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Criminal Prosecutions Of Illegal Immigrants Stopped When Coronavirus Hit. They Never Resumed – The Daily Wire

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President Joe Biden has largely given up on criminally prosecuting illegal immigrants for crossing the border, with the number of prosecutions of serious immigration offenses lower during every year of the Biden administration than any year of the Trump or Obama administrations, a Daily Wire analysis of newly-released data shows.

The prosecutions have screeched to a virtual halt under Biden. In 2018, the Department of Justice charged 84,000 people with illegal entry, a misdemeanor. The total number charged with this misdemeanor during the entire three-year period from 2021 to 2023 was 11,000, according to a Daily Wire analysis of Department Of Justice data only 4% of the old rate.

Illegals who re-enter the country after they have already been deported once are committing a felony. In 2019, the DOJ charged 27,000 people with that crime. In 2023, the number was about half that, at 14,000. This comes as the number of illegal crossings has skyrocketed, making the decrease even more striking.

The apparent decision to rely on, at best, civil deportation proceedings instead of bringing criminal charges particularly in more egregious cases such as those who re-enter the country after already having been deported contradicts Bidens claim that he needs new authorities from Congress in order to secure the border.

Criminal cases against illegal immigrants essentially ceased in April 2020 when courts closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. In March 2020, 4,000 illegals were charged with entry and 2,000 with felony reentry; by April those numbers were only 671 and 960. Criminal cases for illegal entry remained essentially nonexistent during the coronavirus-lockdown period of the rest of 2020, at 13 cases in December, while felony illegal reentry charges were at half their earlier levels.

Joe Biden took office in January 2021, and the coronavirus pandemic receded. Yet criminal enforcement of immigration laws never returned.

In December 2023, the most recent month with data, a mere 708 people were charged with illegal entry and 1,236 with felony reentry. Compare that to December 2018, when those numbers were nearly 7,000 and 2,000, respectively.

The peak of criminal enforcement during the Trump administration came in June 2018, when the numbers were 9,500 and 2,237. Border apprehensions decreased, which the administration argued showed that its efforts were working as a deterrent. By comparison, the current record-low prosecution of illegal border crossing comes as crossings are at all-time highs.

The change is not simply an expected difference between Republican and Democrat administrations. Rather, Biden has taken a more lenient posture towards illegals than Barack Obama, the Democrat president for whom he served as vice president.

Though detailed data only goes back to 2019, the Executive Office of US Attorneys released annual statistics last month that make it possible to track a longer period. That data shows cases prosecuted by the Department of Justice pursuant to a referral by the Department of Homeland Security, though it doesnt include most misdemeanor illegal-entry charges. They show that the number of illegals charged with serious immigration crimes in each year of the Biden administration was lower than any year since at least 2009.

Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the Department of Justice responded to requests for comment.

In 2011, the Obama administration brought 37,000 serious cases referred by DHS almost twice as many as Biden did last year. But after he won re-election to a second term, he lowered that number every year, ending at 27,000 in 2016.

The Trump administration took a few years to get back to the levels of Obamas first term, reaching 36,607 cases in 2019 but never actually surpassing Obamas peak, according to the DOJ data covering serious immigration crimes.

But it smashed records when it came to misdemeanor charges for illegal first-time entry. Although the criminal charge is less serious, it captures a significantly larger number of people.

In FY 2018, more than 68,400 defendants were charged with misdemeanor illegal entry. This is the highest number of such defendants charged since EOUSA started to track this category and an almost 86 percent increase from the previous year. This total is also more than 4 percent higher than the previous record of over 65,500 defendants set in FY 2013, the Trump administration said in a 2018 press release.

Gene Hamilton, who served in the DOJ during the Trump administration and now works as general counsel for America First Legal, which is helmed by Trump immigration czar Stephen Miller, told The Daily Wire that crossing the border illegally is a crime, prosecutable in criminal court, but the Biden administration has chosen to treat it like a traffic ticket, causing word to get out in Latin America that there is little reason not to try to come to the United States.

Given the number of illegal aliens crossing the border, you should be seeing all-time records for prosecutions for crossing the border illegally, but youre not, Hamilton said. They have removed a deterrent. The ultimate thing that matters to people is whether they make it into the country and are released and they call home and tell their family. If people know they could be criminally prosecuted, it acts as a deterrent and reduces the number of people who come in the first place.

Debate about immigration has rarely discussed the criminal figures, instead focusing on the number of civil deportation proceedings, which in the Biden administration have stacked up into a record backlog. But criminal charges, with the prospect of punishment instead of merely turning them away, can be filed for illegal entry, illegal reentry, alien smuggling, and immigration fraud.

While the Trump administration sought to create a deterrent by emphasizing prosecutions of misdemeanor, first-time border crossings, Biden has departed from historical norms by rarely prosecuting even those who commit felony re-entryrecidivist criminals who have shown that a gentle approach did not work.

In a report on fiscal year 2022 data, the United States Sentencing Commission said that illegal reentry prosecutions had decreased by 34% since 2018. It said that 97.6% of illegal reentry offenders were men, their average age was 39, and many had extensive criminal histories. It said 99.3% of convicts are sentenced to prison, for an average of 13 months.

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Criminal Prosecutions Of Illegal Immigrants Stopped When Coronavirus Hit. They Never Resumed - The Daily Wire

NATIONAL VIEW: Measles is more contagious than the coronavirus, and it’s back – Odessa American

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This year is not yet one-third over, yet measles cases in the United States are on track to be the worst since a massive outbreak in 2019. At the same time, anti-vaccine activists are recklessly sowing doubts and encouraging vaccine hesitancy. Parents who leave their children unvaccinated are risking not only their health but also the well-being of those around them.

Measles is one of the most contagious human viruses more so than the coronavirus and is spread through direct or airborne contact when an infected person breathes, coughs or sneezes. The virus can hang in the air for up to two hours after an infected person has left an area. It can cause serious complications, including pneumonia, encephalitis and death, especially in unvaccinated people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one person infected with measles can infect 9 out of 10 unvaccinated individuals with whom they come in close contact.

But measles can be prevented with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine; two doses are 97 percent effective. When 95 percent or more of a community is vaccinated, herd immunity protects the whole. Unfortunately, vaccination rates are falling. The global vaccine coverage rate of the first dose, at 83 percent, and second dose, at 74 percent, are well under the 95 percent level. Vaccination coverage among U.S. kindergartners has slipped from 95.2 percent during the 2019-2020 school year to 93.1 percent in the 2022-2023 school year, according to the CDC, leaving approximately 250,000 kindergartners at risk each year over the past three years.

The virus is slipping through the gaps. According to the World Health Organization, in 2022, 37 countries experienced large or disruptive measles outbreaks compared with 22 countries in 2021. In the United States, there have been seven outbreaks so far this year, with 121 cases in 18 jurisdictions. Most are children. Many of the outbreaks in the United States appear to have been triggered by international travel or contact with a traveler. Disturbingly, 82 percent of those infected were unvaccinated or their status unknown.

The largest toll has been in Illinois, followed by Florida. But when an outbreak hit the Manatee Bay Elementary School in Broward County in early March, Floridas top public health official, state Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo, did not follow the standard recommendation that parents of unvaccinated children keep them home for 21 days to avoid getting the disease. Instead, Dr. Ladapo said, Florida would be deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance. This means allowing children without protection to go to school. Dr. Ladapos letter was an unnecessarily reckless act of pandering to an anti-vaccine movement with increasing political influence.

Vaccine hesitancy is being encouraged by activists who warn of government coercion, using social media to amplify irresponsible claims. An article published March 20 on the website of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s Childrens Health Defense organization is headlined, Be Very Afraid? CDC, Big Media Drum Up Fear of Deadly Measles Outbreaks. The author, Alan Cassels, claims that the news media is advancing a a fear-mongering narrative, and adds, Those of us born before 1970 with personal experience pretty much all agree that measles is a big meh. We all had it ourselves and so did our brothers, sisters and school friends. We also had chicken pox and mumps and typically got a few days off school. The only side effect of those diseases was that my mom sighed heavily and called work to say she had to stay home to look after a kid with spots.

Today, he adds, Big media and government overhyping the nature of an illness, which history has shown us can be a precursor to some very bad public health policies such as mandatory vaccination programs and other coercive measures.

This is just wrong. The CDC reports that, in the decade before the measles vaccine became available in 1963, the disease killed 400 to 500 people, hospitalized 48,000 and gave 1,000 people encephalitis in the United States every year and that was just among reported cases.

The elimination of measles in the United States in 2000, driven by a safe and effective vaccine, was a major public health success. Although the elimination status still holds, the U.S. situation has deteriorated. The nation has been below 95 percent two-dose coverage for three consecutive years, and 12 states and the District below 90 percent. At the same time, the rest of the world must also strive to boost childhood vaccination rates, which slid backward during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the WHO, low-income countries with the highest risk of death from measles continue to have the lowest vaccination rates, only 66 percent.

The battle against measles requires a big not a meh effort.

The Washington Post

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NATIONAL VIEW: Measles is more contagious than the coronavirus, and it's back - Odessa American

Europe’s A.I. ‘Champion’ Sets Sights on Tech Giants in U.S. – The New York Times

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Arthur Mensch, tall and lean with a flop of unkempt hair, arrived for a speech last month at a sprawling tech hub in Paris wearing jeans and carrying a bicycle helmet. He had an unassuming look for a person European officials are counting on to help propel the region into a high-stakes match with the United States and China over artificial intelligence.

Mr. Mensch, 31, is the chief executive and a founder of Mistral, considered by many to be one of the most promising challengers to OpenAI and Google. You have become the poster child for A.I. in France, Matt Clifford, a British investor, told him onstage.

A lot is riding on Mr. Mensch, whose company has shot into the spotlight just a year after he founded it in Paris with two college friends. As Europe scrambles to get a foothold in the A.I. revolution, the French government has singled out Mistral as its best hope to create a standard-bearer, and has lobbied European Union policymakers to help ensure the firms success.

Artificial intelligence will be built rapidly into the global economy in the coming decade, and policymakers and business leaders in Europe fear that growth and competitiveness will suffer if the region does not keep up. Behind their worries is a conviction that A.I. should not be dominated by tech giants, like Microsoft and Google, that might forge global standards at odds with the culture and politics of other countries. At stake is the bigger question of which artificial intelligence models will wind up influencing the world, and how they should be regulated.

The issue with not having a European champion is that the road map gets set by the United States, said Mr. Mensch, who just 18 months ago was working as an engineer at Googles DeepMind lab in Paris, building A.I. models. His co-founders, Timothe Lacroix and Guillaume Lample, also in their 30s, held similar positions at Meta.

In an interview at Mistrals spartan, whitewashed offices facing the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris, Mr. Mensch said it wasnt safe to trust U.S. tech giants to set ground rules for a powerful new technology that would affect millions of lives.

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Europe's A.I. 'Champion' Sets Sights on Tech Giants in U.S. - The New York Times

Bridger Aerospace Announces Schedule for its Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Release and Conference Call – GlobeNewswire

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BELGRADE, Mont., March 13, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bridger Aerospace Group Holdings, Inc. (Bridger or Bridger Aerospace), (NASDAQ: BAER, BAERW), one of the nations largest aerial firefighting companies, today announced that it will release financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2023 on Tuesday, March 19, 2024 after the market close.

Management will conduct an investor conference call on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time (3:00 p.m. Mountain Time) to discuss these results and its business outlook. Interested parties can access the conference call by dialing 800-274-8461 or 203-518-9783. The conference call will also be broadcast live on the Investor Relations section of our website at https://ir.bridgeraerospace.com.

An audio replay will be available through March 26, 2024, by calling 844-512-2921 or 412-317-6671 and using the passcode 1155141. The replay will also be accessible at https://ir.bridgeraerospace.com.

About Bridger Aerospace Based in Belgrade, Montana, Bridger Aerospace Group Holdings, Inc. is one of the nations largest aerial firefighting companies. Bridger provides aerial firefighting and wildfire management services to federal and state government agencies, including the United States Forest Service, across the nation, as well as internationally. More information about Bridger Aerospace is available at https://www.bridgeraerospace.com.

Investor Contacts Alison Ziegler Darrow Associates 201-220-2678 aziegler@darrowir.com

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Bridger Aerospace Announces Schedule for its Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Release and Conference Call - GlobeNewswire

Rocket Lab Electron rocket lifts off with space debris removal mission Spaceflight Now – Spaceflight Now

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An Electron rocket lifts off from Rocket Labs launch site on New Zealands Mahia Peninsula carrying the ADRAS-J satellite for Astroscale. Image: Rocket Lab.

A small satellite that will inspect a discarded rocket body in orbit lifted off Sunday/Monday on a mission to develop techniques for removing space debris. The satellite built by Japan-based Astroscale launched atop a Rocket Lab Electron from the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand at 3:52 a.m. NZDT (9:52 a.m. EST / 1452 UTC).

The Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan satellite or ADRAS-J will approach and monitor the spent upper-stage rocket of an H-2A rocket that launched in January 2009. It is part of the Japanese space agencys (JAXA) Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration program and is designed to lay the ground work for a future mission to deobit the rocket stage, tentatively scheduled for 2026. A contract has yet to be awarded for this second phase of the program.

ADRAS-J was deployed 64 minutes into flight after two firings of the Electrons Curie kick stage to precisely place the spacecraft on course for its rendezvous in space.

100% mission success, Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck wrote in a social media post. Big day for the GNC [Guidance Navigation and Control] team with perfect argument of perigee targeting.

The mission, nick named On Closer Inspection, was the 44th Electron launch to date and Rocket Labs second mission of 2024.

The ADRAS-J spacecraft will initially close in on the derelict rocket body using ground-based observation data but will then switch to on-board sensors to complete the rendezvous. It is equipped with visual and infrared cameras and LiDAR sensors. Once in close proximity, it will assess the rocket bodys condition and gauge the extent to which it might be tumbling. It will circle the upper-stage and make a close approach, but will not attempt to latch on to the rocket.

The H-2A upper stage is currently in a 622 x 557 km orbit, inclined at 98.2 degrees to the equator, has a mass of three tonnes, is 11 meters long and a diameter of four meters.

Taking images in space might sound easy, but doing it with an unprepared object that does not provide any location data on its own and its moving at approximately 7.5 kilometers per second is extremely hard, said Nobu Okada, founder and CEO of Astroscale. In fact, this kind of operation is one of the most challenging capabilities necessary for on orbit services.

Astroscale was founded in 2013 with the goal of offering on-orbit servicing and space debris removal services. It is headquarted in Japan and has subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and Israel.

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Rocket Lab Electron rocket lifts off with space debris removal mission Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

Proviso Suburbs Are Regulating Unscheduled Buses As Migrant Crisis Enters Harsh Winter – Village Free Press |

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Migrants in tents outside of the 15th District Chicago Police station in the citys Austin community in October 2023. The city has since relocated the migrants, but now suburban officials are taking measures to regulate unscheduled buses that may be unsafely dropping the asylum-seekers off in municipalities. | File

Monday, January 15, 2024 || By Michael Romain || michael@wearejohnwilk.com

Suburbs across Proviso Township have recently enacted legislation to address the wave of buses carrying migrants to various points across the Chicago area and burdening resource-strapped municipalities.

The villages of Bellwood, Broadview, Hillside and Westchester are among the municipalities whose boards have voted on ordinances or whose mayors have issued executive orders since December designed to introduce fines, penalties and restrictions for buses illegally dropping off passengers.

The primary aim is to safeguard the health and safety of both residents and bus occupants, Hillside village officials explained in a statement posted to the villages website on Dec. 29.

The Village lacks the resources to adequately support these migrants, Hillside officials added. Collaborative efforts with Local, State, County, and regional authorities are underway to address these concerns.

CNN reported in December that since April 2022, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has sent more than 90,000 asylum-seeking migrants from Latin America to various Democratic-run sanctuary cities, including Chicago.

Border authorities encountered more than 225,000 migrants along the US-Mexico border in December alone, marking the highest monthly total recorded since 2000, according to preliminary Homeland Security statistics shared with CNN, the outlet reported.

In their various ordinances and executive orders, Proviso-area village officials explained that the legislation regulating unscheduled buses is time-sensitive due to the onset of the frigid winter weather.

Entities sending such charter buses know, or should know, that the passengers on such buses are likely to seek emergency shelter and other immediate services from the municipality upon or soon after arrival in the municipality, reads the ordinance the Westchester village board unanimously passed on Jan. 9.

Local police departments have been tasked with enforcing the new regulations. In a statement shared with WGN 9, Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson said that any violation of her executive order by any bus company or bus driver, regardless of origin or destination, authorizes the seizure and impoundment of the bus by the Broadview Police Department as well as criminal charges to be filed against the company and driver.

Broadview Police Chief Thomas Mills said his department is requesting bus companies notify us five days in advance, adding that they need to know how many people are coming under the age of 18 (and) how many adults so we know how many are arriving in the Village of Broadview, WGN reported.

Mayor Thompson issued her executive order in December. The Broadview village board is poised to vote on a series of ordinances regulating unscheduled buses at a regular meeting on Jan. 16.

State opens migrant shelter

Earlier this month, Capitol News Illinois reported that another migrant shelter opened in Chicago on Jan. 10, the states latest step in dealing with an influx of more than 30,000 asylum seekers sent to Illinois from states on the southern U.S. Border since summer 2022.

The recently opened shelter is located in a former CVS in Chicagos Little Village neighborhood and is expected to host about 220 migrants. The shelter is part of a $160 million state spending plan for migrant assistance that Gov. JB Pritzker announced in November, Capitol News Illinois reported.

The new site is one of several that houses migrants, mostly from Venezuela, that have arrived in Chicago over the past year. Roughly 250 migrants are currently staying at OHare International Airport and another 280 people slept in city buses at a so-called landing zone facility in the South Loop.

Possible causes of the Venezuelan migrant crisis

Most of the migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border into the United States come from Venezuela. According to data from the Inter-Agency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela, roughly 8 million Venezuelans have fled their homes since the countrys economy collapsed in 2014. Most of those refugees have settled in about two dozen Caribbean and Latin America countries.

Critics of Venezuelas left-wing government have argued that the countrys economic collapse was due to corruption and economic mismanagement.

According to the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington, D.C. think tank, Venezuela is an example of a petrostate, where the government is highly dependent on fossil fuel income, power is concentrated, and corruption is widespread.

Petrostates are vulnerable to what economists call Dutch disease, in which a government develops an unhealthy dependence on natural resource exports to the detriment of other sectors.

When the price of oil plunged from more than $100 per barrel in 2014 to under $30 per barrel in early 2016, Venezuela entered an economic and political spiral, and despite rising prices since then, conditions remain bleak, the Council argued.

But other experts argue that the United States foreign policy also plays a critical role in the Latin American countrys collapse.

Last year, Juan Gonzlez, a reporter and senior fellow at the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told WBEZ that the influx of Venezuelan migrants to the United States is a relatively new phenomenon. Its only really happened in the last three or four years. But now Venezuelans have become the fastest growing group of the Latino community in the United States.

Gonzlez said that economic sanctions lodged by the United States against Venezuela constituted an economic war against the country. The sanctions have been under Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden, he said.

The result has been an almost complete economic collapse of the country. Besides perhaps war, it is difficult to think of a tool of foreign policy that today causes more economic and humanitarian destruction than economic sanctions, Gonzlez told WBEZ.

For instance, Citgo petroleum, a major petroleum company in this country, is a Venezuelan-owned company, he added. The Trump administration froze all the assets of Citgo. The company takes in about $24 billion in oil revenues in the United States. None of that money, though, can go to Venezuela, which is its owner.

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Proviso Suburbs Are Regulating Unscheduled Buses As Migrant Crisis Enters Harsh Winter - Village Free Press |

Supercomputer predicts Boxing Day results as both Liverpool and Manchester United get ready for action – Sportskeeda

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A supercomputer has predicted contrasting results for Manchester United and Liverpool as they take the field on Boxing Day in the Premier League.

According to Caught Offside, a supercomputer has predicted Liverpool to secure an emphatic 4-0 victory over Burnley at Turf Moor. The same computer has predicted Manchester United to once again drop points and pick up a 2-2 draw against Aston Villa at Old Trafford.

Both sides desperately need a win heading into their respective Boxing Day fixtures. The Reds have drawn their last two home games against United and then against Arsenal on Saturday, December 23.

Erik ten Hag's side, however, are in an even worse run of form in the Premier League. The Red Devils are currently winless in their last three league games and have failed to score a goal in each of those outings. They come into the game on the back of a 2-0 loss to West Ham United at London Stadium.

The two aforementioned fixtures are not the only Boxing Day games the supercomputer predicted. The computer also predicted wins for Nottingham Forest, Fulham, and Luton Town against Newcastle United, Bournemouth, and Sheffield United, respectively.

According to the aforementioned source, the supercomputer has taken various factors into consideration while making these predictions. Things like a team's record in past Boxing Day games, current form, etc. were all contributing factors for the predictions made.

Liverpool and Manchester United have had contrasting fortunes in the 2023-24 season so far. The Reds are in the midst of a title race with the likes of Arsenal, Aston Villa, and Manchester City.

The team from Merseyside are currently second in the table, having accumulated 39 points from 18 games. They are just one point behind league leaders Arsenal.

United, on the other hand, are struggling to secure European football of any flavor. At the time of writing, they are eighth in the standings, having picked up 28 points from 18 matches. Erik ten Hag's side are eight points behind Tottenham Hotspur who currently occupy the final Champions League spot.

Manchester United did secure a 0-0 draw against Liverpool at Anfield earlier this month. Jurgen Klopp's side dominated the affair with 69 percent possession and 34 shots in the game to United's six but still failed to make use of their chances.

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Supercomputer predicts Boxing Day results as both Liverpool and Manchester United get ready for action - Sportskeeda