived to assist other officers who were struggling to get Floyd into a squad car as the crowd around them grew larger and more hostile.

“Derek Chauvin did exactly what he had been trained to do over his 19-year career,” Nelson said.

He also argued that Chauvin was not to blame for Floyd’s death, as Floyd did not have any signs of asphyxiation and had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system.

“The evidence is far greater than nine minutes and 29 seconds,” Nelson said.

Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill on March 19 approved a request by Nelson to admit some evidence from Floyd’s 2019 arrest.

In both arrests, as officers drew their guns and struggled to get Floyd out of the car, he called out for his mother, claimed he had been shot before and cried, and put what appeared to be pills in his mouth. Both searches turned up drugs in the cars. Officers noticed a white residue outside his mouth both times, although that has not been explained.

Paramedics who examined Floyd in 2019 warned him that his blood pressure was dangerously high, putting him at risk for a heart attack or stroke, and took him to a hospital for examination. In Floyd’s 2019 arrest, several opioid pills and cocaine were found. An autopsy showed Floyd had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system when he died in May of last year.

“Clearly there is a cause of death issue here, and it is highly contested,” Cahill said on March 19, ruling to allow evidence from the 2019 arrest, but limiting it only to what pertains to the cause of Floyd’s death.

Chauvin faces charges of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and manslaughter.

A Boeing 737 of Delta Airlines is seen parked at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, Calif., on Aug. 2, 2020. (Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images) Republicans

By Jack Phillips April 1, 2021 Updated: April 1, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

The Georgia state House voted Wednesday to strip Delta Air Lines of a significant tax break after the firm’s CEO condemned a recently passed voting integrity law.

Led by Republicans, the Georgia House voted to strip the firm of the break that’s worth tens of millions of dollars per year. The Senate did not take up the measure before it adjourned.

“It was very disappointing,” said House Speaker Rep. David Ralston, a Republican, said of Delta CEO Ed Bastian’s comment on the voting laws earlier this week. “You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand. You’ve got to keep that in mind sometimes,” Ralston added of the passage of the bill, according to local media reports.

The final vote in the state House was 97-73.

“The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie,” Bastian said in a statement of the Georgia voting bill, adding: “Unfortunately, that excuse is being used in states across the nation that are attempting to pass similar legislation to restrict voting rights.”

Bastian added that Delta “joined other major Atlanta corporations to work closely with elected officials from both parties, to try and remove some of the most egregious measures from the bill. We had some success in eliminating the most suppressive tactics that some had proposed.”

But, he remarked, “I need to make it crystal clear that the final bill is unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values.”

Coca-Cola chief executive James Quincey also described the measure as a “step backward” during a TV interview.

Bastian’s and Quincey’s comments come in the midst of a Democrat-led pressure campaign against state Republican leaders. A number of celebrities—including actor Mark Hamill and director James Mangold—wrote on social media that they would boycott filming in Georgia after the passage of the measure. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden weighed in on the issue and told reporters he would “strongly support” the Major League Baseball All-Star Game being moved from Atlanta.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, said the bill is being misrepresented in the press and by Delta’s CEO.

“Throughout the legislative process, we spoke directly with Delta representatives numerous times,” Kemp said in a statement, adding that the same corporations were involved in the law’s development. “Today’s statement … stands in stark contrast to our conversations with the company, ignores the content of the new law, and unfortunately continues to spread the same false attacks being repeated by partisan activists.”

It’s not the first time Delta, which has its headquarters in Atlanta, commented on laws or social issues. Delta attacked the National Rifle Association (NRA) following the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, several years ago, and during that public spat, Republicans eliminated a tax break for the firm.

Delta is the state’s largest private employer with more than 30,000 employees statewide.

Mark Truppner Published Apr 1, 2021 06:50 am

Tom McClintock View Photo

Congressman McClintock today voted NO on HR 1868. The Congressman delivered remarks on the House floor during debate on the measure.

McClintock was Thursday’s KVML “Newsmaker of the Day”. Here are his words:

“Mr. Speaker:

This bill is just the first taste of the bitter brew concocted by the those who pushed through $1.9 trillion of pure deficit spending last week.

This measure involves our PAYGO rules. You remember PAYGO. The current version dates to 2010, when everyone was worried about a $1.3 trillion deficit and a $13 trillion national debt. Isn’t that adorable?

PAYGO requires across-the-board spending cuts to offset any bill that spends money we don’t have. And we just spent a lot of money we don’t have. As PAYGO works, the first installment payment for the Biden binge is $345 billion of spending cuts — every year for the next five years. That includes $52 billion in PAYGO and BCA cuts to Medicare, which is expected to go broke in 2024 as it is.

That’s just to pay for the party the Democrats had the other day.

So how will they pay for it? No problem. Just For-get-a-bout-it.

Just wipe it off the books and start planning the next trillion-dollar spending spree. That’s how both parties have addressed PAYGO since we passed it. The net result is that the deficit has nearly tripled and the debt has more than doubled in less than a decade.

At least the Republican tax cuts in 2017 helped produce such a strong economic recovery that our revenues went up – not down. That should have reduced the deficit, but OUR failure to control spending instead drove the deficit still higher. In short, “It’s the Spending, Stupid.”

No nation has ever spent, taxed and borrowed its way to prosperity – but many have spent, taxed and borrowed themselves to bankruptcy and ruin. History warns us that nations that bankrupt themselves aren’t around very long – because before you can provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare you first have to pay for them.

Excessive debt saps the credit of a nation that is its lifeline in times of genuine peril.

It consumes our future prosperity as interest costs swell.

It saps the economic vitality of a nation by crowding out capital that would otherwise be available to consumers and homebuyers and businesses.

It robs the currency of its value, pilfering people’s savings and pensions.

And it alienates capital markets until interest rates rise and interest costs balloon into a debt spiral. Once this starts, there’s no way to stop it until the whole house of cards crashes down.

You want to know what that looks like? It looks a lot like Venezuela.

In the spring of 1945, there was serious concern whether we could continue the war into 1946 – bond sales were failing miserably, war taxes, spending, borrowing and inflation had hollowed out our economy and the nation’s credit was nearing exhaustion. Now consider this: we are carrying a larger percentage of debt today than we were at the end of World War II, and I fear how we could respond to a similar sustained national threat today.

When a colleague told the great economist Adam Smith that a British defeat would be the “Ruin of the nation,” Smith calmly observed, “Be assured, my young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”

But as I look at the unprecedented and unsustainable debt these policies are producing, I can’t avoid a sense of foreboding that our nation is fast running out of ruin, and that a terrible day of reckoning is coming.

The “Newsmaker of the Day” is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.

Written by Mark Truppner