wo men are kidnapped at the border and tortured in order to extract a ransom. The reporter says the first one has been expelled (from the US). He probably crossed the border and was expelled immediately, due to Covid restrictions. Maybe both have been have been expelled. Often the Border Patrol expels repeat crossers in another part of the border, so that they won’t cross so quickly again. The cartel in the new area may be different. If the person has not paid the local cartel and wants to cross without paying, they may kidnap him to extort money from his family. If they cannot collect, some will be killed.
Many are not going to be too sympathetic to be plight of those who try to cross the border illegally. However, I just think it destroys the pretense of the open-borders radicals of being so morally superior. By encouraging people to cross illegally, they promote the murders, violence, kidnapping, drug smuggling and other crime on both sides of the border. Biden is directly responsible for this latest surge.
Irineo Mujica is head of Pueblos Sin Frontiers (Nations without Borders) and he organized and lead some of the large caravans that came to the border.
About 80 of Biden’s fake refugees boarding a plane bound for Midland, Texas. DHS has leased a fleet of dozens of Boeing 737 jets to distribute these fraudulent asylum seekers to all parts of the country. The great majority will never obtain asylum status from a court, but just disappear to live illegally in the US interior. San Diegans were told that it would initially be 5-12 year-old children. That seems just a ploy used so that the public would better accept them in the beginning, knowing that public attention is short-lived. At some point, when Biden lifts Covid restrictions, there will be thousands of entire families staying at these government shelters for illegal migrants. They use children as human shields and the vanguard of the attack on American sovereignty.
The Biden administration ordered up these children. When they announced that they would be allowing children and minors to stay, unscrupulous and immoral people in Central American put their children and minors in danger in the hands of the violent cartels to be trafficked across the border. It’s cause and effect, the Biden administration caused these children to be smuggled so that the families can gain a foothold or expand their foothold in the United States.
They talked about children so much that it misled local people into thinking they would all be “children”, though it was mentioned is some reports that it would initially only children. I don’t think it was ever mainly “children”, but mostly teens and young adults. If they have thrown away their ID and lie about their age and CBP can’t prove their real age, the law says just to accept their claim as their age.
The asylum system has been perverted by our Government as an illegal alternative to the normal immigration system. The government for whatever reasons – political, financial corruption, etc. — wants more illegal immigrants from Central America and all over the world to come into the United States. This misuse of the asylum system was designed and started during the Obama administration and is being greatly expanded under Biden.
It will be chain migration, but now it’s expansion of the illegal population by chain migration. The Government is now actively bringing in illegal aliens whom they actually reunite with equally illegal family members already living in the U.S. The hosts may not even be family members, but unrelated cartel associates. This is the ultimate corruption of our border security system, thanks to presidents Obama and Biden.
These fake refugees were taken to Midland, Texas, which has been designated as a major dumping ground for fraudulent refugees. As many as 3,000 are expected to be held there. There was a holding station built for them in March. It seems that the government used the same ploy in Midland/Odessa to placate local residents, bringing in younger children at first, to placate local citizens.
Here are some links about how the illegal migrant dumping ground in Midland was created.
The daily flights from Brownsville to San Diego of families and single men stopped recently. The were flying about 100 of them every day to San Diego to be expelled immediately back to Mexico, due to Covid19 restrictions, per Title 42, the Health Public Safety law. Presumably, they were doing the same at other border locations, if so they have also been stopped.
These flights from one part of the border to another for expulsion are called “lateral flights”. If they deport the illegal crosses in South Texas, they can try to cross again immediately. They have already paid the coyote the cartel toll and they can try multiple times. When they are pushed back across in another part of the border, like San Diego, there is a different cartel there which has not been paid for the trip from Central America or to cross the border.
This is a video of Senator Josh Hawley jousting with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as to why these lateral flights were stopped. ACLU apparently filed a lawsuit to have them stopped. Senator Hawley accuses Mayorkas of engaging in “friendly litigation” with the ACLU to stop the lateral expulsions back to Mexico. Mayorkas even makes a Freudian slip and says he is “working with the ACLU” to stop the lateral expulsion flights. Mayorkas is not just working with the ACLU, but also working in conjunction with the smuggling cartels to get these illegal aliens released into the US.
Friendly litigation is when one party colludes with another just to obtain a court settlement that achieves a result that both parties want, causing the settlement of have the impact of law, though it was never approved by Congress. According to the Wiki, friendly litigation, where there is no adversarial relationship between the two parties, is unconstitutional. It is abuse of the court system.
As an aside, this may be also be how the “Flores Settlement Agreement of 1997” was done, which was used to create the Catch-And-Release procedure. The Flores Settlement has been exploited as a loophole in the law to release hundreds of thousands, if not millions of illegal aliens posing as refugees into the U.S. interior. Yet, Congress never approved it. It is only an agreement between Bill Clinton’s Justice Department and certain activist groups.
Now getting back to the immediate situation in San Diego, the Ambassadors of Jesus (Embajadores de Jesús) run a shelter in a place with the uninviting name of “Scorpion Canyon” aka “Little Haiti”, which now serves those expelled via these lateral flights. Many of them are just waiting for Biden to change the policy to allow them to cross the border and be released.
The English-translated article below from a Tijuana news website, El Imparcial, describes the predicament of the fake refugees, saying that one person was caught illegally crossing the border in Texas five times. The coyotes have been lying to recruit them and cheat them out of their money, saying they can cross and be released if they bring a child or minor with them, but this has not been true under Covid restrictions. Only when Biden lifts the restrictions, will the full catch-and-release policy will be back in effect again. This may happen soon, however.
They say the number of people at the shelter is 750, but this article was written a month earlier. I believe the number grew to about 2,000, before the lateral flights were terminated by the ACLU legal swindle. On the more positive side, if they are trying to cross multiple times, the number of people actually gaining entry into the US has been, so far, considerably lower than the approximately 170k apprehensions per month of reported by the Border Patrol, because many are being apprehended 2-3 times.
(Activist points out that human traffickers have them cross with adults.)
TIJUANA, B.C.- Currently the modus operandi of human traffickers or ‘coyotes’ is to use children as a shield to cross into the United States in an irregular manner, lamented the director of the Embajadores de Jesús A.C.
Gustavo Banda explained that the “coyotes” deceive women and men into crossing the border with minors so that the American immigration authorities will give them the protection of humanitarian asylum.
He also said that they are made to believe that the state of Texas allows migrants to enter the United States, which motivates other families to leave their countries.
“They told them that Texas is completely open, so the coyotes, through social media, are making their ‘harvest’. They take them to the United States, telling them that Texas is open,” he said.
The director of the CA commented that this problem has caused 100 people a day to be returned to Mexico under Title 42. (just in San Diego)
One of them is Senora Ritzi and her daughters, who are Honduran and twice tried to reach the United States to obtain humanitarian asylum.
“It is difficult because they come to dump you here. I was not expecting it, because according to what I heard, they were letting children pass,” she said.
Currently, the AC and the Embajadores de Jesus church serve 750 people, some of whom have been returned up to five times for trying to cross the border irregularly.
Trafficking of illegal aliens and fraudulent refugees enriches the cartels and expands their influence in the US. We can safely assume that the cartels are already bribing some of our top politicians of both parties to allow this human trade to continue. Many of those smuggled will end up indentured to the cartels or voluntarily working for them, performing tasks like drug distribution/sales, money laundering, coerced sexual services, protection racketeering, etc. Human trafficking is the practice of treating humans like a commodity, just to make a profit with no real concern for their well-being.
The progressive and liberal Democrats have outsourced much of our immigration system to Mexican cartels. The cartels decide who will be allowed to come to the US and remain here, probably forever. The cartel coyotes will naturally choose people who are most willing to work with the cartels. By allowing this to happen, we are importing narco culture into the US on a massive scale. At the time this was posted, hundreds of thousands cross every month, trafficked by the cartels.
Though Univision reports that the coyote driver is being prosecuted for human trafficking, it seems more likely he is charged under Title 8 with “aiding and abetting illegal aliens”. This is “human trafficking” in concept, but Title 8 is a more specific and more appropriate law to use against traffickers of illegal aliens.
The reason I like these Univision videos is that they generally show more detail than English-language outlets and it is more difficult for open-borders radicals to refute, if you cite Univision as your reference, in contrast to say Fox News or Newsmax.
Our new progressive-dominated San Diego County Board of Supervisors decided to put Americans last, once again, when they voted to give illegal aliens financial aid for their legal defense against deportation. Deportation proceedings is a civil action and American citizens are not eligible to obtain financial aid if they are defendants in a civil lawsuit. The County has allocated five million dollars for this program. It is expected to become a part of the annual budget.
County Boards, with their feelings self-importance, are often not satisfied with the more mundane local tasks, such fixing potholes, catching stray dogs and dealing with homelessness. Sometimes they like to weigh-in on national and even global issues, using our money. Deportation of illegal aliens is a federal issue. Certainly, the County should not be using local taxpayers money to defend non-citizens from deportation in a federal court.
Terra Lawson-Remer is the radical, newly-elected, progressive supervisor who proposed this measure. That she thinks the Constitution guarantees illegal aliens a taxpayer-funded defense just shows how twisted and confused the thinking of progressives can be. One commentator also commented that the fund could also be used to sue landlords for discrimination when they refuse to rent to illegal aliens.
San Diego, we did it! Today in a historic vote, the Board of Supervisors approved our proposal to provide access to legal representation to all immigrants detained in San Diego County and facing deportation.
According to the reports below, it can cost anywhere from $500 to $10,000 dollars just to cross the actual border, depending on where you want to cross. It can cost $5,000 to $14,000 to have a coyote smuggle a person from Central America or Southern Mexico to the US border.
Cartel Coyotes charge different prices to smuggle people across the southern border with Mexico. It varies widely, depending on where you want to cross, how you want to cross, the coyote that is used and the overall situation. However, here are some recent examples, from Noticias Univision (subtitled). I will add more information to this post as I find it. So, come back to this page for updates.
The great majority of illegal crossers pay a cartel to cross, because it can be very dangerous for an illegal border crosser to transit Mexico or to cross the border without the permission of the local cartel that controls the territory for the purposes of trafficking humans, drugs or whatever contraband is being smuggled. That means when they arrive in the US they virtually all have contacts and are already engaged with the cartels.
The building of 450 miles of 18 and 30-foot-high bollard fence has made it much more difficult to cross in those places where it was built and that has driven up the price of crossing. It is basic supply and demand. Fewer places to cross easily and many people wanting to cross now means the price to cross goes up.
HOW DO THEY PAY SUCH COSTS?
They pay the cost of crossing from their savings, borrowing money from family/friends, selling property, etc. The cartel may loan them up to 50% of the cost. The illegal may be working for the cartel to pay back the loan after they cross, engaged in criminal activity. This helps expand these criminal organizations in our own country.
If you want to see where that can lead, just look at the tens of thousands of murders by the cartels every year in Mexico with assassinations of politicians, journalists and others who do not cooperate. The cartels are a kind of shadow government in Mexico and truth be known they are already exerting significant influence over our own government.
The United Nations Refugee Agency, NGO’s, social-justice churches and nonprofits help “refugees” with their needs on both sides of the border. The UN can coordinate and provide Internet-enabled cell phones with paid service plans for communications and debit cards with an allowance for basic expenses. Other nonprofit groups may provide food, clothes, medical aid, legal advice, etc.
Foundations, corporations and individuals can donate for this specific cause to help traffick people from Latin American and other places into the US. The smuggling cartels, progressive Democrats, nonprofit groups, leftist churches and even some US/Mexican governmental agencies are, in effect, all working in conjunction to traffick these people, thereby growing this criminal network and influence of cartels in the United States.
NEWS REPORTS (English Subtitled)
In the report by Univision below they state at 01:20 that it cost from $8,000 to $14,000 to be smuggled from Central America or Southern Mexico. Once they reach the border, it cost $1,000 to $1,800 more just to cross the river (at 01:40).
In this video from April 22, 2021, a woman says at 02:00 that she paid the coyote $9,000 for her and her child to cross. She crossed twice and was expelled twice and says she would not not try it again.
The woman in this video states at 01:35 that she paid $4,000 to the Coyote and owes $1,500 just to start the trip to the US border. This report is from March 17, 2021.
In this report (from March 31, 2021) early on in the wave that came after Biden was inaugurated, they state at 00:35 that crossing cost only $500, a real bargain at that time to have someone paddle you across the Rio Grande.
A person who claimed to be knowledgeable said in April, 2021 that to cross the border in San Diego, it cost $7,500 for Latin Americans and $10,000 for Chinese. He told me this at the refugee camp in Tijuana at El Chaparral border crossing. The Trump fence has been largely completed, for now, in San Diego and is quite formidable and there are a lot of Border Patrol Agents in the area.
These are images (from 4/26/2021) of the refugee camp at El Chaparral pedestrian crossing in Tijuana, also called PEDWEST on the US side. It had been about three weeks since I last took video. Every week it grows a little, but may be starting to stabilize a bit by now, at least until Biden lifts the Covid restrictions and a new wave comes.
One thing that stands out is the lack of nonprofit groups here on this day. No one is serving food or handing out clothes. No information tables. There was, however, a small medical truck nearby. The demand may have just overwhelmed these local groups. You can see in the video that some of the refugees are feeding themselves.
My understanding is that these are new arrivals that have not applied for asylum, yet or crossed the border and been deported. There is another group about the same size, if not larger, in the hills a couple of miles southeast of here at the Ambassadors of Jesus Church in a place called Little Haiti or Scorpion Canyon. People go there who crossed illegally and have been immediately expelled due to Covid restrictions.
These people brought the children because they thought Biden was going to start catch-and-release again, which is based on a Supreme Court agreement from the 1990’s that requires those with children to be released from detainment within 20 days. This Flores Agreement has been weaponized by the progressives, since about 2016. They exploit it as a giant loophole that allows massive numbers of illegal immigrants to gain entry to the US and just disappear by defrauding the asylum process.
Biden eliminated Trump’s rational, remain-in-Mexico policy and started releasing into the US every day hundreds of the 25k asylum seekers to disappear that were sent back to Mexico by Trump to wait for a court ruling. During the Trump term, Title 42, the Public Health and Welfare Law, was put into effect due to Covid, which requires the immediate expulsion of illegal border crossers. Biden has also made exceptions to Title 42 that allows pregnant women and minors, many with Covid, to be released immediately into the US. Biden may lift the Covid restrictions within the next few weeks and reinstate catch-and-release, which should cause another even much bigger rush to the border.
These children are being exploited as human shields, just so the adults can obtain easy access into the US, most to live illegally. This amounts to a form of child trafficking. It’s using children as a commodity in order to obtain some personal benefit, entry into the US, access to better paying jobs and social benefits, or even for criminal profit. The Cartels are also trafficking the adults for the money. Though they claim to be morally superior, progressives and liberals promote this very large trafficking industry, because they believe it benefits them politically and there is a financial benefit for some their organizations. For these reasons they are actively complicit in this human trafficking.
The migrants pay a cartel to transport them here. They may use all their savings, sell their property, borrow from family and friends to get here with some back home thinking they will, in turn, help them come later, or at least send money. The cartel may loan them a part of their charges, too. If the money is not paid back, the person’s family at home could be at serious risk. The borrower may have to do criminal acts to pay back the money.
Such migrants are those who are willing to work with the cartels and are likely to work with them again on the US side of the border. By encouraging this kind of illegal mass migration we are making the cartels stronger, even on our side of the border. In effect, the cartel is in charge of a large part of our immigration policy. They choose who can immigrate to the US and most likely the progressives will make them citizens in the end
The illegal migrants are often illegally in Mexico, too, and could always decide to turn themselves in to Mexican authorities and be deported back to their homeland. But if they do that they will lose all the money they paid the traffickers to get this far. The danger and hardship that they suffered along the way will have been for nothing. This is an investment for most of them and they are very committed to obtaining the pay-off. To allow it to happen, just encourages more to come. The Trump administration actually demonstrated that it could be stopped with a simple political agreement. In the long run, it is much kinder to stop it than to let it continue like this.
Progressive journalists Amy Goodman of Democracy Now and Jean Guerrero of the Daily Beast attempt to brand several Mexican live-streamers as racist, white nationalists and racial supremacists. LoL! Oscar “El Blue” Ramirez and Anthony Agüero work for Border Network News and Paloma Zuniga” is known as “Paloma for Trump”. They are all “cien por ciento Mexicanos”. Oscar and Paloma both live in Mexico and Anthony lives in the US.
Jean Guerrero accuses Oscar El Blue of slandering Democrats by claiming they are trafficking children. This is actually very true. We should all be shouting it from the rooftops. Progressive Democrats, as well as the United Nations Refugee Agency and various NGO’s are very complicit in the cartel trafficking of children, as well as trafficking of adults from Central America into the U.S. for use as cheap illegal labor and some for illegal activities, such as drug distribution/sales, money laundering and sexual services. It certainly is a kind of invasion, as they accuse him of saying, an invasion promoted by progressive Democrats.
Progressives believe they will benefit politically by fostering a subservient underclass, which is dependent on the Government and eternally loyal to the progressive political agenda. You don’t have to be a Qanon follower to see that progressive Democrats are fostering the trafficking of humans (illegal aliens) for their political and financial benefit. They claim that anyone, who doesn’t accept their anti-American beliefs, is a racist and Qanon conspiracy theorist.
I say “progressive Democrats”, because not all Democrats support the trafficking of illegals into the US. It is not strictly an issue of one political party. Some progressive Republicans also support it, though they tend to be not as outspoken in their support. Both parties ought to purge themselves of those corrupt politicians, who support this terribly inhumane social ill of trafficking illegal aliens, which is destructive to American society and sovereignty.
Oscar has admitted his conviction for drug smuggling, mentioned in the video, but that was in 2008, more than twelve years ago. He has served his time and paid his debt to society, as we say. He has also said publically that he regrets it. What he live-streams can be judged on its own merits. You can read the original, two-page complaint against him below.
As thousands of asylum seekers continue to wait in Mexico for a chance to enter the United States, investigative journalist Jean Guerrero says Mexican social media influencers connected to right-wing U.S. media outlets and political figures are whipping up “hysteria” about the southern border. She says they are spreading false conspiracy theories about an orchestrated “invasion” and “child trafficking” funded by Democrats that are endangering vulnerable people. “It’s been incredibly damaging,” says Guerrero.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We look now at how two Mexican social media influencers, who are devoted Trump supporters, have been spreading false conspiracy theories about the ongoing crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, warning their viewers in the United States of an orchestrated “invasion” and “child trafficking” funded by Democrats. Sound QAnony?
Well, an explosive new report published Monday in The Daily Beast by reporter Jean Guerrero reveals one of the men was deported after serving time in prison for a federal drug-trafficking conviction but was able to reenter the U.S. while Trump was president. He’s a live-streamer named Oscar Ramirez, or “Oscar El Blue,” who calls himself an independent reporter and was featured on Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon’s podcast War Room several times this month. Ramirez also contributes to a U.S. right-wing media network called Real America’s Voice. This is a clip from one of his reports.
OSCAR RAMIREZ: All the way over here, they put a wall to protect the United States and to protect this invasion that is happening. So, it is — it was amazing.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Oscar Ramirez, or “Oscar El Blue.” Just this past April, Ramirez reportedly reentered the U.S. at the El Paso, Texas, border crossing, along with Anthony Agüero, another right-wing influencer, who allegedly took part in the January 6th insurrection and is a close friend of the QAnon conspiracy theorist congressperson, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Well, if you’re having a little trouble following this, let’s go to Jean Guerrero, investigative journalist and author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. She has this new piece in The Daily Beast headlined “The MAGA Clowns Making Chaos at the Border Have Ugly Pasts.”
Jean, welcome back to Democracy Now! Just lay out what you have found. This is explosive.
JEAN GUERRERO: Yes, I mean, I looked at the cases of two of these right-wing influencers and conspiracy theorists, but Oscar Ramirez’s is definitely the most shocking case. He is someone, as you said, Amy, with a federal drug-trafficking conviction in his past, which, according to the Immigration and Nationality Act, U.S. federal law on immigration, someone with that kind of conviction would be inadmissible to the United States after deportation, unless he were able to obtain a special visa waiver from the attorney general himself or the State Department. And so, it would be impossible for him to reenter the United States without basically very strong political connections or working as an informant. I asked Mr. Ramirez what the details of his visa were. He refused to give them. He accused me and The Daily Beast of promoting child trafficking by trying to expose some of the things that he’s involved in.
But in addition to the tens of thousands of U.S.-based followers that he has and who he’s spreading lies to, you know, creating hysteria about alleged trafficking at the border, when he himself has a federal drug-trafficking conviction, it’s been incredibly damaging. And in addition to that social media following, he’s been appearing regularly on a U.S. right-wing media outlet called Real America’s Voice, which airs Steve Bannon’s program The War Room, among other things. And I reached out to them about their decision to use a convicted drug trafficker as a talking head on border security and to create hysteria about trafficking at the border, and they declined to respond. But they are creating —
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jean, could you — Jean, could you talk also about Anthony Agüero and his ties to right-wing elements in the United States, as well as another person, Paloma Zuniga?
JEAN GUERRERO: Yes. So, Oscar Ramirez, he is close friends and collaborators with Anthony Agüero, as well as Ben Bergquam, who is a correspondent at Real America’s Voice. These three men are very close. And both of the U.S.-based men, Ben Bergquam and Anthony Agüero, are close, longtime associates and friends of Marjorie Taylor Greene. They’ve defended the integrity of the Proud Boys, which is designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They’ve been involved in a number of right-wing extremist activities in the United States. And there’s some speculation that because of Oscar Ramirez’s close connections with these individuals, he was able to get connections in the Trump administration. And despite the fact that the Trump administration was not — was instructing agents not to use their discretion in favor of extending leniency to any immigrant whatsoever, let alone those with criminal convictions, he was able to get a special — this special pass to get back into the United States and to report alongside these two individuals for this U.S. right-wing network called Real America’s Voice.
“Paloma for Trump” is a U.S. and Mexican national who’s also extremely problematic. She has tens of thousands of followers, as well, also associated with Ben Bergquam, the Marjorie Taylor Greene associate. And she has been involved in numerous physical confrontations with migrants. At one point she was caught on camera chasing and, literally, physically shoving a migrant child who was approaching the border with his father to request asylum. She was screaming in his face, chasing him around and shoving him and telling him that he was not welcome in the United States. She has since apologized for that incident, but she remains a problematic character. She’s been involved in an incident in which rocks and racial epithets were thrown, were hurled at the asylum seekers.
She very recently went to this migrant camp of thousands of people who are waiting for their turn to request asylum legally in the U.S., and started broadcasting their images, including images of children, without their permission, something which makes the asylum seekers very nervous because of their precarious situation in northern Mexico, where many of these people are fleeing death threats. There’s gang violence that they have to worry about. They don’t want their images broadcast. And these live-streamers have been going down there, not respecting their rights to privacy. Often they’ll interview them under false premises and then mistranslate to their U.S.-based audiences to create more hysteria and to basically conflate all of these asylum seekers with child traffickers and conflate their advocates with traffickers, as well.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And also, in terms of — some of them, as you report, engage in Mexican chauvinism toward Central American refugees?
JEAN GUERRERO: Yes, exactly. So, Oscar Ramirez, he claims that he’s only against illegal immigration. But when you look at his videos, I mean, he tells his viewers that Central Americans are, quote-unquote, “lazy” and that anyone who is trying to come to the United States through Mexico from Central America is just looking for, quote, “easy money,” “easy welfare.” He peddles these very racist and negative stereotypes about Central Americans.
And this is something that’s very common. It’s an established problem, this internalized racism that can occur in the Latinx community, although Ramirez and Zuniga deny being racist. But they both have expressed very negative views toward Central Americans, towards people who are coming from other countries who may have darker skin than Mexicans.
And it’s a very common strategy with people who are peddling white supremacist ideas to use people of color as shields against accusations of racism. So, having people like Paloma Zuniga or Oscar Ramirez on these U.S. right-wing media outlets talking about a, quote-unquote, “invasion of horrible people at the border,” you know, it helps blunt accusations of racism in these U.S. right-wing media outlets and just really creates a lot of hysteria and hurts the chances of these asylum seekers to ever find a legal pathway into the United States.
I spoke to many of them, who say that they’re afraid of these live-streamers. The live-streamers make them really sad and concerned that they might — that it might turn public opinion in the United States against immigration and create this hysteria that will ultimately lead them to not be able to find refuge in this country, where they’re hoping to save their children’s lives.
AMY GOODMAN: Jean Guerrero, we want to thank you so much for being with us, wrote The Daily Beast piece, which we will link to, “The MAGA Clowns Making Chaos at the Border Have Ugly Pasts.” Jean is also author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda.
When we come back, we go to Bessemer, Alabama, where Amazon workers are voting on whether to become the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the United States. Stay with us.
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Between Tecate and the small town of Campo there is valley with 1.3 miles of border where there is no barrier, at all. Campo creek crosses the border at this location. The community is called “Canyon City”. The Border Patrol apparently calls this part of the border “Trestle Valley”, because an old railroad bridge is there.
Even though there are a couple of gaps in the border fence in California, the fence overall is much better than it was a couple of years ago. A small gap does not negate the rest of the fence that has been built. A border barrier is not an all-or-nothing situation. The new fence may not be perfect, but it is a great help to the Border Patrol. When it becomes more difficult to cross and fewer places to cross, the price goes up and fewer people can afford to cross. It becomes physically more risky to cross, also.
On either side of this gap are several hundred yards of older bollard fence, built at the end of the Bush term or early in the Obama term in office. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 is what authorized the building of a barrier on the border in response to the 9/11 attacks. Bush began building the new steel bollard fence and it was continued for a time under Obama. It wasn’t a political football at that time and Obama didn’t stop it immediately, but he didn’t finish it either.
The current fence built by Trump is very similar to the earlier steel-bollard design, just generally higher, about 28-30 feet. This is the fence that the Border Patrol wanted. Along the 160-mile California border there is about 50-60 miles of the old Bus/Obama fence and about the same amount was built by Trump.
Yesterday, April 23, there was a protest by women with children at the Tijuana border demanding asylum from Joe Biden. Below, for your convenience, is the automatic translation of the original article in Spanish to English with some corrections of obvious errors and grammar issues. The bus lane and several SENTRII lanes were shut down, according to reports and they almost got into US territory.
According to my understanding, probably all of these women each paid a cartel coyote around $5,000 to $10,000 to transport them and their children to the US Border. Many even pay the cartel to transport their small children alone. The cartels in Tijuana murdered about 2,500 people last year and all of the cartels together murdered 36,000 people in Mexico. Would you pay to put your child in the hands of such people? Do you really think people that work with the cartels and willingly put their own children at extreme risk will make good US citizens?
Biden has extended for one month the Title 42 restrictions due to Covid and officially, at least, only pregnant women and unaccompanied minors are being released at this time into the U.S. I have been told, however, that there are always some exceptions to these policies.
If Biden lifts the restrictions next month, I estimate from news reports that there are around 8,000-10,000 waiting to apply for asylum just in Tijuana. Along the entire border with Mexico there are likely about ten times that many already at the border and many more would soon be on their way to the border when Biden says the word.
With banners and accompanied by minors, the migrants asked the United States Government for help. | Sergio Ortiz
Tijuana, BC.- With children infront, dozens of migrants protested at the Tijuana-San Ysidro gatehouse with the intention of drawing the attention of the President of the United States, Joe Biden, to obtain the protection of humanitarian asylum.
The migrants are from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, who have been living for almost three months in the camp they set up in the plaza in front of the El Chaparral pedestrian crossing, where approximately two thousand people are, including minors and adults.
Joe Biden, “Give us protection’ and ‘Biden we are tired’ were some of the slogans on the part of the protesters, who came very close to touching US soil, which caused the mobilization of at least 25 security agents of the CBP (Office of Customs and Border Protection).
“Support us, President, because you promised that you would help us, there are many citizens who have been forgotten,” said Mrs. Sacarías.
In the presence of dozens of girls and boys, the intervention of the municipal police of Tijuana was necessary to ask the parents to monitor them and forbid them to run among the motorists to avoid a tragedy or theft.
The demonstration caused the closure of the bus lane, which was stopped for four hours, said a driver who is works providing transportation service to tourists from Tijuana to the United States.
