Category: Guest Authors

House Gives Traitorous Mayorkas a Free Pass

By Joe Guzzardi

Even the lowest hanging fruit is beyond the hapless Grand Old Party’s reach. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment, a ripe peach waiting to be picked, never happened.

Since prior to the 2022 mid-term elections in which the GOP dramatically underperformed, Republican legislators have promised to restore border security which, under Mayorkas’ criminal, anti-constitutional, impeachable refusal to enforce immigration law, has devolved into chaos. At the time that then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy released the Commitment to America, Mayorkas had allowed 3.8 million illegal aliens to cross, and 900,000 gotaways to escape into the interior. In all, foreign nationals from more than 160 nations had been processed and released. There are 195 countries in the world.

The invasion continues unabated. Over the past 12 months, Customs and Border Protection has encountered 3.2 million illegal aliens, and the gotaway total has likely doubled. A closer look at the 2023 statistics reveal more criminal disregard for Americans’ safety and security. In FY 2023, CBP caught 52,000 Chinese nationals. China is America’s greatest threat, according to the FBI directorand others. CBP also encountered a record-high number of aliens who appear on the FBI’s suspected terrorist watch list: 172. Of this number, 169 were attempting to evade capture at the southern border, and three were apprehended trying to sneak in through the increasingly porous northern border.

The DHS guideline for a secretary’s competency is whether his agency has “operational control” of the border. Operational Control, as defined in the 2006 Secure Fence Act, Section 2 (b), mandates that the secretary “achieves and maintains” operational control which means “the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband.” The statistics cited above, and thousands of online and nationally broadcast videos, prove that unlawful entries have flourished since President Biden’s inauguration, January 20, 2021. Because aliens keep arriving, and continuously accessing costly affirmative benefits like medical care, education, housing and transportation, pinpointing the precise cost to citizen taxpayers is impossible. The House Committee on Homeland Security provided a dollar-cost range. But what a staggering range it is – from $150 billion to $451 billion annually.

Before Congress left on its Thanksgiving recess, the GOP had a golden opportunity to impeach Mayorkas, but it punted. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) brought Articles of Impeachmentagainst Mayorkas to the House floor as a privileged resolution which means that members would vote on it within 48 hours. But eight Republicans joined with Democrats to vote 209-201 to send Greene’s resolution to the House graveyard for possible consideration at some undefined future time.

Mayorkas gets off, free to keep the status quo of wide-open borders alive and well. The eight who joined with Democrats are Colorado’s Ken Buck, North Carolina’s Virginia Foxx and Patrick McHenry, Oregon’s Cliff Bentz, Ohio’s Mike Turner, and California’s Darrell Issa, John Duarte and Tom McClintock. Colorado, North Carolina, Oregon, Ohio and certainly California have felt the fiscal burden of Mayorkas’ criminal neglect. All except Duarte have strong pro-enforcement voting records, but on the Mayorkas matter, they chose to join the other side.

The most curious nay vote was from McClintock, the influential Chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Immigration Subcommittee. If the GOP can’t count on high-ranking officials like McClintock to support the overdue Mayorkas impeachment effort, then border security is a fantasy. McClintock’s defense of his vote overlooked the national crisis that Mayorkas has encouraged and enabled.

While McClintock acknowledged that Mayorkas had opened the border to drugs, terrorists and criminals, he concluded that those crimes represent policy disputes and didn’t rise to impeachment level. Then, traveling far afield from Mayorkas’ malfeasance, McClintock said the Republicans must not “allow the left to become our teachers,” a reference to the Democrats’ two unsuccessful impeachment attempts made on President Donald Trump. In McClintock’s view, drugs, terrorists and criminals are okay, but the sanctity of the House impeachment process is more important than protecting the homeland.

Even though the Senate would never have upheld a House vote to impeach, the opportunity missed was huge. Impeaching Mayorkas would show that the Republicans are serious about protecting Americans from the danger that unvetted migrants represent. A related takeaway from a successful Mayorkas impeachment would be that the GOP also has its eye on the soaring costs of funding illegal immigration, a concern that taxpaying Americans share.

The most devastating outcome: shelving Mayorkas’ impeachment means that, over the coming months, hundreds of thousands of aliens will be processed and released into the interior – not an exaggeration. In South Texas, to select one example among many, border officials reported encountering 1,200 migrants daily, exposing the treasonous handiwork of Mayorkas. By the time Inauguration Day 2025 arrives, likely more than 8 million people from locations across the globe will have been released into the general population in cities and towns across the U.S.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org.

House Gives Traitorous Mayorkas a Free Pass

NYC Mayor Adams’ Woes Mount

By Joe Guzzardi

The FBI is ramping up its criminal investigation into New York Mayor Eric Adams’ winning 2021 campaign. The New York Times reported last week that federal investigators seized at least two of the mayor’s mobile phones and an iPad just days before the newspaper published its story.

The federal probe centers on whether Adams’ campaign colluded with the Turkish government to solicit donations laundered through a Brooklyn construction company. Earlier, the feds raided the home of a former Adams intern and the mayor’s chief fundraiser, Brianna Suggs. A search warrant that The Times obtained showed that the agents grabbed two laptops, three iPhones, a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams,” seven files titled “contribution card binders” and other potentially incriminating hard copy materials. To obtain a search warrant, prosecutors must convince a judge that the electronic devices contain probable cause evidence of criminal offenses. In his statement, Adams said he would be “shocked” if any campaign team member had done anything wrong, adding that, for his part, he “had done nothing wrong.”

At issue is whether Adams, who had just won the city’s Democratic mayoral primary, pressured Fire Department officials to allow the new Turkish consulate across from the United Nations to open despite safety concerns. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called the $300 million, 35-story-tall building a “masterpiece” and presided over its September 2021 grand opening.

Despite his staunch denials, and citing long-standing ties to Turkey, Adams must be uneasy. Although Adams is not charged with personal wrongdoing, the FBI is playing hardball, a tactic that’s ended poorly for the agency’s previous targets – Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, the 1,200 citizens charged in the January 6 protest and, most notably, President Donald Trump.

Insider speculation is rampant that the feds don’t care much if at all about Adams’ potential involvement in an illegal campaign financing scheme. Around Washington, election financing irregularity accusations are barely newsworthy. At the root of Adams’ problems are that he’s spoken publicly, loudly, critically and repeatedly about President Biden’s open border policy and how the arriving illegal aliens are bankrupting his once proud city. Even prominent Democratic supporters like Adams can’t get away with such candor. Adams may have sealed his fate when, in frustration, he said that without federal assistance the illegal alien debacle “will destroy New York City.” He warned that he saw no end to the unmanageable, unending wave of needy human arrivals.

Adams made his truthful but ill-advised warning about New York City’s potential destruction more than two months ago. Since then, conditions have grown significantly worse. The latest in New York’s constantly eroding fiscal situation, which pits spending on migrants against funding for legal resident programs, is Adams’ announcement that parents might have to volunteer to keep Big Apple schools nonviolent. Hundreds of trained safety agents were fired because migrant-related overhead, an estimated $12 billion and counting over the next three years, has crippled the city. Working 9-t0-5 parents howled about the task’s impossibility, and nonworking parents decried the injustice.

Boiled down to its bare bones, nothing will stop Biden from his lawless, unconstitutional, treasonous open border commitment. Tens of thousands of words have been written about how, to citizens’ detriment, cartels have trafficked humans and deadly drugs through the border.  Add to the sad list that, because Adams has to fund illegal aliens’ housing and food, the city can’t pay school security guards. Without experienced personnel, children will be at greater risk. Only months into the 2023-2024 academic year, three students have been slain so far, and at least 18 others have been stabbed or shot, victims of gang rivalries and ever-younger gun-toting kids who take advantage of the state’s forgiving judicial system.

Ironically, in April, Biden tweeted that “our children are our nation’s future” and that the “White House will always have their backs,” the president’s sad, dishonest cliché that he passes off as compassion.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org.

NYC Mayor Adams’ Woes Mount

Europeans Experiencing Migration ‘Compassion Fatigue’

By Joe Guzzardi

An article published in The Spectator, a British weekly and the world’s oldest magazine, should raise eyebrows in the U.S., especially among voters who consider the Southwest border disaster a national security threat. The story, “In Europe, opposing mass migration can be a crime,” summarizes a bleak demographic future for the EU. “Europeans will vote for politicians who want to stop the migration, and they may even come into office, but the situation will not change,” adds the subhead.

All across Europe, citizens are ringing alarm bells to convey their apprehension about mass immigration. This summer, long-serving Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte resigned after the government coalition he led disagreed on how to stem the refugee flow into the Netherlands. Rutte’s departure is the latest example of migration politics as an increasingly challenging predicament for European officials, with conservative parties using their rising influence to promote reduced immigration in campaign platforms.

For Europeans, the stakes are high. Over centuries, national identities have been formed with commonality in heritage, language, religion, custom and history. Immigration threatens to destabilize or destroy those commonalities. With one coalition already toppled in the Netherlands, experts say similar issues face leaders in Germany, Italy and perhaps France and Spain. A Pew Research report found that majorities or pluralities in most EU nations want less immigration into their countries. Many that Pew polled believe that immigrants remain distinct from the broader culture, and they further worry that immigration increases terrorism risks.

Much like the immigration crisis that began when President Biden assumed office in 2021, five years ago more than 1 million people crossed into Europe, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. The migrants took huge risks, embarking on dangerous journeys in search of better lives. All said that they had no future in their native countries. But some died along the way; others once they arrived at their destination could not find meaningful employment.

Receiving countries, however, adopted then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “Wir schaffen das” or “We can manage” philosophy. With significant grassroots volunteer assistance, the countries did indeed get by, at least in the beginning. But as the numbers of incoming migrants grew, so did compassion fatigue. Merkel eventually dropped her slogan. In the end, asylum requests far outnumbered approvals at about a 4-1 ratio, meaning that only a small percentage of migrants had valid claims to remain in countries they hoped would embrace them.

As with opposition that grew in the EU, resistance to Biden’s open borders has grown in the U.S. In areas where migrant overflow has most severely affected communities, the backlash is significant, although not yet a crime as The Spectator story inferred it might one day be. New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston and Denver have pled for federal assistance, a plea consistently ignored by the administration.

Time will tell whether President Biden’s open border agenda will topple his 2024 re-election bid. The three recent debates with GOP candidates skirted immigration, and the expansionist faction stifles meaningful discussion. Any suggestion that poorly managed and too much immigration contributes to unsustainable population growth and overcrowding, placing an estimated $20 billion financial burden on taxpayers, is shouted down with allegations of racism and xenophobia. This sophomoric, but too-often successful tactic, often sways crucial, independent voters.

The question that The Spectator raised – “Will the situation [immigration] change?” – is the crux of the matter. Whatever the eventual presidential nominees may have said on the stump, the elected president is only part of the immigration equation. Although Biden has ignored virtually every enforcement-related immigration law, marching down his own unconstitutional path, Congress has the sole responsibility to lead the way.

A year from now, voters will need to focus on electing congressional candidates who genuinely want an immigration policy that’s designed to help America, a huge challenge. Today, Congress is mostly split on immigration along party lines, although the House GOP has several representatives who bow to the donor class that wants more cheap labor delivered via immigration.

Overcoming five decades of lax enforcement is a steep mountain to climb, as is voiding legislation designed to attract more immigration, such as the spate of employment-based visas that President George H.W. Bush signed into law with the Immigration Act of 1990.

At the risk of sounding alarmist, the 2024 election could be America’s last chance to retain its sovereignty. Maintaining the status quo means that, assuming the current migrant entry rate, by the 2028 election between 15 and 20 million unvetted illegal immigrants would be residing in the U.S., a treasonous act.

Europeans Experiencing Migration ‘Compassion Fatigue’