DELEITURAS

Justice Department official Bruce Ohr’s testimony about his meetings with FBI officials regarding dossier author Christopher Steele severely undercuts claims made last year by California Rep. Adam Schiff and his fellow Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.

Ohr told lawmakers on Aug. 28 that he briefed top FBI officials Andrew McCabe and Lisa Page in early August 2016, just days after he met with Steele, a former British spy who was investigating Donald Trump.

Ohr testified that he told McCabe and Page about his interactions with Steele, who was working at the time for Fusion GPS, a Democrat-funded opposition research firm.

The FBI relied heavily on Steele’s unverified dossier to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Republicans have focused on the Ohrs’ link to the dossier and Steele.

In a memo dated Feb. 2, 2018, House Intelligence Republicans, led by then-Chairman Devin Nunes, asserted that the FBI filed to disclose in their FISA applications that Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS. They also noted in the so-called Nunes memo that the FISA applications do not reveal Steele’s anti-Trump bias. Ohr claimed that Steele told him during a meeting on Sept. 23, 2016 that he was “desperate” that Trump not win election.

Ohr testified that he had shared details of his contacts with Steele with the FBI prior to the election.

In addition to the meeting in early August 2016, Ohr met in late September 2016 or early the next month with Page, FBI counterintelligence deputy chief Peter Strzok, and Justice Department officials Bruce Swartz, Zainab Ahmad, and Andrew Weissmann. Ahmad and Weissmann are currently working on the special counsel’s investigation.

The FBI obtained its first FISA against Page weeks after that meeting, on Oct. 21, 2016.

Ohr’s testimony conflicts with House Intelligence Democrats’ claim in a memo released on Feb. 24, 2018 that served as a rebuttal to the Nunes memo.

That document sought to defend the FBI’s handling of the Steele dossier and its applications for the first FISA warrant.

Democrats asserted that Ohr did not meet with the FBI until after the 2016 election and thus had no opportunity to tell the FBI that his wife worked for Fusion GPS. He was also unable to relay that Steele had communicated anti-Trump bias to him.

“[Republicans] mischaracterize[s] Bruce Ohr’s role, overstates the significance of his interactions with Steele, and misleads about the timeframe of Ohr’s communication with the FBI,” the so-called Schiff memo reads.

Democrats claimed that only in “late November 2016” did Ohr inform the FBI “his prior professional relationship with Steele and information that Steele shared with him.”

“This occurred weeks after the election and more than a month after the Court approved the initial FISA application,” reads the memo, which included the emphasis on “after.”

“The Majority’s reference to Bruce Ohr is misleading,” Democrats asserted.

The revelations in Ohr’s testimony create a bit of a dilemma for Schiff, who is now chairman of the House Intelligence panel.

In a Feb. 6, 2018 interview with The Atlantic, Schiff remarked on “how flawed the Nunes memo is.”

Negotiations to keep one of the biggest coal power plants in the U.S. in operation have stalled, placing hundreds of Native American workers at risk of losing their jobs.

Owners of the Navajo Generating Station — a 2,250-megawatt coal-fired plant in northern Arizona — say talks to transfer ownership of the facility have reached a standstill, and they are moving forward with plans to decommission the plant by Dec. 22. The announcement is the latest in a string of bad news for supporters of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS).

Salt River Project, Arizona Public Service, NV Energy and Tuscon Electric Power — all joint owners of NGS — announced in February 2017 that they would be closing the plant down by the end of 2019, claiming its continued operation to be unprofitable. Since that time, there has been a concerted effort to find a buyer and save the more than 700 related jobs to the plant.

Middle River Power, a private equity firm based in Chicago, had been in talks to acquire NGS, but backed out in September after failing to find enough potential buyers of power. Since that time, the Navajo Transitional Energy Company — a coal company created and owned by the Navajo Nation — is actively pursing its options on buying the plant.

However, talks reached an impasse when NGS owners asked the Navajo Transitional Energy Company (NTEC) to take on any known and unknown liabilities, such as land restoration and whatever environmental regulations may be enacted in the future. The Navajo have framed the pledge as unnecessary.

“While the owners have been willing to explore avenues for NTEC to assume ownership of NGS, NTEC is not able to provide the required assurances to protect the plant’s owners, their customers and shareholders in the event of a sale. Because of the time challenges to meet their decommissioning obligations, the owners will continue to move forward with plans to decommission NGS later this year,” Salt River Project spokesman Scott Harelson said in a statement.

The breakdown in negations puts hundreds of jobs at risk, and would likely devastate the surrounding Native American communities. The vast majority of the employees working at NGS — and the Kayenta Mine that supplies its coal — belong to the nearby Navajo Nation and Hopi tribe. In fact, the NGS plant and mine together provide nearly $40 million in annual revenue to the Navajo Nation. Loss of the coal plant would be brutal for a community that already suffers from sky-high unemployment rates.

However, not all is lost for NGS supporters.

Navajo Transitional Energy Company leaders are still hopeful they can reach a deal, and the Navajo Nation Council will continue meeting with company representatives in order to reach a compromise.

A woman who attacked a man sporting a “Make America Great Again” hat was apprehended Tuesday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after authorities discovered she is unlawfully present in the U.S.

“Deportation officers with ICE’s Fugitive Operations Team arrested Rosiane Santos, an unlawfully present citizen of Brazil, today near Falmouth, Massachusetts,” ICE spokesman John Mohan said, CBS News reported Tuesday.

“Santos is currently facing local charges for assault and other offenses. She is presently in ICE custody and has been entered into removal proceedings before the federal immigration courts,” Mohan added.

Authorities charged Santos with disorderly conduct after she attacked Bryton Turner at a restaurant in Falmouth, Massachusetts, CBS reported on Feb. 21. Santos batted the hat off Turner’s head and commenced verbally assaulting him, according to Falmouth Police.

“It’s just a hat at the end of the day,” Turner said after the incident, according to CBS. “I don’t really understand why people can’t just express themselves anymore, everybody has to get mad.”

• A non-profit group linked to Fusion GPS has ties to a cybersecurity firm recently implicated in a self-described “false flag” operation in the Alabama Senate race.
• The Democracy Integrity Project, which works with Fusion GPS and dossier author Christopher Steele, partnered before the 2018 midterms with New Knowledge, an Austin-based firm that has been tied to an operation that created fake Russian bots in Alabama’s December 2017 special election.
• New Knowledge recently produced a report for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and TDIP’s founder was in contact with two Democrats from the committee. 

A nonprofit group linked to Fusion GPS and partially funded by George Soros worked in recent months with a technology company implicated in a scheme to use fake Russian bots during Alabama’s special Senate election.

The groups, the Democracy Integrity Project (TDIP) and New Knowledge, partnered before the 2018 mid-terms to track alleged Russian disinformation networks, a website the organizations collaboratively run shows.

Both organizations have links to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), which is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as well as possible Trump campaign collusion.

SSCI provided New Knowledge with data from various social media companies as part of an investigation into Russian disinformation networks, according to a report New Knowledge released Dec. 17. Two days later, news broke that New Knowledge’s chief executive was involved in a self-described “false flag” operation in the special election for a Senate seat in Alabama, as was another staffer who was the lead author on the Senate report.

TDIP is also linked to the Senate Intelligence panel. Its founder, Daniel J. Jones, was previously a staffer for Democrats on SSCI. He was also in contact in early 2017 with Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the Democratic vice chairman of SSCI. As part of TDIP’s own Trump-Russia investigation, the group hired Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, the author of the anti-Trump dossier.

The extent of Warner’s contacts with Jones remain unclear.

The collaboration between TDIP and New Knowledge, which has not been previously reported, involved a dashboard set up at the site, Disinfo2018.com, which tracked “social media disinformation networks — to include suspected foreign state-actors — conducting information warfare against the American public prior to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.”

The project appears similar to Hamilton 68, a dashboard operated by the Alliance for Security Democracy. Jonathon Morgan, the founder of New Knowledge, helped create Hamilton 68 and has appeared frequently in the media to discuss Russia’s disinformation efforts.

In an interview with BBC, Morgan claimed Russians were behind #ReleaseTheMemo, the hashtag used to call for the release of a memo from House Intel Republicans that questioned the FBI’s reliance on the unverified Steele dossier to obtain surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

But New Knowledge and Morgan are now known for their tactics during the December 2017 Alabama special election.

The New York Times published a damning exposé Dec. 19, 2018, showing New Knowledge operatives targeted conservative Alabamans with fake Facebook pages intended to sow doubt about Roy Moore, the controversial Republican candidate.

The operatives also created thousands of fake Russian Twitter accounts set to follow Moore. The effect was that numerous news outlets reported Moore was being supported by a Russian disinformation network.

New Knowledge has come under heavy criticism following the report, largely because the firm’s tactics in Alabama so closely mirrored the Russian efforts they say they oppose. Morgan, a former State Department adviser, said the Alabama project was merely an experiment that had no impact on the special election, which was won by Democrat Doug Jones.

The Washington Post reported New Knowledge authored a document describing the Alabama false flag operation, but Morgan has denied that claim and said he was unaware of most of the activities detailed in it.

New Knowledge’s Senate report on Russian disinformation networks makes clear its investigation was undertaken at the request of SSCI. But an SSCI official told TheDCNF the committee did not pay New Knowledge and TDIP has never been hired for any work. The official also noted that SSCI does not necessarily endorse New Knowledge’s findings.

TDIP has maintained a lower profile than New Knowledge. Most of what’s known about the group has been revealed only through Adam Waldman, an attorney who had contact with the organization in 2017. Information that Jones, the TDIP founder, provided to the FBI was also released in an April 27, 2018, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report.

Jones, who registered TDIP on Jan. 31, 2017, told the FBI in late March 2017 his organization had hired Fusion GPS and Steele, a former MI6 officer, to continue investigations into Russian meddling in the U.S. elections that began with funding from the DNC and Clinton campaign. Jones also told the FBI that the project had received $50 million in funding from between seven and 10 wealthy liberal donors.

IRS records suggest that TDIP did not receive all of that funding at once. Information from the nonprofit’s tax filings show that the group received $9 million in 2017.

Around the same time as his meeting with the FBI, Jones reached out to Waldman, an attorney with a myriad of links to players in the Russia saga. Waldman represented Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and has apparent links to Steele.

Waldman told TheDCNF Jones said to him that Fusion GPS was involved with TDIP. He also said Jones claimed Soros had provided funding for TDIP’s anti-Trump operation.

Waldman also provided text messages from March 17, 2017, in which Jones said TDIP helped plant anti-Trump news stories.

“Our team helped with this,” Jones wrote to Waldman, linking to a Reuters article about Russian investment in Florida properties owned by President Donald Trump.

Waldman also exchanged text messages with Warner that suggested the Virginia Democrat was in close contact with Jones.

In an April 25, 2017, text message to Warner, Waldman said Steele had told him “Dan Jones is coming to see you.”

The interactions between Warner, Waldman, Steele and Jones remain one of the enduring puzzles of SSCI’s Russia probe. The committee has refused to discuss the matter.

But Warner was not Jones’s only Democratic contact on SSCI.

According to New Yorker article published Oct. 15, 2018, an unidentified Democratic senator other than Warner contacted Jones in early 2017 to review data related to Alfa Bank, a Russian bank whose computer servers allegedly had back-channel contacts with Trump Organization computers.

The Alfa Bank connection to Trump was first reported by Slate on Oct. 31, 2016. Alfa Bank’s founders are also accused of having cozy relations with the Kremlin in Steele’s dossier. The claims of illicit contact between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization have remain unverified, with some computer experts doubting the theory.

Neither TDIP nor New Knowledge responded to multiple requests for comment.

Democrats on the bicameral Homeland Security funding conference committee are demanding that border security appropriations include a limit to the number of beds at immigration detention facilities.

The committee signaled last week that they are nearing a final border security deal that could be voted on prior to the Feb. 15 funding deadline. However, Republican Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, a key member of the committee, revealed on Sunday morning that negotiations have hit a stalemate since Democrats demanded a limit to how many criminals Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is allowed to detain.

“I think the talks are stalled right now. I’m hoping we can get off the dime later today or in the morning because time is ticking away but we’ve got some problems with the Democrats dealing with ICE, that is detaining criminals that come into the U.S. and they want a cap on them,” Shelby said on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ “We don’t want a cap on that.”

The Democrats have proposed a new 16,500 bed cap on the number of detention beds that would be used for interior enforcement, meaning individuals that are apprehended for violations within the United States, reported The Wall Street Journal. That cap would also apply to violent criminals.

“A cap on ICE detention beds will force the Trump administration to prioritize deportations for criminals and people who pose real security threats, not law-abiding immigrants who are contributing to our country, “California Democratic Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, a ranking member of the Homeland Security funding conference committee said in a statement.

Republicans have condemned the the proposal and are demanding that violent criminals be excluded from that cap since ICE would have to release any individuals that are apprehended if the limit is reached.

“Democrats now want a hard cap on the number of beds at ICE detention facilities. How is that a serious or defensible position?” Freedom Caucus chairmen Mark Meadows tweeted. “They are openly trying to hamstring law enforcement and make it easier for thousands of migrants (some with criminal records) to be released into the US.”

“Now, apparently, not only is it enough they want to abolish ICE. They want to abolish the bed spaces available to the country to house violent offenders so they can be held and deported,” Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Fox News. “I promise you this. Donald Trump is not going to sign any bill that reduces the number of bed spaces available to hold violent offenders who come across our border. He can’t do that. He won’t do that.”

Border state Republicans have also been vocal in their opposition to the policy proposal, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, and Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw who noted “this is terrible policy.”

“Democrats are more concerned about releasing illegal immigrants, particularly ones charged with or convicted of crimes into our communities than in securing the border for the benefit of American citizens or migrants,” Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

• Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is running for president 2020 with a singular focus on fighting climate change.
• However, Inslee’s failed to implement major climate policies in Washington, a deep-blue state.
• “None of his climate policies even made it to the floor of the state House,” said one policy expert.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee has entered the 2020 presidential race as the candidate who has what it takes to unite Americans around one goal — fighting climate change.

But while Inslee pushes for a Green New Deal-like economic plan, the Democratic governor has failed to implement major climate policies in his own state.

“His climate policy has failed with the legislature, failed with the courts and failed with the voters,” said Todd Myers, environmental policy director at the free-market Washington Policy Center.

“There’s not a single metric where Washington state is going the right direction on climate change,” Myers told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.

Inslee launched his presidential campaign Friday with a video making clear that fighting climate change would be the central focus of his campaign — though he’s also come out for abolishing the Senate filibuster and statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico.

“So [climate change] can’t be on a laundry list,” Inslee told Vox in an interview published Friday. “It can’t be something that candidates check the box on. It has to be a full-blooded effort to mobilize the United States in all capacities.”

To that end, Inslee’s campaign website lays out his plan for “an all-out national climate mobilization” called “America’s Climate Mission,” which is his answer to the Green New Deal that’s backed by many Democratic 2020 contenders.

Inslee’s plan includes getting to “100% clean energy and net-zero greenhouse gas pollution through targeted strategies for all sectors of our economy” and creating “millions of good-paying jobs over the next 10 years.”

Inslee hopes to win over anti-Trump environmentalists and donors. His campaign website highlights his environmental agenda, including being called “the greenest governor in the country” by the League of Conservation Voters.

However, Myers said Inslee has largely failed to implement climate policies in environmentally-conscious, deep-blue Washington.

Washington voters overwhelmingly rejected a carbon tax ballot initiative in 2018 that Inslee supported and even campaigned for. The ballot measure would have raised energy prices about $230 per year for the average Washington household.

It was the second time Washington voters rejected a carbon tax ballot measure, though Inslee did not support the previous revenue-neutral tax proposed on the 2016 ballot.

Previously, Inslee tried to implement a statewide cap-and-trade program through executive actions, but the courts quickly blocked the governor. The matter is now headed for oral arguments in the state supreme court.

Inslee’s push for carbon tax legislation died in the state legislature in early 2018. Democrats joined Republicans in the state Senate to block the bill and it wasn’t even brought to the floor in the state House.

“It’s not just that they just didn’t pass in the Republican-held state Senate, he couldn’t get out of the state House,” Myers said. “None of his climate policies even made it to the floor of the state House.”

Inslee admitted there’s been “frustrations,” but claimed “progress” on promoting renewable energy, electric vehicles and electrified mass transit. A spokesman also recently touted Inslee’s blocking of coal and oil export terminals along Washington coast.

“Johnson hadn’t passed civil rights legislation for 20 years in the Senate, either, but he signed the Civil Rights bill,” Inslee told Vox.

“I was very involved in passing the renewable portfolio standard,” Inslee said, referring to a 2006 law. “We went from zero to a billion-dollar wind industry in the last several years. We have moved the needle on the electrification of our transportation system.”

“We’re number one or two, or we used to be, with electric cars because of the work we’ve been doing with incentives and building the electrical charging station grid on the interstate,” Inslee added.

However, Myers pointed to a Washington Policy Center report he published in July that found, relying on state data, that most electric car subsidies benefited the wealthiest Washington residents and did little to reduce emissions.

Indeed, Washington state emissions increased during Inslee’s first term as governor. The latest state figures show Washington emissions rose 6 percent between 2012 and 2016 — Inslee took office in 2013.

Despite his troubled start, Inslee told Vox he’ll continue to push climate legislation while he’s governor.

“So this year we are advancing a package of bills in the legislature, including a 100 percent clean grid bill,” Inslee told Vox.

By AMI Newswire

President Trump will call on Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro to leave office according an advanced text of a speech he will deliver today in Miami.

Trump will also demand that Venezuela’s military allow humanitarian aid to arrive in that beleaguered socialist state. If the military leaders refuse, he is threatening to freeze their international financial assets. He has already taken that action against many Venezuelans connected to Maduro.

Declaring “the current path toward democracy is irreversible,” Trump will make his demands in a speech at Florida International University just one week after National Assembly leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president while claiming that Maduro’s 2018 re-election was illegitimate.

“Venezuelan military officials have a clear choice: work toward democracy for their future and the future of their families, or they will lose everything hey have,” said Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “The United States knows where military officials and their families have money hidden throughout the world.”

American and European lawmakers are keeping the pressure on Maduro’s socialist regime as the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate in that country. Most of the country’s military and border security forces remain loyal to Maduro despite the growing international recognition of Guaido as the country’s interim leader.

On Sunday, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio traveled to a remote Colombian border town in an effort to deliver much needed humanitarian aid to Venezuelan refugees and to put more pressure on Venezuela’s military.

Shouting at Venezuela’s soldiers across the border in Spanish, Rubio warned them that they would spend “the rest of their lives hiding from justice” if they did not let a convoy of U.S. aid enter the country on February 23rd.

Elsewhere the deportation of a group of European Union lawyers from Venezuela marks a significant escalation in the ongoing crisis over that country’s political future.
The United States, The European Parliament and dozens of other countries around the world – including almost every country in Latin America, have recognized Venezuelan opposition chief Juan Guaido as the country’s new president.

Maduro’s few remaining allies are Russia, Cuba and Iran.

However, the first international delegation invited to the country by Guaido was turned back at the airport.

“Be aware!” tweeted Spanish lawmaker Esteban González Pons in a rare English language tweet. “Our passports have been taken and we’re being expelled from Venezuela. Bad manners and the only explanation is Maduro doesn’t want us here.”

Pons and the other members of his delegation are from center-right parties in Europe, he has vowed to attempt to return to Venezuela on Saturday – the same day a Major shipment of U.S Aid is set to attempt to cross the border from Colombia to Venezuela.

President Donald Trump continued to hammer on the need for a southern border wall Saturday after announcing Friday that he will support a deal to temporarily reopen the government without any funding for the wall.

“We have turned away, at great expense, two major Caravans, but a big one has now formed and is coming,” Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday. “At least 8000 people! If we had a powerful Wall, they wouldn’t even try to make the long and dangerous journey. Build the Wall and Crime will Fall!”

The New York Times reported on the third migrant caravan that Trump referenced:

The current migrant caravan left San Pedro Sula in Honduras on Jan. 14 and, in the following days, began arriving at the Guatemala-Mexico border. Mexican officials encouraged the migrants to apply for the humanitarian visa, and since then over 12,000 people, mostly Hondurans, have done so in this border town in southern Mexico.

Trump used his new slogan “Build the wall and crime will fall” in the tweet.

Trump’s message about the proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall comes a day after he and Congress ended the record-breaking 35-day partial government shutdown. Republicans and Democrats now have until Feb. 15 to come to an agreement on border security funding before another partial shutdown is triggered.

“21 days goes very quickly. Negotiations with Democrats will start immediately. Will not be easy to make a deal, both parties very dug in. The case for National Security has been greatly enhanced by what has been happening at the Border [and] through dialogue. We will build the Wall!” Trump also wrote on Twitter Saturday morning.

Many conservative commentators expressed their displeasure with Trump after his Friday announcement that he would agree to reopen the government without obtaining funding for a border wall first.

Former Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke stated on Thursday that he would remove the existing border barrier in his hometown of El Paso if he had the ability to do so, a question proposed to him by his fellow Texan, Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw.

Prior to President Donald Trump’s rally in El Paso on Monday, Crenshaw tweeted at O’Rourke asking “if you could snap your fingers and make El Paso’s border wall disappear, would you?”

“Yes, absolutely. I’d take the wall down,” O’Rourke responded to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes when presented with Crenshaw’s question.

O’Rourke claimed that since a barrier was constructed on the U.S.-Mexico border through the Secure Fence Act, American citizens have not “in any demonstrative way” made Americans safer. However, Crenshaw’s tweet provided data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which showed that illegal border crossings reduced significantly since the wall was in place. He also provided data showing a similar pattern in other border cities.

“[The border wall] has cost us tens of billions of dollars to build and maintain and it has pushed migrants and asylum seekers and refugees to the most inhospitable, the most hostile stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border, ensuring their suffering and death,” O’Rourke continued. “More than 4,000 human beings — little kids, women and children — have died. They’re not in cages, they’re not locked up, they’re dead.”

The failed senatorial candidate has long argued against a border wall. Following Trump’s executive order in September to erect an 18-foot steel bollard wall to replace the existing pedestrian fencing in El Paso, he called the existing chain-link fence “bad enough.”

In the past, O’Rourke has emphasized that the way to improve safety and security is to “ensure that we are maximizing the potential from everyone … [and] treating each other with respect and dignity,” and referred to Trump’s request to fund a wall an “expression of our smallness, our meanness, our fear to the rest of the world.”

O’Rourke, who has claimed to oppose open borders, has faced backlash for refusing to clarify where he stood on the migrant caravan that was heading toward the United States. O’Rourke dodged commenting on the topic despite immigration and border security overwhelmingly being the top issues for voters in Texas during his unsuccessful run to unseat Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in November.

He also raised eyebrows in December when he blamed a border wall as the reason for why an increasing number of migrants have died as they illegally attempt to cross into the country.

Apprehensions of illegal migrants at the southwest border in January increased dramatically from the same time last year, and experts predict 2019 will experience increases in illegal migrant arrests overall.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — a subset agency of the Department of Homeland Security — reported a total of 47,893 apprehensions of illegal migrants in January at the southwest border, a region of the U.S.-Mexico border that is the most active. The number marked an increase of nearly 22,000 arrests, or 84 percent, from January 2018.

The huge uptick could suggest more illegal immigrants will try to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in 2019 than originally anticipated. Princeton Policy Advisors, a group that analyzes immigration trends, is currently forecasting 606,000 apprehensions for the entire year, but left the door open to increase this projection.

“The January numbers don’t yet warrant an upward revision in our forecast of 606,000 apprehensions in 2019. But we are on notice,” Steven Kopits, president of Princeton Policy Advisors, stated to the Washington Examiner. “Buckle your seat belts: 2019 could be a wild ride at the southwest border.”

The January numbers reflect a growing trend at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Nearly 467,000 apprehensions took place at the U.S. southern border in 2018, more than any other calendar year since at least 2012, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. The spike in arrests was lead in large part by migrant families attempting to reach the U.S. illegally at the tail end of 2018.

While rising apprehensions can be indicative of more migrants attempting to enter the U.S., the numbers also reflect an evolving strategy among illegal migrants.

Many illegal immigrants reach the border with the intention of getting caught by border patrol where they can then make an asylum claim. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), for example, recorded 78,564 asylum requests in 2017, a huge increase from the 13,880 requests made in 2012.

“Remember, the problem right now isn’t people crossing the border illegally. It’s people presenting themselves to border patrol agents – people who want to get apprehended so they can lodge a frivolous asylum claim,” RJ Hauman, director of government relations for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, stated to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “They know we don’t have the detention space, so we just release them into the interior of the country.”