Illegal immigration crossings have skyrocketed across the US/Northern border along Canada with authorities reporting that Border Patrol agents have seen a drastic increase in encounters compared to last fiscal year.
According to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Border Patrol agents encountered 4,827 illegal immigrants at the US/Canadian border between October 2022 and April 2023, compared to 2,238 encounters for all of fiscal year 2022, Daily Caller reports.
Border Patrol says that while agents have seen a more than double increase in encounters in the first seven months of fiscal year 2023, 2,458 of those encounters were illegal immigrants from Mexico, according to the outlet.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s lax border policies grants Mexicans the authority to fly into the country with electronic travel authorizations, which can be easily obtained with the low price of $7.00. They do not have to present visas, granting them easy access to the northern nation.
National Border Patrol Council President Sean Walsh warned about the increase in illegal crossings along the north, telling Daily Caller that, “The northern border is less secure than it ever has been and the security speaks for itself.”
“If we’re losing twelve times the amount of people just in this fiscal year alone than in the whole last year, the cartels and criminal organizations have taken advantage and exploited the border and this administration’s policies or lack of policies to address security,” Walsh said, who oversees the Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire sector of the northern border.
The increase in illegal crossings have residents living in northern border towns concerned and questioning what the future could look like if President Joe Biden and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau fail to take necessary measures to ensure the safety of both Americans and Canadians.
“Everybody in this area is on edge,” Dan Cowan, a resident along the New York-Canadian border, told Daily Caller.
“We don’t have the holding capacity for Border Patrol or US Customs. What are they gonna do with these people when they’re getting here? They’re not deporting them,” Cowan explained.
The state of New York has recently declared a state of emergency as illegal immigrants pour into the Big Apple after illegally crossing into the US from Mexico.
The House Oversight Committee’s National Security Subcommittee held a hearing this week on the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Unaccompanied Alien Children Program. Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the office, appeared, but if you watch that hearing you’ll learn a lot more from the questions than the answers — because there weren’t many answers on key issues, such as the fate of 85,000 children the office has apparently lost contact with. Someone needs to put a up a large “Help Wanted” sign in Washington, because the American people are desperately in need of accountability on migrant children — both in the government and in the media.
“Unaccompanied Alien Children”.
Until late 2002, unaccompanied alien children or “UACs” were not really a thing. That’s not to say that the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) — precursor to CBP and ICE in immigration enforcement and to USCIS in adjudicating immigration benefits — did not encounter, process, and in cases detain alien kids without parents or guardians. It did.
And it often received criticism for how it did so. In 1985, two organizations sued the INS on behalf of alien children being detained by the agency. The purpose of the suit, as NPR has explained, was to “challeng[e] procedures regarding the detention, treatment, and release of children”.
That case went through several levels of judicial review, including by the Supreme Court in March 1993 on the question of whether the then-controlling regulation limiting the release of those children without parents or guardians violated the constitution’s Due Process clause.
That regulation provided for the release of UACs only to their parents, close relatives, or legal guardians, “except in unusual and compelling circumstances”. If not released under this provision, an INS official was required to find “suitable placement … in a facility designated for the occupancy of juveniles.”
Justice Scalia, writing for six other justices, found that the regulation was not unconstitutional. He noted:
The parties to the present suit agree that the Service must assure itself that someone will care for those minors pending resolution of their deportation proceedings. That is easily done when the juvenile’s parents have also been detained and the family can be released together; it becomes complicated when the juvenile is arrested alone, i. e., unaccompanied by a parent, guardian, or other related adult.
The matter was remanded to U.S. district court, and in January 1997, the Clinton DOJ and the plaintiffs entered into a stipulated settlement agreement (the Flores settlement agreement, or FSA).
The FSA governed the conditions of detention and release of unaccompanied children in INS custody, but it never satisfied the advocates. When the INS was abolished and DHS created in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (HSA), they had the chance to act.
A Democratic amendment to HSA defined the term “unaccompanied alien child” as:
a child who — (A) has no lawful immigration status in the United States; (B) has not attained 18 years of age; and (C) with respect to whom — (i) there is no parent or legal guardian in the United States; or (ii) no parent or legal guardian in the United States is available to provide care and physical custody.
That amendment also gave responsibility for the care and placement of those UACs to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
There was little debate when this amendment was approved, so it’s unclear why anybody thought that ORR would do a better job with those kids than the former INS had, or as the future ICE — which has authority to detain aliens generally — would do.
In any event, the change was not that significant at first, because DHS didn’t encounter many UACs to transfer. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the number of UACs DHS referred to ORR in the early 2000s “averaged 6,700 annually”.
That quickly changed in 2008, however, when congressional Democrats pushed through the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA).
Section 235 of the TVPRA divided UACs into two groups: (1) children from the “contiguous” countries of Canada and Mexico; and (2) minor nationals of “non-contiguous” countries (everywhere else).
Under that provision, a UAC from a contiguous country can be returned home if the child has not been trafficked and does not have a credible fear of return.
UACs from non-contiguous countries, however, must be transferred to ORR within 72 hours and placed into formal removal proceedings (UACs can’t be placed into expedited removal), even if they have not been trafficked and have no fear of return. ORR is then directed to place most of those children with “sponsors” in the United States.
That created an opening for parents, other family members, guardians, and traffickers in the United States interested in bringing children living in those “non-contiguous” countries to do so, urged by smugglers with their own agendas.
That is my perspective, at least, but take a look at the statistics and decide for yourself: According to CRS, in FY 2008, the fiscal year before TVPRA took effect, CBP encountered fewer than 10,000 UACs at the Southwest border.
By FY 2009, when that bill was signed, that figure rose to around 20,000 UACs, 82 percent of them Mexican nationals, and just 17 percent from the non-contiguous “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
The number of UACs entering illegally kept growing thereafter, with Border Patrol apprehending more than 68,500 of them in FY 2014. By that point, however, just 23 percent of UACs came from Mexico and 77 percent from the Northern Triangle.
Faced with a surge in “non-contiguous” UACs that year, President Obamadesperately wrote to Congress, asking it to provide DHS with “additional authority to exercise discretion in processing the return and removal of unaccompanied minor children from non-contiguous countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador” — that is, to fix section 235 of TVPRA. That did not happen.
The Hottest Button.
Immigration has become a “hot button” issue on Capitol Hill — right up there with gun control and abortion — although as my colleague George Fishmanrecently explained, members reached bipartisan accord on it as recently as 2005. And as a subset, the treatment of UACs has become the hottest button.
Obama knew that fixes were needed, but even he could not convince Congress to do anything to bring that about, and not even stunning Senate reports in 2016 and 2018 on ORR failures forced a change.
Instead of legislative action, various parties — including most notably Joe Biden — have decided to demagogue the issue for political advantage. Let me explain.
The Trump administration attempted to address the UAC issue through any number of administrative actions, including “a biometric and biographic information-sharing agreement between ORR and DHS … intended to ensure greater child safety and immigration enforcement”. That vetting took time, however, and by FY 2020, UACs were spending on average 102 days in ORR custody while that office found a suitable sponsor in the United States.
Trump had left himself vulnerable on the issue of alien children, however, due to a poorly implemented 2018 plan (“zero tolerance”) to prosecute alien adults who had brought children with them when they entered illegally in “family units” (FMUs) for “improper entry” (a misdemeanor federal offense).
When the adults in those FMUs were sent to U.S. Marshal’s Service custody for prosecution, the children were deemed “unaccompanied” and sent to ORR — a process derided as “family separation” by Trump’s legion of detractors. The plan was poorly implemented (and more poorly explained), prompting a firestorm in the press.
Trump had to quickly shut zero tolerance down, but by then the damage had been done. Anything he tried to do thereafter relating to migrant children — including a plea for additional funding to move UACs out of overcrowded CBP processing centers and into ORR shelters in the spring of 2019 — was twisted in the increasingly hostile press and played for outrage by Congress.
That 2019 crisis led to the “kids in cages” trope, in which the public was almost categorically led to believe that UACs were sitting in squalor in government detention because Trump wanted to abuse them, and not because Congress refused to provide funding.
Then-candidate Biden issued various position papers on his immigration plans, but he only highlighted — and the press only focused on — his promises to eliminate the cages and reunify separated families. Here’s how he stated it, at the top of his campaign’s immigration website:
It is a moral failing and a national shame when … children are locked away in overcrowded detention centers and the government seeks to keep them there indefinitely. When our government argues in court against giving those children toothbrushes and soap. When President Trump uses family separation as a weapon against desperate mothers, fathers, and children seeking safety and a better life.
When I say “the press only focused on”, consider that there was only one immigration question asked during the 2020 presidential debates between Biden and Trump, from Kristen Welker at NBC News:
Mr. President, your administration separated children from their parents at the border, at least 4000 kids, You’ve since reversed your zero tolerance policy, but the United States can’t locate the parents of more than 500 children. So how will these families ever be reunited?
Trump did himself no favors in response, fumbling his answer and deflecting by asking Biden “who built the cages?”
Biden Rides In. Biden then rode into office promising to reunite those families (and attempting to use Border Patrol and ICE funds to do so, although curiously separation reportedly continues under his administration), and to move UACs out of ORR custody as quickly as possible.
That all led to a brand-new UAC surge, which has eclipsed the one Obama faced in 2014. In March 2021 alone, Border Patrol agents at the Southwest border apprehended more than 16,000 non-contiguous UACs — five times as many as in the prior December.
That forced Biden to open up “temporary” shelters known as “emergency intake sites”, or “EIS”. Advocates soon complained about the conditions in those EIS, and by April Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) was threatening to shut down the one in San Antonio, calling in the Texas Rangers (a component of the state’s Department of Public Safety), to investigate what was going on there.
By March 2022, it was revealed that ORR had lost 20,000 of the UACs it had released to sponsors under Biden, and complaints about EIS were amplified last September when the HHS Office of Inspector General issued a blistering report on the office’s failures in keeping track of children in its care and vetting potential sponsors.
Though honestly, “amplified” is likely the wrong word. Aside from me and a few congressional staffers, few if any in the media noticed what was going on, even as Biden began cutting corners in vetting potential UAC sponsors, including by revoking Trump’s biometric and biographic information-sharing agreement between ORR and DHS.
By April 17, according to HHS, “the average length of time an unaccompanied child remained in ORR’s care was 25 days”.
This only changed when the New York Times started running a series of exposés on released UACs who were being forced into grueling labor and hardship in February.
Oversight Hearing.Which brings me to this week’s hearing. Among the key takeaways were that only about 37 percent of released UACs end up with a parent, and that about two-thirds of them are working full-time jobs (often without work authorization). Respectfully, if the Biden administration believes that there is a worker shortage in the United States, migrant kids in sweatshops aren’t the solution.
Shockingly, however, Director Dunn Marcos could not (or would not) confirm in response to questioning by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) that her office had lost contact with “85,000 kids” it had released to sponsors. All she could say was that in 81 percent of post-release follow-up safety and welfare calls, ORR was able to make contact with the child. Meaning that in about one-fifth of UAC cases, ORR lost contact.
All procedural arguments are self-serving, but Chairman Glenn Grothman (R-Wisc.) was spot-on when he went off script to complain:
It’s particularly aggravating to see these kids come across the border and have the press not cover what’s going on, when these kids may never see their parents again, and just a few years ago we saw the press screaming about broken families.
Compare whatever coverage you may see about Rep. Biggs’ questioning on 85,000 UACs to the following report from the Washington Post in May 2018, during the Trump administration:
During a Senate committee hearing late last month, Steven Wagner, an official with the Department of Health and Human Services, testified that the federal agency had lost track of 1,475 children who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border on their own (that is, unaccompanied by adults) and subsequently were placed with adult sponsors in the United States. As the Associated Press reported, the number was based on a survey of more than 7,000 children:
From October to December 2017, HHS called 7,635 children the agency had placed with sponsors, and found 6,075 of the children were still living with their sponsors, 28 had run away, five had been deported and 52 were living with someone else. The rest were missing, said Steven Wagner, acting assistant secretary at HHS.
Let me do the math for you. The AP report referenced showed HHS reached 79.5 percent of UACs it had released during three months in 2017 but could not contact 1,475 of them.
Dunn Marcos asserted that her office had been able to reach 81 percent of UACs it released but couldn’t even confirm that it was unable to contact 85,000 others.
The difference between 79.5 percent and 81 percent is 1.5 percent — basically a rounding error.
The difference between 85,000 and 1,475, however, is 83,525 — more lost kids than are enrolled in the Austin (Texas) Independent School District — America’s 41st largest. If somehow someone had lost every student in Austin’s public schools, every outlet would cover it like CNN covered the first Gulf War. Biggs’ unanswered contention? Crickets.
Did I mention that the headline on the May 2018 Post article was “The U.S. lost track of 1,475 immigrant children last year. Here’s why people are outraged now”? In that vein, where’s the outrage now?
I’m not saying the press should have cut Donald Trump slack on migrant kids. “Politics ain’t beanbag”, and in many ways he did himself few favors. But if the media isn’t solely composed of partisan hacks playing gotcha on such children, they should be as enraged about 85,000 lost kids now as they were about a fraction of that number in 2018. They aren’t — and that’s the true outrage.
BREAKING: House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep Mark Green tells us he has just learned all Democrats on the committee are pulling out from attending a field hearing about the border crisis in Texas on Wednesday. He says that’s despite several Dems confirming attendance, & inviting their own minority witness, who is confirmed on the federal panel. US Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz is also set to testify. Chairman Green says he was given no reason for the abrupt pullout. Chairman Green’s statement below. #FoxNews
Homeland Security committee Dems confirm that they will not be attending the border hearing
They say that they never agreed to attend in the first place so they are not “pulling out.”
It’s time America takes ACTION! SPEAK UP!
Call: Rep Mark Green’s office 202-224-3121 (Capitol switchboard)
Speak to the staff of ranking committee chair, this gets your message to him directly…. otherwise, our voices are diluted 🇺🇸
STATEMENT from Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D):
“After careful consideration, Committee Democrats have decided not to participate in the Republicans’ field hearing this week. Unfortunately, it has become clear that Republicans planned to politicize this event from the start, breaking with the Committee’s proud history of bipartisanship. Instead of a fact-finding mission to develop better border security and immigration policies, Republicans are traveling to the border to attack the Administration and try to score political points with their extreme rhetoric – despite having voted against the resources border personnel need. Committee Democrats are in regular contact with Department leadership and stakeholders on the ground and will be taking substantive site visits to the border – including as soon as this week.”
The Biden Border plan is to shift illegal immigration from mass numbers of illegal aliens rushing the border to paroling or releasing those same illegal aliens into the United States with employment authorization and access to welfare, preparing the illegals for eventual de facto or legislative amnesty. The legislative amnesty is off the table with the Republican House, but the de facto amnesty remains in play.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Imagine it! All this is allowed by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
The Luge press’s is only too happy to run cover for the lies. Just a few days ago the Lying Press, Associated Press in this case, touted that the numbers of border crossers is down significantly, as if the announcements of the parole amnesty convinced millions of illegal aliens enroute through Central America or flying into Mexico from Africa, Asia, and South America to just return home and try and use the app to enter, rather than try their luck at the border. Actually, luck has nothing to do with it; coyotes who work for the cartels have guaranteed entry to the United States, no matter how many attempts it takes.
A sharp drop in illegal border crossings since December could blunt a Republican point of attack against President Joe Biden as the Democratic leader moves to reshape a broken asylum system that has dogged him and his predecessors.
A new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows some support for changing the number of immigrants and asylum-seekers allowed into the country. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults say the level of immigration and asylum-seekers should be lowered, while about 2 in 10 say they should be higher, according to the poll. About a third want the numbers to remain the same.
The decrease in border crossings followed Biden’s announcement in early January that Mexico would take back Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans under a pandemic-era rule that denies migrants the right to seek asylum as part of an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. At the same time, the U.S. agreed to admit up to 30,000 a month of those four nationalities on humanitarian parole if they apply online, enter at an airport and find a financial sponsor.
Instead, the reality is that the Fiscal Year 2023 is heading tobreak the record of illegal immigration from the last two fiscal years, when over 5 million illegal aliens entered or attempted to enter the United States, with most being released into the United States.
Migrant encounters at the southern border have already surpassed the one million mark for Fiscal Year 2023, multiple Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources tell Fox News, marking an unprecedented pace for encounters.
As of Friday, the total migrant encounters at the border were at 1,008,217 for the fiscal year, which began in October. Of those, 87.8% were single adults. Just 328,454 were expelled under Title 42 — the pandemic-era protocol that allows border agents to rapidly expel border crossers.
There were more than 1.7 million encounters overall in FY 2021 and over 2.3 million in FY 2022. The first months of FY 2023 have outpaced those of the prior fiscal year. This time last year, numbers for FY22 through March 1 were 839,819—well under the 1 million mark.
Meanwhile, there have been 354,522 known “gotaways”—illegal immigrants who have evaded Border Patrol agents but have been detected on another form of surveillance. In FY 2022, there were nearly 600,000gotaways.
One may argue that the last few days have educated the illegal aliens and the numbers are dropping. But sadly for the Biden Regime and the Lying Press, reality has struck, and badly. Illegal aliens for whom the CBP One app is not available or not working have decided they are coming in, by hook or by crook, but mostly by violence. In fact, they are reverting to the common tactic that appeared during the early Clinton Regime, rushing the Ports-of-Entry (POE), the facilities where pedestrians and motor vehicles enter the United States from Mexico. Such tactics began in the 90s, but occasionally happened more recently as well under the Obama Regime and the Trump Administration.
House votes to declassify info about origins of COVID-19
By LISA MASCARO
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House voted unanimously Friday to declassify U.S. intelligence information about the origins of COVID-19, a sweeping show of bipartisan support near the third anniversary of the start of the deadly pandemic.
The 419-0 vote was final congressional approval of the bill, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk. It’s unclear whether the president will sign the measure into law, and the White House said the matter was under review. … If signed into law, the measure would require within 90 days the declassification of “any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the Coronavirus Disease.”
That includes information about research and other activities at the lab and whether any researchers grew ill.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees us a speedy trial. The process of those detained on January 6th has been anything but speedy. It has been impeded by disingenuous politics from the Left.
The information we see coming out from defense teams in the trials of these people indicate that the federal government and law enforcement from the District of Columbia were integral in goading the people into violent and illegal action.
Evidence has now been exposed that shows undercover and plain clothed police officers from both the DC Metro and the Capitol Hill Police – as well as federal agents – were amongst the protesters, some of them literally pushing people towards the doors of the Capitol Building.
Many of us have seen video already of Capitol Hill police officers showing people the way up the stairs inside the Capitol Building.
And then there is the joke of a January 6th committee that was put together – that was gerrymandered – by Nancy Pelosi that withheld all of the video evidence from that day. There shouldn’t be anything held back from that day as far as video evidence. It should all be open for the public to see.
Now that Kevin McCarthy has given Tucker Carlson complete access to that video archive I am sure we are going to see more things that really piss us off!
The bottom line here is that there were legitimate objections to some of the Electors that were being seated, objections that needed to go through a legal procedure in the Electoral College. That chaos stopped those objections.
So, if there was any gerrymandering of the election in 2020 – besides the fact that the Judicial Branch in the Supreme Court failed to act on a question of constitutionality where the changing of election law was concerned in several States – it happened with the Democrats manufacturing, fomenting, and encouraging chaos on Capitol Hill that stopped those objections to those electors being seated.
It’s all got to come out.
Everybody knows something wasn’t right with the election. I’m not going as far as to support Donald Trump’s “It was stolen,” but there were things that happened during that election that should never happen again.
Then, this morning’s segment on Talkback with Chuck Wilder…
A report by Public Citizen documents the enormous scale of pharmaceutical industry lawless activities during the past two decades–crimes that resulted in a minimum of $1 million in penalties paid to the government.
Between 1991-2010, there were 165 criminal and/or civil settlements by major pharmaceutical companies comprising of $19.8 billion in penalties.
Four of the world’s largest drug companies–GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Schering-Plough–accounted for 53% ($10.5 billion) of penalties during these two decades.
If that isn’t shocking enough, during the past five years, Big Pharma has been engaged in a veritable crime spree:
73% of these settlements (121) and 75% of the penalties ($14.8 billion) occurred between 2006-2010.
“While the defense industry used to be the biggest defrauder of the federal government under the False Claims Act (FCA), a law enacted in 1863 to prevent defense contractor fraud, the pharmaceutical industry has greatly overtaken the defense industry in recent years. The pharmaceutical industry now tops not only the defense industry, but all other industries in the total amount of fraud payments for actions taken against the federal government under the False Claims Act.”
Former company employees who filed qui tam (whistleblower) suits were the most instrumental in bringing to light the evidence that resulted in the largest number of federal settlements over the past 10 years.
From 1991-2000 qui tam law suits accounted for only 9% of settlements with the government. But from 2001-2010, qui tam settlements comprised 67% of the billions in payouts.
The federal government levied the largest financial penalties for the illegal off-label promotion of drugs and state governments levied the largest penalties for deliberate overcharging of Medicaid–both crimes yielded pharmaceutical companies with huge profits. Public Citizen found that state Medicaid programs were paying as much as 12 times the actual cost of a drug.
Additional unlawful practices by pharmaceutical companies include: unlawful monopoly practices to extend patent pricing or collusion with other companies, kickbacks to providers, hospitals, doctors; concealing negative study findings; poor manufacturing practices and selling contaminated products; environmental violations; accounting or tax fraud and insider trading; illigal distribution of unapproved pharmaceutical products.
Thus, the size of the financial penalties levied paled when compared with the profits from illegal practices–which is why this industry has escalated its criminal marketing modus operandi.
We wholeheartedly agree with the assessment of Public Citizen: “Clearly, the continuing increase in violations by pharmaceutical compaines–despite the large financial settlements– demonstrates that the current enforcement system is not working. The lack of criminal prosecution that would result in jailing of company executives has been cited as a major reason for the continuing large-scale fraud, in addition to the fact that current settlement payouts may not be a sufficient deterrent.”
Adding insult to injury, who do you think is footing the cost of legal and settlement expenditures incurred by pharmaceutical companies? Just check the increased price of drugs and figure it out.
Finally, government suits against pharmaceutical companies have avoided charging or penalizing pharmaceutical companies for the severe harmful consequences suffered by consumers from illegal marketed harmful drugs. This failure to address the disabling adverse drug effects and drug-linked deahts resulting from illegal pharmaceutical activities contributes to the devaluation of human beings–thereby buttressing this industry’s disregard for the welfare of its customers.
Sec. 4 . Policy and Actions Related to United States Central Bank Digital Currencies. (a) The policy of my Administration on a United States CBDC is as follows:
(i) Sovereign money is at the core of a well-functioning financial system, macroeconomic stabilization policies, and economic growth. My Administration places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC. These efforts should include assessments of possible benefits and risks for consumers, investors, and businesses; financial stability and systemic risk; payment systems; national security; the ability to exercise human rights; financial inclusion and equity; and the actions required to launch a United States CBDC if doing so is deemed to be in the national interest.
(ii) My Administration sees merit in showcasing United States leadership and participation in international fora related to CBDCs and in multi-country conversations and pilot projects involving CBDCs. Any future dollar payment system should be designed in a way that is consistent with United States priorities (as outlined in section 4(a)(i) of this order) and democratic values, including privacy protections, and that ensures the global financial system has appropriate transparency, connectivity, and platform and architecture interoperability or transferability, as appropriate.
(iii) A United States CBDC may have the potential to support efficient and low-cost transactions, particularly for cross-border funds transfers and payments, and to foster greater access to the financial system, with fewer of the risks posed by private sector-administered digital assets. A United States CBDC that is interoperable with CBDCs issued by other monetary authorities could facilitate faster and lower-cost cross-border payments and potentially boost economic growth, support the continued centrality of the United States within the international financial system, and help to protect the unique role that the dollar plays in global finance. There are also, however, potential risks and downsides to consider. We should prioritize timely assessments of potential benefits and risks under various designs to ensure that the United States remains a leader in the international financial system.
(b) Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Director of National Intelligence, and the heads of other relevant agencies, shall submit to the President a report on the future of money and payment systems, including the conditions that drive broad adoption of digital assets; the extent to which technological innovation may influence these outcomes; and the implications for the United States financial system, the modernization of and changes to payment systems, economic growth, financial inclusion, and national security. This report shall be coordinated through the interagency process described in section 3 of this order. Based on the potential United States CBDC design options, this report shall include an analysis of:
(i) the potential implications of a United States CBDC, based on the possible design choices, for national interests, including implications for economic growth and stability;
(ii) the potential implications a United States CBDC might have on financial inclusion;
(iii) the potential relationship between a CBDC and private sector-administered digital assets;
(iv) the future of sovereign and privately produced money globally and implications for our financial system and democracy;
(v) the extent to which foreign CBDCs could displace existing currencies and alter the payment system in ways that could undermine United States financial centrality;
(vi) the potential implications for national security and financial crime, including an analysis of illicit financing risks, sanctions risks, other law enforcement and national security interests, and implications for human rights; and
(vii) an assessment of the effects that the growth of foreign CBDCs may have on United States interests generally.
(c) The Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Chairman of the Federal Reserve) is encouraged to continue to research and report on the extent to which CBDCs could improve the efficiency and reduce the costs of existing and future payments systems, to continue to assess the optimal form of a United States CBDC, and to develop a strategic plan for Federal Reserve and broader United States Government action, as appropriate, that evaluates the necessary steps and requirements for the potential implementation and launch of a United States CBDC. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is also encouraged to evaluate the extent to which a United States CBDC, based on the potential design options, could enhance or impede the ability of monetary policy to function effectively as a critical macroeconomic stabilization tool.
(d) The Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, shall:
(i) within 180 days of the date of this order, provide to the President through the APNSA and APEP an assessment of whether legislative changes would be necessary to issue a United States CBDC, should it be deemed appropriate and in the national interest; and
(ii) within 210 days of the date of this order, provide to the President through the APNSA and the APEP a corresponding legislative proposal, based on consideration of the report submitted by the Secretary of the Treasury under section 4(b) of this order and any materials developed by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve consistent with section 4(c) of this order.
The language in Section 4 makes Order 14067…
…the most treacherous act by a sitting President in the history of our republic.
Because Section 4 sets the stage for…
Legal government surveillance of all US citizens…
Total control over your bank accounts and purchases…
And the ability to silence all dissenting voices for good.
In this new war on freedom, the Dems aren’t coming for your guns.
No, they’re thinking much bigger than that…
They’re coming for your money.
And it’s already started.
Former Advisor to Pentagon and CIA: “Your life savings and freedoms are at immediate risk.“
Jim Richards, a former advisor to the Pentagon, the White House, Congress, the CIA, and the Department of Defense and an attorney, investment banker……and author of 7 books on currencies and international economics has stated the following…
When places like Fox, CNBC or Bloomberg want to know what’s about to shakeup the global economy, they call me.
Most of all, like you, I’m a proud American patriot.
The disturbing predictions you’re about to see are based on my independent research and my contacts in the intelligence community.
Someone needs to pull the alarm!
Section 4 of Biden’s Order means for all Americans…it is laying the groundwork for…
The US dollar being made obsolete.
It Can Happen Here: The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Depositors
Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few eurozone troika officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds. New Zealand has a similar directive, discussed earlier here.
Few depositors realize that legally, the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank’s, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs. (See here and here.) But until now, the bank has been obligated to pay the money back as cash on demand. Under the FDIC-BOE plan, our IOUs will be converted into “bank equity.” The bank will get the money and we will get stock in the bank. With any luck we may be able to sell the stock to someone else, but when and at what price? Most people keep a deposit account so they can have ready cash to pay the bills.
Reading the Fine Print
The 15-page FDIC-BOE document is called “Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions.” It begins by explaining that since the 2008 banking crisis, it has become clear that some other way besides taxpayer bailouts are needed to maintain “financial stability.” Evidently anticipating that the next financial collapse will be on a grander scale than either the taxpayers or Congress is willing to underwrite, the authors present this alternative:
An efficient path for returning the sound operations of the G-SIFI to the private sector would be provided by exchanging or converting a sufficient amount of the unsecured debt from the original creditors of the failed company [meaning the depositors] into equity [or stock]. In the U.S., the new equity would become capital in one or more newly formed operating entities. In the U.K., the same approach could be used, or the equity could be used to recapitalize the failing financial company itself–thus, the highest layer of surviving bailed-in creditors would become the owners of the resolved firm. In either country, the new equity holders would take on the corresponding risk of being shareholders in a financial institution. [Emphasis added.]
No exception is indicated for “insured deposits” in the U.S., meaning those under $250,000, the deposits we thought were protected by FDIC insurance. This can hardly be an oversight, since it is the FDIC that is issuing the directive. The FDIC is an insurance company funded by premiums paid by private banks. The directive is called a “resolution process,” defined elsewhere as a plan that “would be triggered in the event of the failure of an insurer and would facilitate [the failed bank’s] resolution in a controlled manner, avoiding systemic disruption and use of public funds.” The only mention of “insured deposits”is in connection with existing UK legislation, which the FDIC-BOE directive goes on to say is inadequate, implying that it needs to be modified or overridden.
An Imminent Risk
If our IOUs are converted to bank stock, they will no longer be subject to insurance protection but will be “at risk” and vulnerable to being wiped out, just as the Lehman Brothers shareholders were in 2008. That this dire scenario could actually materialize was underscored by Yves Smith in a March 19 post titled When You Weren’t Looking, Democrat Bank Stooges Launch Bills to Permit Bailouts, Deregulate Derivatives. She writes:
In the U.S., depositors have actually been put in a worse position than Cyprus deposit-holders, at least if they are at the big banks that play in the derivatives casino. The regulators have turned a blind eye as banks use their depositaries to fund derivatives exposures. And as bad as that is, the depositors, unlike their Cypriot confreres, aren’t even senior creditors. Remember Lehman? When the investment bank failed, unsecured creditors (and remember, depositors are unsecured creditors) got eight cents on the dollar. One big reason was that derivatives counterparties require collateral for any exposures, meaning they are secured creditors. The 2005 bankruptcy reforms made derivatives counterparties senior to unsecured lenders. [Emphasis added.]
One might wonder why the posting of collateral by a derivative counterparty, at some percentage of full exposure, makes the creditor “secured,” while the depositor who posted collateral at 100 cents on the dollar is “unsecured.” But moving on — Smith writes:
Lehman had only two itty bitty banking subsidiaries, and to my knowledge, was not gathering retail deposits. But as readers may recall, Bank of America moved most of its derivatives from its Merrill Lynch operation [to] its depositary in late 2011.
Its “depositary” is the arm of the bank that takes deposits. At B of A, that means lots and lots of deposits. The deposits are now subject to being wiped out by a major derivatives loss. How bad could that be? Smith quotes Bloomberg:
… Bank of America’s holding company… held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June…
That compares with JPMorgan’s deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99 percent of the New York-based firm’s $79 trillion of notional derivatives, the OCC data show.
$75 trillion and $79 trillion in derivatives! These two mega-banks alone hold more in derivatives eachthan the entire global GDP (at $70 trillion).
Smith goes on:
… Remember the effect of the 2005 bankruptcy law revisions: derivatives counterparties are first in line, they get to grab assets first and leave everyone else to scramble for crumbs… Lehman failed over a weekend after JP Morgan grabbed collateral.
But it’s even worse than that. During the Savings & Loan crisis, the FDIC did not have enough in deposit insurance receipts to pay for the Resolution Trust Corporation wind-down vehicle. It had to get more funding from Congress. This move paves the way for another TARP-style shakedown of taxpayers, this time to save depositors.
Perhaps, but Congress has already been burned and is liable to balk a second time. Hence the need for the FDIC-BOE resolution. When it is implemented, the FDIC will no longer need to protect depositor funds; it can just confiscate them.
Note that an FDIC confiscation of deposits to recapitalize the banks is far different from a simple tax on taxpayers to pay government expenses. The government’s debt is at least arguably the people’s debt, since the government is there to provide services for the people. But when the banks get into trouble with their derivative schemes, they are not serving depositors, who are not getting a cut of the profits; and by no stretch of the imagination are the depositors liable for the losses. Taking depositor funds is simply theft. What should be done is to raise FDIC insurance premiums and make the banks pay to keep their depositors whole, but premiums are already high. The FDIC is a government agency, but like other regulatory agencies it is subject to regulatory capture. Deposit insurance has failed, and so has the private banking system that has depended on it for the trust that makes banking work.
Note too that imposing losses on depositors is not a “wealth tax” but is a tax on the poor, since wealthy people don’t keep most of their money in bank accounts. They keep it in the stock market, in real estate, in over-the-counter derivatives, in gold and silver, and so forth.
Are you safe, then, if your money is in gold and silver? Apparently not — if it’s stored in a safety deposit box in the bank. Homeland Security has reportedly told banks that it has authority to seize the contents of safety deposit boxes without a warrant when it’s a matter of “national security,” which a major bank crisis no doubt will be.
The Swedish Alternative: Nationalize the Banks
Another alternative was considered by President Obama in 2009 but was rejected: nationalize failed banks. In a February 2009 article titled “Are Uninsured Bank Depositors in Danger?,” Felix Salmon discussed a newsletter by Asia-based investment strategist Christopher Wood, in which Wood wrote:
It is… amazing that Obama does not understand the political appeal of the nationalization option… [D]espite this latest setback nationalization of the banks is coming sooner or later because the realities of the situation will demand it. The result will be shareholders wiped out and bondholders forced to take debt-for-equity swaps, if not hopefully depositors.
On whether depositors could be forced to become equity holders, Salmon commented:
It’s worth remembering that depositors are unsecured creditors of any bank; usually, indeed, they’re by far the largest class of unsecured creditors.
President Obama acknowledged that bank nationalization had worked in Sweden, and that the course pursued by the U.S. Fed had not worked in Japan, which wound up instead in a “lost decade.” But Obama opted for the Japanese approach because, according to Ed Harrison, “Americans will not tolerate nationalization.”
That was four years ago. When Americans realize that the alternative is to have their ready cash transformed into “bank stock” of questionable marketability, moving failed mega-banks into the public sector may start to have more appeal.
Soon, your cash will be confiscated – or will simply be worthless paper.
To make this happen, banks will be closing branches under the pretense its workers are quitting over fear of transmission of the COVID-19 coronavirus from bank customer to bank teller. Intentional central bank induced inflation will crush the purchasing power of the American dollar. Then there will be pre-planned shortages of cash and coin that will force the public to beg for currency reform – the elimination of paper money and its replacement with a digital money card, what the World Economic Forum calls THE 4TH DIGITAL INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.
Every “digital dollar” will be programmed by the government…that means they will be able to “turn on or off” your money at will.
Not only that, but they’ll be able to TRACK and RECORD every purchase you make.
The digital dollar means Dems would be able to punish any contribution, purchase, or even social media comment they don’t like.
And this isn’t something years away… It’s starting now.
Biden’s secret army has been hard at work, and…US trials are already well underway.
In fact, our government is racing to catch up…
Quote: “We think it’s really important that the central bank maintain a stable currency and payments system for the public’s benefit. That’s one of our jobs,” Powell said. He noted the “transformational innovation” in the area of digital payments and said the Fed is continuing to do work on the matter, including its own FedNow system expected to go online in 2023.”
The White House pressured the Democratic mayor of El Paso, Texas, to not declare a state of emergency over the city’s migrant crisis due to fear it would make President Biden look bad, The Post has learned.
At least three of the El Paso City Council’s eight members have urged Mayor Oscar Leeser to issue an emergency declaration in response to the thousands of migrants who’ve filled the city’s shelters and are being housed in local hotels, sources familiar with the matter said.
But Leeser admitted during a private phone conversation last month that he’d been directed otherwise by the Biden administration, one of the officials told The Post.
“He told me the White House asked him not to,” Council member Claudia Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez also said Leeser has repeatedly assured her that he’d declare a state of emergency “if things got worse” — without saying what that meant.
US Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), whose district covers rural areas and border towns near El Paso, also said he heard similar accounts from other city officials.
“It is a sleight of hand what the administration is doing — pressuring the local government to not issue a declaration of emergency, to say as if everything is going OK,” he said.
Gonzales also alleged that the White House has done “the same thing in other parts of my district,” which have also seen huge numbers of migrants seeking refuge.
Leeser declined to speak with The Post but said in a prepared statement, “I don’t bow to pressure from any side.”
At one point over 2,100 migrants were crossing the border at El Paso daily.
New York Post
“I make decisions based on current circumstances and in the best interest of the citizens of El Paso,” the statement said.
Leeser also praised the federal government for providing his city with “critical” assistance.
The White House pressured El Paso’s mayor to not declare a State of Emergency over the city’s migrant crisis. New York PostCongressman Tony Gonzales shares it was not the first time they’ve received pressure regarding migrants seeking refuge. Congressman Tony Gonzalez
At a Sept. 27 City Council meeting, Mayor Leeser also addressed the issue, saying Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) had urged him not to declare a State of Emergency, adding: “The White House has asked, at this point, for us not to do that and they’ll continue to work with us and continue to give us … money through [the] Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
Figures posted on El Paso’s official website show the city has received only $2 million in federal reimbursements toward the $8 million it has spent dealing with the migrant crisis.
The total cost could end up being much more, with ElPasomatters.org reporting in September the city was spending as much as $300,000 a day to shelter, feed and transport asylum-seeking immigrants.
In May, The Post first reported how officials in El Paso were considering declaring a state of emergency ahead of the expected ending of pandemic-related expulsions of border-crossers under Title 42 of the federal Public Health Services Act.
The move would have made the city and county eligible for state and federal funding to open additional shelters for housing migrants.
But the following day, El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego said that “the mayor and I backed off,” telling The Post that “we found out that there’s very little difference between the funding we’re getting now and the funding that we would get if it went up to the governor and the governor sent it to President Biden.”
At the time, about 700 migrants a day were arriving in El Paso.
But that number topped 2,100 a day last week before dropping down to around 1,600 a day, according to the latest information posted Monday on the city’s website.
Between April and mid-September more than 62,000 migrants had crossed the border at El Paso alone.
El Paso has relocated more than 10,000 migrants by bus to New York City since August, with Lesser revealing at a public meeting last month that he got a green light to do so from Mayor Eric Adams.
The front cover of the New York Post for Oct. 18, 2022.
Adams has denied that assertion and publicly called on Leeser to end the program earlier this month, saying “New York cannot accommodate the number of buses that we have coming here to our city.”
The Oct. 7 appeal came the same day Hizzoner declared a state of emergency in the Big Apple over its migrant crisis.
But the buses have continued rolling to the city from El Paso, most recently on Sunday.
Leeser has said that most of the migrants flooding El Paso come from Venezuela.
In recent days, migrants have been able to simply walk across the dried-up Rio Grande, surrender to US Customs and Border Protection officials and get released after saying they intend to seek political asylum.
Last week, the US and Mexican governments announced a deal under which Venezuelans who cross into the US would be sent back to Mexico.
But border sources told The Post that the agreement was only being enforced in a small number of cases.
The White House didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
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