DeSantis, Ducey, and Abbott Are Human Trafficking ... Meanwhile Biden Averts a Railroad Strike
Who is helping the country, not hindering it? Biden
A whole lot has happened in the last 24 hours but these two stories stand out in stark contrast to each other so I wanted to start here.
For those who may not have seen the stories, Ducey, Abbott, and Desantis have decided to “own the libs” even more by busing or flying immigrants out of their states to places like NY, DC, and now Martha’s Vineyard (which is an island for those of you who don’t know); and they are doing it to the tune of $12 million spent by both Abbott and DeSantis and up to $15 million by Ducey (totally fiscally responsible there).
They are not giving any of these places a heads up that they are sending people who have “volunteered” to be shipped to who knows where so these states have to scramble to get services and people on the ground to help these immigrants who have been plopped down into a strange city with no money, no idea where to go and can’t speak the language.
Not to mention a lot of the immigrants are hopping off the buses before they even get to DC or NYC and pissing off people in the other Red States…so well done there you morons.
But increasingly the migrants are hopping off the buses before reaching Washington and New York, which are too expensive to settle in for many migrants who don’t have friends or family in those cities. Instead, they are disembarking in red states along the route, where the cost of living is much lower — but where their presence has generated opposition from some state and local officials.
“If Texas is going to put people on buses, they need to make sure that these individuals are going to their destinations,” said Georgia state Rep. Mike Cameron, a Republican who protested bus stops in Dade County, Georgia. “I understand Texas’ problem, but don’t just put people on a bus and let them get off anywhere. That’s not a solution.”
Both Arizona and Texas offer asylum seekers voluntary bus rides as they are released with permission to travel and pursue their asylum claims after screenings by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, who determine they’re not a security threat and don’t qualify for programs that force some asylum seekers to wait south of the border. In Texas, a humanitarian group offers the seats on state-funded buses to those who need transportation.
Texas can’t stop people from getting off at intermediate stops, but the buses no longer stop in Dade County or nearby Chattanooga, Tennessee, after protests from Cameron and other Republican officials.
Now, all these liberal states have no issue with accepting immigrants, the issue is that they are not getting any warning at all, meanwhile, Abbott and DeSantis seem to think they are scoring political points by doing this…
“President Biden’s reckless open border policies have created an ongoing crisis,” Abbott’s press secretary Renae Eze said in a statement Wednesday. “Until President Biden and Congress do their jobs and secure our southern border, Texas will continue utilizing every strategy to address this border crisis and protect Texans.”
And when DeSantis, just yesterday, chucked 50 immigrants into Martha’s Vineyard with no warning whatsoever this is what happened.
“Town Emergency Management Operations from the six Island towns and the Sheriff’s Office, as well as County Management are actively collaborating to develop a coordinated regional response,” the statement said, adding “two emergency shelters have been established at local Island churches, with additional space available in case further arrivals occur.”
The emergency management teams had “reached out to our State and Federal partners for additional and long term support and assistance.”
CBS Boston reported that the group of migrants wandered about three and a half miles from the airport to Edgartown, where Barbara Rush, of St. Andrews Church, said “Martha’s Vineyard Community Services had 50 people sort of literally walk up to their front door.”
CBS News immigration reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez notes that, unlike the other cities Republican governors have chosen as destinations for migrants, Martha’s Vineyard is not an urban, metropolitan area with a robust social services infrastructure: There are no large refugee or migrant services organizations on the island. There’s no Justice Department immigration court where the migrants can attend asylum hearings. There’s no ICE field office where migrants can check in. As it hasn’t been a top destination for recent arrivals, the flights will also raise questions about whether all the migrants transported there on Wednesday knew where they were going.
Besides the utterly irresponsible behavior shown by Abbott and DeSantis in throwing these immigrants to the winds the reasons for them doing this are complete bullshit.
The border is NOT OPEN!! As I wrote in an article about immigration and the BS GOP talking points, border crossings and immigration fluctuate all the time and it has little to nothing to do with who is President here and more to do with what is going on in South America.
Not to mention, Biden and the Mexican President already came to an agreement where Mexico will HELP PAY to increase border security, to the tune of $1.5 billion coming from Mexico. Abbott and DeSantis love to talk about how all these illegals cause crime in border cities when that is factually incorrect.
From 2021:
Reported violent crime in the United States rose in 2020 for the first time in four years, but violent crime rates in 11 of the largest communities along the U.S.-Mexico border stayed below the national average, an Axios analysis found.
Why it matters: Year after year, data showing low violent crime rates in majority-Mexican American and Mexican immigrant border communities dispels myths of the U.S.-Mexico border as a region filled with crime and chaos.
By the numbers: The Axios analysis using FBI data and the 2020 census found 11 border communities had a violent crime rate of 340.2 per 100,000 residents, around 15% lower than the national average of 398.5.
Also, in the 11 communities from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, taken together, the average murder rate was 4.1 per 100,000 residents — well below the FBI’s reported national average of 6.5.
The intrigue: The disparity in violent crime rates is starker when comparing the 11 border communities with similar-size cities with similar poverty demographics further north.
El Paso, Texas, a city of 681,000, had a violent crime rate of 318 per 100,000 residents. Memphis, a city of 650,00, has a violent crime rate of 2,356.5 — more than seven times higher.
Del Rio, Texas — a city of nearly 36,000 people, where mounted Border Patrol agents on horseback were seen charging Haitian migrants last month — had a violent crime rate of 162.4. Lima, Ohio, a city nearly the same size in population, had a violent crime rate of 688.8.
Calexico, California; Nogales, Arizona; and the Texas cities of Del Rio, Eagle Pass, and McAllen all had violent crime rates below 190.
So, as usual, the talking points are utter lies. But what about the money Texas and Florida are forced to spend on immigrants every year? Here’s the thing, DeSantis and Abbott use the “open border that we need to step up on do what the Feds aren’t” bullshit line every year and every election season they drum it up and use it as a way to get more money from their own state and the feds with little to show for their efforts.
Over the next 17 years, Perry and his successor, Gov. Greg Abbott, persuaded the Texas Legislature to spend billions of dollars on border security measures that included at least nine operations and several smaller initiatives. Each time, the governors promised that the state would do what the federal government had failed to: secure the border.
The pronouncements often coincided with their gubernatorial campaigns or times when they were considering bids for higher office. Perry and Abbott also ramped up their political attacks on the federal government during periods when Democrats held the presidency or a majority in Congress.
………….
The way the governors and their administrations have tracked success has fluctuated over the years, offering little clarity into whether the state is closer to securing the border today than it was nearly 20 years ago.
Neither the governor’s office nor the DPS, the main agency leading border security efforts, can provide a full breakdown of the state-led operations since 2005, their duration, their cost to taxpayers and their accomplishments. Because the state has declined to provide such information, the news organizations compiled a partial list of recent border operations and their outcomes using news releases and media coverage, as well as reports by both the Texas Legislative Budget Board, the state’s top budget analysts, and advocacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union.
Weird, you think the party that’s all about fiscal responsibility would be tracking every single penny to prove that the Feds totally suck at Border Security and they’re the only ones that know how to do things right. But oddly, they don’t. Wonder where all that money is actually going? Hmmmm
Meanwhile, along with securing help from Mexico Biden also did this.
President Joe Biden proposed the second budget of his term today, a $5.8 trillion request to Congress containing $56.7 billion for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and $1.4 billion for the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) immigration courts.
The proposed 2023 Budget reflects the administration’s priorities for the coming year, covering funding allocation requests for all 15 executive departments and their sub-agencies. The funding request for DHS is roughly a 5% increase over the enacted spending level for 2021.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, a component of DHS, received a 700% increase over the 2021 spending level, at $904 million. Of that request, the administration has requested $765 million specifically for caseload and backlog reductions. The discretionary funding is intended to decrease rising asylum backlogs, improve refugee processing, and to address the historic backlog of applications for work authorization, naturalization, green cards, and other immigration benefits.
And if we want to look back in time, Obama did this.
From 2014
Under the Obama administration, the resources that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) dedicates to security at the Southwest border are at an all-time high. Today, there are 3,000 additional Border Patrol agents along the Southwest Border, and our border fencing, unmanned aircraft surveillance systems, and ground surveillance systems have more than doubled since 2008. Taken as a whole, the additional boots on the ground, technology, and resources provided in the last six years represent the most serious and sustained effort to secure our border in our nation’s history, cutting illegal border crossings by more than half.
And this effort is producing results. From 1990 to 2007, the population of undocumented individuals in the United States grew from 3.5 million to 11 million people. Since then, the size of the undocumented population has stopped growing for the first time in decades. Border apprehensions — a key indicator of border security — are at their lowest level since the 1970s. The President’s immigration reform proposal gives law enforcement the tools they need to make our communities safer from crime. And by enhancing our infrastructure and technology, the President’s proposal continues to strengthen our ability to remove criminals and apprehend and prosecute threats to our national security.
So it seems that not only is the Border NOT OPEN but that the Feds, at least under the Dems, consistently step up to make sure the Border Patrol, etc are fully funded and set with state-of-the-art tech to decrease illegal crossings. Huh…
Oh and one last talking point to dispel…immigration numbers are skyrocketing…hmmm about that. From July 2022
“This marks the second month in a row of decreased encounters along the Southwest border. While the encounter numbers remain high, this is a positive trend and the first two-month drop since October 2021,” said CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus. “In May, CBP launched a digital advertising campaign to dissuade irregular migration by targeting the lies smugglers use to lure the vulnerable into a dangerous journey that often ends in removal or death. That danger was highlighted in the recent takedown of a deadly human smuggling network based in Guatemala responsible for the death of a Guatemalan woman who died in Texas in April 2021. These are among many actions we are taking to reduce irregular migration and dismantle the human smuggling operations that put these migrants in danger.”
And here’s a chart showing numbers for decades re: apprehensions.
Then there’s also this fun little fact check… that due to Trump’s remain in Mexico Policy many immigrants tried multiple times to cross…meaning numbers get inflated.
In fact, in a July 15, 2022, news release from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection covering the June numbers, the federal agency explained: “The large number of expulsions during the pandemic has contributed to a higher-than-usual number of migrants making multiple border crossing attempts, which means that total encounters somewhat overstate the number of unique individuals arriving at the border.”
In the same news release, the agency broke down the numbers:
In total, there were 207,416 apprehensions along the southwest border in June.
But of that number, 26% had at least one prior apprehension in the last 12 months.
The number of unique individuals apprehended in June was 153,379.
So, that’s an important caveat to Grothman’s claim.
But hey, when have facts stopped a GOP fear-based talking point?
What’s really going on here is a case where GOP is showing that not only is cruelty in their blood but that they’re no better than the low-life human smugglers and coyotes that they supposedly hate. They are sticking people on buses and planes with no food or thought for what happens to them simply to get paid in the currency that they hold most dear, political points with their despicable base.
So…while the GOP was throwing all these tantrums and basically being human smugglers what has Biden been up to?
Not much, JUST MAKING SURE THE ENTIRE RAILROAD SYSTEM DOESN’T COLLAPSE.
Freight rail companies and unions representing tens of thousands of workers reached a tentative agreement to avoid what would have been an economically damaging strike, a relief for businesses and consumers and a win for President Biden, whose administration helped broker the deal.
The breakthrough came just hours before a critical deadline that would have allowed workers to strike and followed all-night talks with unions and industry leaders that were brokered by Mr. Biden’s labor secretary, Martin J. Walsh.
But I will put more about that in another diary (click for full story) as this one has gotten long. Just remember which party is doing the work to keep the whole country functioning and which party is being human traffickers.
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