DELEITURAS

The Trump administration is preparing to trim its budget by closing down numerous immigration offices around the world, a move that will likely make it harder for foreign nationals to relocate to the United States.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will shutter nearly two dozen international field offices in the coming months “in an effort to maximize our agency’s finite resources,” according to an email from USCIS Director L. Francis Cissna that was sent to staffers on Tuesday. Services currently being performed by the nearly two dozen offices abroad will instead be transferred to domestic offices and the State Department’s consulates and embassies.

A cost analysis by USCIS officials in 2018 found that a phase out of its international offices would save the agency millions per year.

“I believe by doing so, we will better leverage our funds to address backlogs in the United States while also leveraging existing Department of State resources at post,” Cissna wrote in the email, obtained by The Washington Post. “Change can be difficult and can cause consternation. I want to assure you we will work to make this as smooth a transition as possible for each of our USCIS staff while also ensuring that those utilizing our services may continue to do so and our agency operations continue undisrupted.”

However, immigration activists are claiming this is simply the latest move by the Trump administration to restrict immigration into the country. Closing international field offices, they argue, would slow family visa applications, refugee processing and other immigrant applications.

“This is another instance of the Trump administration halting legal immigration by denying people the opportunity to file for immigration benefits in the most expedient manner,” stated immigration attorney Margaret Stock. “It’s going to smack all government employees abroad, including folks in the military, who have a foreign spouse or kids they are trying to bring to the U.S. legally.”

The international division of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services operates in over 20 different countries. The agency’s offices perform a number of duties, such as helping potential U.S. immigrants with their applications, aiding immigrants who misplaced their green cards, and work on immigration petitions.

The USCIS, however, contends that the move to shutter its international division and shift responsibilities to U.S. offices is strictly a cost-saving and streamlining measure.

In a strong indication that the Trump administration is preparing for the next phase of the immigration battle, the Department of Justice is now hiring lawyers to handle border wall litigation in South Texas.

The two attorney positions — which are advertised to pay between $53,062 and $138,790 — are to be based in the southern Texas towns of Brownsville and McAllen. Preferred candidates are to have “at least four (4) years of civil litigation experience in litigation of land condemnation cases, oil and gas disputes, and real estate matters,” according to the posting on USAJobs, adding that knowledge of the Spanish language “is helpful, but not required.”

The jobs were first posted in December, with the deadline for applications closing on March 5.

The attorneys will likely be tasked with eminent domain and other property seizure legalities — issues that will undoubtedly arise if President Donald Trump is able to move forward with construction of a wall on the southern border.

The federal government is on the 28th day of a partial shutdown — the longest in U.S. history. Trump is demanding Congress send him a budget that includes $5.7 billion in funding for 200-plus miles of new and replacement barriers on the U.S.-Mexico border, but liberal lawmakers have stood sharply opposed to the proposal.

The budget standoff between the president and Democratic leaders has reached a fever pitch.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday told reporters she would delay the State of the Union address, an annual speech by the president that is held in the House of Representatives, because of the government shutdown. Trump responded the following day by cancelling Pelosi’s planned trip to Europe and the Middle East. Trump’s letter reportedly came minutes before the speaker and Democratic staffers were to board a bus for the trip.

Trump, however, told Pelosi she was free to fly commercial if she so chooses.

Should the White House ultimately prevail in the border wall fight, the administration would then have to negotiate with property owners who reside on the wall’s path. While the law typically favors the government in eminent domain cases, property owners could possibly drag out court cases for over a decade.

“Eminent domain is something that has to be used, usually you would say for anything that’s long, like a road, like a pipeline or like a wall or a fence,” Trump told reporters earlier in January in the Rose Garden. He made clear that the White House would wield eminent domain authority only if landowners refuse to sell the land needed for the wall, and he pledged that all landholders would receive fair prices.

“I think it’s a fair process. I think it’s a process that’s very necessary, but I think it’s fair,” he explained. “A lot of times we’ll make a deal, and I would say a good percentage of time we’re making deals.”

Immigration attorney Linda Vega said she’s surprised by Democrats’ rejection of President Donald Trump’s immigration compromise and called the deal a “great offer,” on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday.

“Currently [DACA] applicants are not able to reapply for any benefits. They’re at a standstill,” Vega said. “If they’re in court proceedings they’re being deported. This plan, this three-year offer by the president would offer them the opportunity to adjust their status to permanent residency or to continue studying in this country or to actually work and pay taxes. So it’s a great offer for a starting point.”

Vega said she was surprised the deal fell through because it would give Democrats the ability to create a permanent fix for DACA.

“I’m very surprised because if they’re asking for permanent solution this at least is a starting point to sit at the table and discuss making it a permanent solution,” she said. “And really, frankly that’s Congress’ job. It’s not the president’s job to offer a permanent solution. That’s why Congress members offer bills to make it a permanent law.”

Vega claimed current DACA recipients are angry and frustrated over the gridlock and are missing out on opportunities to become more educated and assimilated into American culture. .

“It is frustrating for them. And they’re full of anger. They’re full of fear. They don’t know whether they’re going to have to leave this country that they believe is their own,” she said. “But, many of them are losing opportunities to go to universities to study, to be in the workforce and to be part of our American culture. And this is an unfortunate situation that Congress won’t even come to the table and look at their benefit. It’s a very selfish behavior. [sic]”

Vega also accused Democrats of being anti-Trump at all costs and said their behavior is holding the process back.

“I’m very surprised they’re not even considering that there’s a possibility to make this a permanent law. They’re not even looking at offer, frankly because it’s President Trump offering. And I can’t think of any other solution or any other means that they won’t come to a reasonable discussion,” she concluded.

Democrats are complaining about what they believe is the media’s penchant for heaping loads of praise on the white men running against President Donald Trump in 2020. They want to know why the lady candidates are not receiving similar treatment.

National media are heaping too much praise on Beto O’Rourke and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, according to Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic political consultant. It’s not fair to the women in the race for the White House and is starting to look a lot like a replay of 2016 when reporters focused on then candidate Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, she believes.

“I feel like the media is always captivated by the person they seem to think is a phenom: Bernie. Trump. Beto. But they always seem to be white men who are phenoms,” Marsh told Politico Friday. “In a year where we have more choices than ever, more women and more persons of color than ever, none of them seem to be deemed a phenom.”

She added: “Not one woman got that kind of coverage. Not one. Not Kamala. Not Kirsten. Not Elizabeth Warren. Not Amy Klobuchar in a blizzard.” A Democratic adviser for Clinton, a former secretary of state during the Obama administration, mirrored Marsh’s sentiments.

“I fully appreciate that he can espouse progressive values as a Democrat, that’s a benefit for the Democratic field. I don’t welcome being fed the retro candidacy,” Tracy Sefl, a Democratic strategist and onetime Clinton adviser, told reporters. “There’s a romanticizing of him. It’s the artful Vanity Fair cover — but in reality he was in Keokuk, Iowa in a coffee shop. That’s the product of romanticizing.”

There’s also a gender imbalance at play, Democratic pollster and strategist Celinda Lake claimed. The women running have received the bulk of the negative coverage, she added. Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, for instance, was forced to defend reports about treating her staff poorly. She also got dinged for eating a salad with a hairbrush.

“I think if you look at the pattern, there is a real distinction between the way men were covered and the way the women were covered. There’s a huge double standard,” Lake said. “With women, many, many more negatives were raised and the men were treated like the second coming. I’m surprised that this is continuing in 2019, after the year of the woman.”

Mexican authorities discovered five abandoned vehicles and at least 20 bodies at a rural location 56 miles west of McAllen, Texas, Wednesday, CNN reported.

News of the discovery came just hours after CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta reported on the area’s apparent safety and tranquility.

“We’re not seeing any kind of imminent danger. There are no migrants trying to rush toward this fence here in the McAllen, Texas, area,” Acosta said on a video posted to his Twitter account Thursday. “No sign of the national emergency that [President Donald Trump] has been talking about. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty tranquil down here.”

Acosta posted a follow-up video a couple of hours later to point out that McAllen’s border wall only covered a short distance, and he said that “a lot of the residents we talked to say this is a very safe community and they don’t see migrants coming into their community causing a lot of crime and mayhem.”

WATCH:

Mexican federal police found four burnt-out trucks, a sedan and the bodies, most of them charred, in a rural community near the town of Miguel Aleman, authorities told CNN. The grisly scene appeared to be the result of a battle between rival gangs, Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica told Carmen Aristegui, who works for CNN and hosts a radio show in Mexico.

CNN reported on the incident Thursday evening.

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The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on a government appropriations bill on Thursday evening and with a day until the vote, lawmakers still have not received the text of the legislation.

“Pelosi and the Democrats promised a full 72 hours to review legislation,” a senior conservative congressional aide told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “But now we’re voting on a massive, probably thousands-page long conference report tomorrow and we haven’t even seen text the day before? This is worse than under Speaker Ryan.”

The bicameral and bipartisan Homeland Security funding conference 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, after hitting a snag over Democrats’ demand to limit to how many criminals Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should be allowed to detain, Congress reportedly reached an “agreement in principle” late Monday.

The agreement includes $1.375 billion for 55 miles of new bollard fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, far short of the $5.7 billion that President Donald Trump initially sought for 234 miles of steel or concrete walls.

Regardless, the legislation is expected to be finalized late on Wednesday giving members of Congress less than 24 hours to read what they are voting on.

“When one bemoans the swamp, look no further than spending a trillion dollars and jamming through legislation when none of us have even seen it,” Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy told TheDCNF. “We should be a no on such incompetence even if it weren’t perpetuating drunken spending and failing to actually secure the border.”

Republican Maryland Rep. Andy Harris also confirmed to TheDCNF that lawmakers have not received a copy of the legislation as of Wednesday afternoon.

“No one has seen the final wording of a long and complicated bill we will be expected to vote on tomorrow evening,” Harris said. “That’s no way to run a legislature.”

Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore explained why he called Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “pompous little twit” during a Tuesday segment with “Fox & Friends.”

Moore was discussing Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal proposal and called it “silly” and outlandish.

“It’s a silly plan. That’s why I suggested that she was a pompous little twit,” Moore said. “Twit meaning silly in the British lexicon and pompous meaning arrogant. She really rubbed me the wrong way when she said she’s the boss. Because she can make up a proposal that’s completely ridiculous and no one else did. And that is what’s wrong about this.”

Moore called out the New York Congresswoman on Twitter back on March 2nd and said she failed to offer a realistic and viable alternative to fossil fuels.

Moore also claimed climate change is real but said the idea of a “climate crisis” has been manufactured and is based on junk science.

“The whole climate crisis as they call it is not only fake news, it’s fake science. There is no climate crisis,” he told Fox News. “There is weather and climate all around the world. And, in fact, carbon dioxide is the main building block of all life. That’s where the carbon comes from in carbon-based life which is all life on land and in the sea. And not only that a little bit of warming would not be a bad thing for myself being a Canadian and the people in Russia wouldn’t mind a little couple of degrees warmer either.”

“Yes, of course climate change is real,” he continued. “It’s been happening since the beginning of time. But it’s not dangerous and it’s not made by people. Climate change is a perfectly natural phenomenon and this modern warm period actually began about 300 years ago when that little ice age began to come to an end. There is nothing to be afraid of. And that’s all they’re doing is instilling fear.”

Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez botched the facts Monday night in a series of tweets attempting to discredit ethics complaints that watchdog groups that have filed against her.

Ocasio-Cortez has already racked up three ethics complaints since taking office in January: two for allegedly misusing congressional resources, and one alleging her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, set up a million-dollar private slush fund.

Ocasio-Cortez has also faced legal scrutiny over her and Chakrabarti’s control of an outside super PAC, Justice Democrats that was a driving force behind her congressional campaign — an arrangement former FEC commissioners say may have violated federal election laws.

The freshman congresswoman on Monday falsely claimed that Right to Rise, a Republican super PAC hit with an FEC fine on Monday, was behind the ethics complaints.

“Whoah: the creepy org filing bogus ethics complaints against me just *actually* got hit with one of the biggest fines in FEC history,” Ocasio-Cortez falsely asserted.

Rather than correcting the inaccurate tweet, Ocasio-Cortez posted a second tweet, claiming that former Right to Rise operative Luke Thompson was both the target of the fine and the person filing ethics complaints against her.

Neither of those claims are true. Thompson wasn’t mentioned in the complaint against Right to Rise, and doesn’t work at any of the groups that have filed the ethics complaints against Ocasio-Cortez.

Thompson has drawn attention to Ocasio-Cortez’s cozy relationship with an outside super PAC, and first pointed out her boyfriend’s government email address, but he doesn’t work for the watchdog groups filing ethics complaints. Thompson hosts a podcast.

Ocasio-Cortez botched the facts while attempting to correct an inaccurate tweet Screenshot/Twitter

Ocasio-Cortez quickly deleted the erroneous correction and replaced it with a third erroneous tweet, which falsely claimed again that Thompson had filed the complaints.

Ocasio-Cortez previously launched a blatantly false attack on Republican consultant Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), will begin construction on the San Diego Secondary Wall Project with the first panels to be in place on February 18, 2019.

On December 20, 2018, CBP awarded a contract to construct up to 14 miles of secondary wall in California within the U.S. Border Patrol’s (USBP) San Diego Sector (SDC). The contract was awarded to SLSCO Ltd. using CBP’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 appropriations.

The secondary wall project includes the replacement of existing secondary barrier with a 30 ft. tall steel bollard wall.  This project is directly north to the San Diego primary fence replacement project that is currently under construction funded with FY 2017 funding. These two important barriers, in combination with a patrol road and technology, create an enforcement zone for the USBP as part of a border wall system.  Given the high-density population in the San Diego-Tijuana area, the updated border infrastructure is critically needed.

Border barriers, along with appropriate technology, roads and personnel, have significantly reduced illegal entry in SDC, however more work remains to be done.  In FY 2018, there were approximately 38,000 apprehensions in the SDC by USBP.

CBP continues to implement President Trump’s Executive Order 13767 – also known as Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements – and continues to take steps to expeditiously  plan, design, and construct a physical wall along the southern border, using appropriate materials and technology to most effectively achieve operational control of the southern border.

Florida Democrats are calling on Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to backtrack his comments after refusing to acknowledge opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate president.

“There are serious questions about the recent election. There are many people who feel it was a fraudulent election,” Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, said Tuesday in an interview with Univision.

Many Florida Democrats were outraged by this response, Politico reported Thursday.

Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala, who represents Venezuelan exiles, told Politico: “He is not going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party. He has demonstrated again that he does not understand this situation.”

This isn’t the first time Sanders has backed left-wing or socialist leaders.

He once called Nicaragua’s leftist leader, Daniel Ortega, “an impressive guy.” Sanders has also repeatedly praised Fidel Castro, the late Cuban communist dictator.

Sanders’ response puts him at odds with President Donald Trump, as well as a growing share of the international community, who recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s president and has not ruled out military intervention in the country.

It also alienates Sanders among 2020 Democratic presidential candidates who have commented on the issue. This list includes Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who each recently denounced Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and backed Guaido.

Florida, which houses more Venezuelan immigrants than any other state, is a perennial swing-state. State Democratic leaders fear a candidate’s stance on this issue could persuade enough Venezuelans to jump ship and support Trump.

The divide among Democratic presidential candidates signals the broader internal civil war between progressives and moderates over the party’s identity.

The final result may prove pivotal in deciding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.