Jarett Coleman Flew To Upset Win Over Pat Browne In 16th District
By Bob Small
Jarett Coleman, a professional pilot, was flying high in his upset GOP primary victory over long-term Lehigh County State Senator Pat Browne of the 16th District. The most recent count, as of June 3, was 17,041 to 17,022.
The 16th Senatorial District consists of Allentown and along with Alburtis, Coopersburg, Heidelberg Township, Lower Macungie Township, Lower Milford Township, Lowhill Township, Lynn Township, Macungie, North Whitehall Township, Slatington, South Whitehall Township, Upper Macungie Township, Upper Milford Township, Upper Saucon Township, Washington Township, Weisenberg Township,
Pat Browne served almost three decades in the Pennsylvania House and Senate. At the time of this election, he was the Pennsylvania Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman, a post he had held since 2014. Having spent a decade in the State House representing the 131st District, he was elected to the State Senate in 2005.
Jarrett Coleman
Among Browne’s accomplishments was his role as the founding Chairman of the Arts and Culture Caucus and the author of laws encouraging businesses to hire citizens with disabilities.
Jarrett Coleman serves on the Parkland School Board where he works against CRT (Critical Race Theory) and mask mandates, and for greater transparency by the schools to parents in terms of the school curriculum.
During the campaign, Coleman pledged that he would decline pension and perks, support term limits, and oppose tax hikes. It will be interesting to follow his progress regarding these pledges.
He lives in Breinigsville with his wife, two children and three dogs.
After nearly three decades serving as a Lehigh Valley lawmaker, State Senator Pat Browne has a short answer when asked, “What’s next?”
No sooner had Texas Sen. John Cornyn finished taking bows for delivering the 15 Republican votes to pass the bipartisan gun safety bill, 65-33, than he began talking up amnesty.
Cornyn, a Judiciary Committee member, was overheard promoting amnesty with fellow senators and immigration advocates Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). Cornyn to Padilla: “First guns, now immigration,” meaning amnesty. Very quickly, however, Cornyn backed off, calling his comment a “joke.” Attempting to cover his tracks, Cornyn said, “The Democrats and their allies in the media really can’t take a joke.”
Nevertheless, the take-away among the GOP is if Cornyn was so quick to cave on the Second Amendment, and to deliver a major legislative victory for the opposition Democrats, more tent-folding, perhaps on amnesty, may not be far away. Because of the pride he took at cooperating with Democrats, at the Texas GOP convention, Cornyn was roundly booed.
Skeptics wonder about Cornyn’s immigration and amnesty credibility. Raising doubts regarding Cornyn’s duplicity and providing validity to his amnesty remark is his chummy relationship with Padilla, the former California Secretary of State who Gov. Gavin Newsom named to replace Kamala Harris as U.S. senator. The son of a cook and a house cleaner who migrated to the U.S. from Mexico, Padilla, immediately appointed as chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee, is an avowed immigration expansionist who pledged to work on behalf of aliens to obtain citizenship. Padilla’s self-admitted mission is to make immigration reform “as bold as we can make it.”
The Padilla-Cornyn coziness includes having worked together successfully on a bill which will speed up the admission process by which Afghan interpreters and translators who allegedly assisted U.S. troops can enter the U.S. The odd couple also joined up to write a transportation bill seeking to use relief funds for natural disaster cleanup on roads, trails, bridges and transit systems. For true immigration enforcement advocates, Padilla should represent the enemy.
If Cornyn studied immigration history, he’d know that official amnesties, passed by Congress and signed by the sitting president, only encourage more illegal immigration. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Actgranted amnesty to about 2.7 million unlawfully present aliens, and promised to resolve a wide range of immigration problems like hiring aliens, and resolving the ag labor shortages. Today, 36 years later, about 15.5 million illegal immigrants reside in the U.S., one million of them arrived during Biden’s first year in office, and immigration-related issues are more vexing than in 1986. IRCA was a colossal failure, yet amnesty is always a primary congressional goal.
Unless Cornyn is living in a vacuum, he must know that under Biden, amnesty is constantly ongoing although through executive fiat. Thousands of migrants released into the interior have received parole, an immigration benefit that allows aliens to secure work permits. Biden has abused parole – normally issued on a temporary basis to individuals to assist in cases of urgent, humanitarian need. Under Biden, Temporary Protected Status protections have been granted to or extended for Afghans, Burmese, Cameroonians, Haitians, Somalis, South Sudanese, Ukrainians, Venezuelans and Yemenis. In the aggregate, the TPS population under Biden increased by several hundred thousand foreign nationals. All will receive work permits, and few will ever return home.
At a minimum, whether he was joking or not, Cornyn’s reference to amnesty demonstrated extremely poor judgment. Open borders and illegal immigration have spun out of control under the Democratic White House and Congress. Because of open borders, fentanyl and human trafficking have reached epic proportions, and Americans are deeply concerned about the nation’s future, and overwhelmingly oppose amnesty.
Cornyn’s next re-election bid comes in 2026, enough time for him to wise up to what his constituents’ priorities are. To Texans, many of whose counties declared the border crisis an invasion, amnesty is no joking matter.
San Antonio officials last week reported the deaths of 53 migrants, a total that includes 40 men and 13 women. The senseless deaths are an international tragedy that plays out year after year. Migrant deaths near the border are common as people attempt to cross rugged terrain without adequate water, food or clothing. Before Monday, the worst smuggling-related mass fatality in recent Texas history was in 2003, when 19 people died after being trapped in an unrefrigerated dairy truck for hundreds of miles. The International Organization for Migration calculated that at least 650 migrants died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021.
In the latest heartbreaking incident, the migrants were trapped in a tractor-trailer; 46 were dead at the scene, and another five expired from heat exhaustion and dehydration, gruesome ways to die, at local hospitals. Five children were among the dead that included 22 Mexicans, seven Guatemalans and two Hondurans. Officials are working to identify the nationalities of the other victims.
The list of parties responsible for these needless deaths is long, and includes at its top the United States President, Joe Biden. Texas Governor Gregg Abbott tweeted, “These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”
Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also was highly critical of the Biden administration. Obrador placed the culpability on the U.S. border and interior failures which, he said, encourage trafficking. But Biden was quick to deflect blame. He called Abbott’s remarks “shameful” grandstanding, while he denounced “exploiting vulnerable individuals for profit.” Incredulously, the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said after the incident that “the border is closed.”
Biden has company on the most culpable list. Among them are Vice President Kamala Harris who has steadfastly refused to travel to the border even though the president specifically gave her that responsibility, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. On social media, Mayorkas promised that he’ll “take action to disrupt smuggling networks.” But Mayorkas’ inaction on border security is the very reason smugglers have thrived under his period as DHS secretary that has seen more than 1 million aliens, exclusive of got-aways, released into the interior.
The only smattering of good news is that four perpetrators, including Juan Francisco D’Luna-Bilbao and Juan Claudio D’Luna-Mendez, are in federal custody. Documents filed on June 28 confirmed that police went to a San Antonio address listed on the tractor-trailer’s registration and stopped a Ford pickup truck that was leaving the property. Police arrested both D’Lunas and charged them with illegal possession of multiple firearms. Both are Mexican citizens in the country illegally after overstaying their tourist visas. Visa overstays are another failure of the government. Department of Homeland Security statistics indicate that in 2020, there were 684,500 visa overstays, up about 1 percent from 2019.
The U.S. border with Mexico has essentially been open, albeit to different degrees, for decades. When the White House and Congress get serious about securing America’s Southwest border, and enforcing the immigration laws that provide citizens with a safe interior, then the smuggling business will slowly die out. The most humane, most life-saving border policy is one that rigorously secures the border.
In the mid-19th century, John Philip Sousa was one of America’s biggest “base ball” bugs, as fans were then called. In his autobiography, “Marching Along,” Sousa, born in 1854, described the joy baseball had imparted to him since way back to the Civil War. Abner Doubleday, the sport’s mythical inventor, was a Union general in the war who fought at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.
Throughout the war, when soldiers on either side weren’t marching or engaged in battle, they played “base ball” to break up camp life’s monotony. Commanders and army doctors encouraged “base ball” believing that it kept the soldiers fit, healthy and out of trouble. While soldiers frequently took part in foot races, wrestling and boxing matches, and occasionally even cricket or football, “base ball” was the most popular of all competitive sports in both army camps. Historians noted that baseball came of age during the Civil War, and entered mainstream American culture during those years. Note: in 1884, The New York Times style guide changed base ball to baseball, and it has been written that way ever since.
As a Washington, D.C. youth, Sousa watched the game evolve from its earliest days through the Dead Ball era that showcased baseball’s first inductees: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner. Starting in 1857, the 21-run endpoint was eliminated, with games instead ending after nine innings. Foreshadowing modern-day baseball, other rule changes were introduced, including called strikes — previously, strikes were only the result of missed swings. Also, cricket-style flat bats were banned, and a white line marked the boundary between fair and foul territory; the umpire no longer had to guess where the ball landed.
Sousa was more than a fan. Through his years as a bandmaster, Sousa often pitched in games which pitted his band members against local nines. Eventually, his band grew large enough so that intra-squad games between the brass and woodwind sections were played. Whenever the opportunity arose to promote the band in front of a large audience, Sousa, often called “The American March King,” would pitch an inning or two. His band members referred to Sousa as “Ace,” and he pitched until age 62.
In the February 1909 issue of “Baseball Magazine,” Sousa, in his essay titled “The Greatest Game in the World,” wrote effusively about playing the American Guards on Independence Day, 1900 at the Paris, France, Exposition Universelle, the World’s Fair. “What,” asked Sousa, “could have been more appropriate for two American organizations in a foreign land to do [play baseball] on the glorious Fourth?” The All-American game that Sousa loved was one of the first baseball games played in Europe.
At the behest of Baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and to celebrate the National League’s 50th anniversary, Sousa in 1925 wrote “The National Game” that combined his two greatest passions, baseball and marches. The original performances featured four baseball bat solos.
As rousing as “The National Game” march is, Sousa’s classic, “Stars and Stripes Forever,” is more uplifting. Written in 1896, and congressionally approved as the nation’s official march in 1987, Sousa’s lyrics have inspired patriotism in generations of Americans:
“Red and white and starry blue
Is freedom’s shield and home.
“Other nations may deem their flags the best And cheer them with fervid elation
“But the flag of the North and South and West Is the flag of flags, the flag of Freedom’s nation.
“Hurrah for the flag of the free! May it wave as our standard forever, The gem of the land and the sea, The banner of the right.”
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.
Rental costs across the United States are rising at the fastest rate in decades. Because the COVID-related, federally mandated eviction moratoriums have been lifted, landlords can boot out existing tenants, increase rents and find new occupants. Landlords can reap windfall profits from the new ground rules, but at the expense of the many people who find themselves either homeless or anxious about the possibility of becoming homeless.
In some of the most sought-after destinations, rent has soared faster and higher than the national average. Record high rents, some as high as 40 percent above previous listings, have been seen in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami and Austin. Recently, prospective Manhattan renters waited more than an hour to view an East Village, 371-square-foot, one-bedroom, third-floor walk-up listed for $2,337.39 a month.
Among those caught up in the dramatic rental price spike are the recently arrived Afghan evacuees. The Department of State’s Reception and Placement Program provides the paroled Afghan evacuees – they don’t have refugee status – with initial resettlement services for up to three months. This includes $2,275 per refugee resettled, with $1,225 of that money going toward food, shelter and clothing. The evacuees are eligible for a long list of affirmative social services programs that include Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income, Head Start, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC). Some Afghan families range in size from 6-11 persons which means they require more expensive and harder-to-find three- or four-bedroom units.
As challenging as finding short-term rentals is, long-term housing is more difficult. Evacuees are, for the most part, unemployed, have no credit history and generally are required to provide the first and last months’ rent in advance as well as a security deposit, an aggregate sum that can total several thousand dollars. In Minneapolis, where rent for a 778-square-foot apartment averages $1,621, Gul Rahim finds himself, his family of 13 and his pregnant wife facing eviction. Rahim doesn’t have a job and, since he doesn’t speak English and is caring for his ill and pregnant wife, can’t look for one either. Of Minneapolis’ 1,200 evacuees, 600 like Rahim are confronting a housing crisis and may soon join the city’s substantial homeless population.
As grave as the affordable housing shortage is for the evacuees, adjusting to U.S. K-12 public schools will present equally weighty problems for their children. Afghanistan has a dual education process that differs significantly from the U.S. In Afghanistan, two parallel systems ongoing at the same time. First, religious education is the responsibility of clerics at mosques, and second, the government provides free academic education at state schools. As for U.S. teachers, helping the Afghans will add to their already-substantial responsibility to instruct other international students. Overcrowded schools are coping with millions of English language learners and will now have to instruct Afghan speakers whose native languages are Dari and Pashto. Teacher time spent on English language learners detracts from the instruction that citizen children should receive, the lack of which harms their quality of education. The greater the number of students in a classroom, the less attention each student can receive from the teacher. This particularly affects students who are struggling and need the extra attention.
The housing emergency that many Afghans are dealing with and the K-12 tribulations that lay ahead are the predictable outcomes of the Biden administration’s hasty, botched withdrawal. Moreover, the open border will create the same set of housing and schooling problems for more than 1 million foreign nationals that have arrived from 150 different countries. They’ll all need places to live and education for their children. The question that Biden and his inner circle never asked is what comes next after millions of illegal aliens and evacuees arrive and need nurturing. If the question were ever asked, no one thought to consider the obvious answer – America has enough affordable housing and education woes without compounding them by importing millions more needy people.
Normally, I wouldn’t discuss political goings-on in York County, a hundred miles from Swarthmore and Delaware County. After all, what could possibly happen there that is meaningful to us in Delco?
However, at this time a very effective rebellion has taken place in York, and two long-term GOP incumbents have been upset. Both chaired their respective Appropriations Committees and we will discuss Keith Gillespie’s even more surprising loss in an upcoming post.
These losses led York County GOP Chairman Jeff Piccola to resign within minutes of the polls closing.
Wendy Fink
The 94th District consists of 14 towns: Chanceford Township, Delta, East Prospect, Felton, Lower Chanceford Township, Lower Windsor Township, Peach Bottom Township, Red Lion, Stewartstown, Windsor, Windsor Township, Winterstown, Yorkana, and parts of Springettsbury Township. This district had been a GOP stronghold since 1969. Prior to that, seats were apportioned by county.
Representative Stan Saylor was defeated by Wendy Fink, who had 5,408 votes to Saylor’s 4,300. Mike Jones (R-93rd) was one of the most prominent people to support her insurgency. Keep in mind that Saylor served almost three decades in politics and described himself as the “most conservative House Appropriations Chairman in decades”, yet, he was defeated.
“This victory really belongs to the people,” Ms. Fink said. “They came out. They made their voices heard. They demanded change, and I look forward to serving them in any way that I can.”
Piccola had sought to have Mike Jones censured by the party for his endorsement of Wendy Fink. The party, quite rightly, refused to comply.
Wendy Jo Fink, like many state representatives of both stripes, has promised to eliminate school property taxes. If she finds the magic formula to eliminate school property taxes without reducing school funding, we may want her to present her formula in Delco.
Leo Knepper, the political director of the Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania (CAP) said “Just because you have an ‘R’ behind your name doesn’t mean you’re doing the right thing.”
Citizens Alliance for Pennsylvania took some credit for some of these victories. See their website for information.
Let me end with the Democratic perspective. Democratic Appropriations Chairman Matt Bradford (D-70) has said “Compromise has become a dirty word.” He worries that the ideological wing of the Republican Party is growing, while the governing wing is shrinking.”
Most Endangered River Provides Water to 40 Million Residents
By Joe Guzzardi
At a June 14 Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee meeting, environmentalists warned that the Colorado River’s reservoir level drop might bring dramatic cuts to water deliveries provided to the seven states dependent on the river. Those states are Colorado, California, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona and Nevada. Alarmingly, given its importance, the conservation group American Rivers ranked the Colorado as No. 1 on its list of the nation’s most endangered rivers.
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton told the committee that maintaining “critical levels” at the largest reservoirs in the U.S. – Lake Mead and Lake Powell – will require large reductions in water deliveries. Touton advised the committee that, in the next two months, her agency is negotiating with the seven states that count on the Colorado River to develop a plan for apportioning the water supply reductions. The Reclamation Bureau is the federal agency charged with assisting the western states, Native American tribes and others to meet water needs. An estimated 40 million residents throughout the region rely on the Colorado for water.
The committee’s witnesses were unanimous in their predictions that acute water shortages are in the near-term future. John Entsminger, the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s general manager, said that the slow-motion train wreck that’s been accelerating for 20 years has created “the moment of reckoning.” Said Entsminger, “We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River, and the rate of decline is accelerating.”
Because the Western United States is suffering through a relentless drought, analysts predict that next year the affected states will cope with a decrease of between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet of water. Scientific Americanreported that 2021’s exceptionally dry year created a record-breaking drought, or mega-drought. The last 20 years have been the driest two decades in the last 1,200 years. To date, 2022 is the driest year on record in California. Researchers predict with a 94 percent degree of certainty that California’s drought will continue for at least one more year.
University of Colorado, Boulder climate scientist Imtiaz Rangwala has observed drought conditions increasingly worsen in the western and central U.S. “The last two years have been more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 Celsius) warmer than normal in these regions. Large swaths of the Southwest have been even hotter, with temperatures more than 3 F (1.7 C) higher.”
The link between more people and more water consumption is undeniable. Yet Congress, the White House, the media and academia refuse to have a rational discussion about reducing the flow of 1 million-plus legal immigrants which, with their offspring, drive population increases. Knowing that the nation’s western states are in a water crisis, opening the border to millions, as the Biden administration is doing, is ecological suicide. Nevertheless, the status quo on adding population continues on autopilot, consequences be damned.
Scaredy cat didn’t hear him come in. She didn’t hear him until she came up the stairs. He was there laughing loudly.
She crouched down in the kitchen next to the doorway. She wanted to find an escape, her escape. She wanted to be in her bedroom sanctuary, but he was sitting on the stairs.
She paced a couple of times trying to figure it out. Should she run back in the basement?
The other one was here too, but he smelled like cats. He was big, but he never did anything but let her watch him from the middle of the stairs.
Oh, no. Not now. She slipped into the room hoping to use the litter box, but it was right there…near him. What was she going to do?
At first, she went into the box and scratched around, but he was too close. So she ran.
Then, she heard a sound, a request and he moved to a chair away from the stairs.
She slowly and carefully went into the litter box. Then, she heard his voice again. She jumped out and ran. She hadn’t finished in the litter box so she left a little gift on the floor.
She stood in the basement doorway gathering her courage. He wasn’t on the stairs anymore. This might be her chance. She crouched low and slunk towards the stairs. The floor had already been cleaned. She rounded the corner and ran swiftly up the stairs.
Made it. She jumped on the bed and curled up in her pillow. She was still scared but she was safe.
Incumbent Dem Loses In 194th Primary After Being Outspent 10 To 1
By Bob Small
In one of the five most expensive Pennsylvania Democratic State House races, Tarik Khan beat incumbent Pamela DeLissio in the primary after outspending her, 10 to one.
Khan spent $283,705 to Ms. DeLissio’s $27,488. He received 59.9% of the vote to her 40.1%.
Since the GOP did not field a candidate, Tarik will be the next representative from the 194th District.
The 194th includes part of Lower Merion Township and part of Philadelphia, and is traditionally Democrat. Its best known representative ever may have been Herbert Fineman, who was forced to resign.
Tarik Khan
Khan is a University of Pennsylvania nursing PhD student. He received his masters degree in nursing from LaSalle University and is employed as a family nurse practitioner at Philly’s Abbotsford-Falls Health Center. He has been a lifelong political activist.
The son of a Pakistani immigrant, Khan speaks of “growing up as a Muslim kid with a Catholic mother in a Jewish neighborhood”. As a nurse, he is following his mother’s career path.
Khan said he also “received over 1,000 contributions from about 700 individuals”. One wonders about the current cost to run successfully for public office in this state and, indeed, in this country.
Ms. DeLissio has served as representative since 2011. She has a record of holding 116 town-hall meetings over the past ten years, and just held her 118th such meeting last week. She chaired the Children and Youth Committee.
Incumbent Dem Loses In 194th Primary After Being Outspent 10 To 1
Biden DHS To Distribute Illegals To Stop Bad Optics
By Joe Guzzardi
Just five months before mid-term elections, the Biden White House is concerned that ugly border optics may cost Democrats both congressional chambers. Border shelters in Texas and Arizona are bulging at the seams. Customs and Border Protection lack other options to address the border crisis and are releasing illegal aliens onto city streets. With this situation, the Department of Homeland Security is preparing, at taxpayer cost, to transport migrants deep into the interior.
The latest DHS plan comes during a record illegal immigrant surge that includes 234,088 aliens in April alone, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Religious and nongovernmental organizations at the border, which typically house illegal immigrants after CBP releases them, are overwhelmed.
In El Paso, for example, CBP recently freed dozens of migrants, penniless non-English speakers, who then sat on street corners. The El Paso Times reported that the city’s resources to help have been depleted. Agents release more than 1,000 immigrants a day despite El Paso only having enough room to house 1,700. Neither the DHS nor any other federal agency contacted El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser to warn that, because of the border surge, large numbers of aliens were on the way. The Biden administration’s policy is to operate arbitrarily, and let the local communities fend for themselves.
Sources with knowledge of the DHS plan said that taxpayer dollars would be allocated to reroute aliens to shelters around the country. The first city DHS targeted is Los Angeles. Then, future migrants will be sent to Albuquerque, Houston, Dallas and other cities. The effort to relocate migrants involves the Southwest Border Coordination Center, which comprises officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CBP and other agencies.
Despite the assembled experience that the multiple federal agencies assumably have, their decision to initiate the program in Los Angeles is baffling. No city in the nation is less prepared to accept mostly poor, mostly unskilled illegal immigrants than Los Angeles with its 20 percent poverty rate. The city and Los Angeles County’s populations are, respectively, four million and 10 million. Both the city and county struggle with a homelessness crisis that the aliens will exacerbate. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s latest numbers, which were gathered in 2020 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, show that the county’s homeless population increased by 12.7 percent to 66,436 over the previous year, while Los Angeles’ homeless population spiked 16.1 percent to 41,290.
Within the general Los Angeles homeless population, a Hispanic subset revealed their dashed hopes about coming to California to find a job, only to eventually be left without shelter. KQED, Northern California’s NPR and PBS member station, spoke with homeless illegal immigrants about their lives post-border crossing. Jobs were lost, illnesses occurred, rents increased to unaffordable levels and connections with family back home grew infrequent. A day laborer, who goes by “Alonso,” said that if conditions in Los Angeles don’t improve, he’ll return to Mexico.
For all the other Alonsos located in California, Albuquerque, Houston and Dallas, Mayorkas is ensuring that their lives will remain unfulfilled. In Albuquerque, the poverty rate is 18 percent, and homelessness is rising, quadrupling since 2013. In Dallas, which has a 22 percent poverty rate, shelters are full every night. And in Houston, with its 21.2 percent poverty rate, homelessness is up 5.8 percent in 2022 in year-over-year counts.
For those who point out that the administration has broken virtually every border and interior enforcement immigration law, and by so doing jeopardized a sovereign America, Biden has the audacity to equate patriots with domestic violent extremists.
Since terrorists with murder on their minds can enter the U.S. effortlessly, Biden’s insult is laden with irony. An alleged ISIS operative, Shihab Ahmed Shihab, already inside the U.S., plotted to smuggle fellow terrorists through the open border. Once safely across, the terrorists planned to surveil former President George W. Bush’s home and his institution to develop an assassination plot. Despite Mayorkas’ claim that the border is secure, the FBI warrant application indicated that Shihab claimed to have smuggled two individuals associated with Hezbollah into the U.S. for a fee of $50,000 each. Shahib, an Iraqi national, had an asylum application pending.
Biden’s immigration agenda, after 18 months as president, includes dismantling immigration law, opening the border and importing poor, limited-skilled individuals, relocating them to communities that can barely keep afloat. As well, the agenda includes disregarding terrorist plots to assassinate former presidents and encouraging fraudulent asylum claims. Little wonder the White House is apprehensive about the upcoming elections.
Biden DHS To Distribute Illegals To Stop Bad Optics
