U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is being called on to protect Arizonans as the state is being flooded with Central American migrants and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are being diverted to the Texas border.
On Thursday, in an interview on KFYI’s James T. Harris show, Mark Spencer of Judicial Watch reported that veteran U.S. Customs agent Patricia Cramer, who also serves as president of the Arizona chapter of the agency’s employee union “called Sinema’s office and told her she needed to go to Texas to see what the problem is. The reason she needs to go to Texas it’s because the CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) Commissioner is stripping 700 agents from various locations to send a Texas.”
According to Spencer, “Arizona is leading in vacancies. The Mayor of Yuma called Sinema’s office and told her they were being flooded in that sector and not to let the Commissioner take bodies from them. Ninety-eight percent of all those claiming credible fear are unqualified.”
According to CBP, agents assigned to the Yuma Sector have begun releasing detainees on their own recognizance due to the “significant rise in the number of family units arrested throughout the sector.”
James T. Harris Interview: Mark Spencer
#550KFYI #JamesT.Harris #Circus https://t.co/a1gZixG0Kk— James T Harris (@JamesTHarris) March 29, 2019
CBP advises that the “demographic is challenging in that they cannot be immediately returned to their country of origin and U.S. Border Patrol processing centers are not designed to house the current numbers of families and small children agents encountering.
“Due to capacity issues at our stations and the ongoing humanitarian crisis nationwide, Border Patrol has begun identifying detainees for potential release in Yuma with a notice to appear for their immigration hearings,” noted CBP in a press release.
Spencer explained that many of the migrants are claiming credible fear in order to obtain refugee status, as a result, the policy of catch and release is mandated essentially. So, border communities are being flooded with migrants the federal government can’t hold, and the local governments can’t provide for.
“Credible fear means to have your life in jeopardy as a result of a hostile government – like Christians in Iran,” said Spencer. “Credible fear does not mean your government doesn’t care – Latin America won’t proactively take action against MS-13. If your husband is beating you, as a neighbor we’ll take you in to rescue you. If your husband just doesn’t buy you roses anymore, then he doesn’t care – that’s your problem. The Dems and elites have lowered the bar, if not completely erased the standard, for the legal definition credible fear for asylum. A woman with no roses – someone with a kid in tow – now gets in, whether their husband/government is hostile or not. “Not nice” is the new “fear of torture” that has caused the gash in the hull – the ship is sinking and the border and ports are wide open.”
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According to U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS), “An individual will be found to have a credible fear of persecution if he or she establishes that there is a “significant possibility” that he or she could establish in a full hearing before an Immigration Judge that he or she has been persecuted or has a well-founded fear of persecution or harm on account of his or her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion if returned to his or her country.”
This week, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen met with senior officials from the Government of Mexico and then traveled to Tegucigalpa, Honduras where she met with security ministers representing the countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
.@DHSgov is focused on confronting the border emergency at the source, which is why I’m in Honduras to meet with security leaders from the Northern Triangle—our goal is to strike a first-ever regional accord. https://t.co/3qF4QujPbO
— Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen (@SecNielsen) March 27, 2019
Security ministers representing the countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador joined Nielsen in signing a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) on border security cooperation in Central America.
At the same time, Nielsen sent a letter to Congress asking for new authorities to deport and the migrants. She wrote that the Department of Homeland Security is “increasingly unable” to uphold its responsibility to control the situation at the southern border. Nielsen explain, “We are grappling with a humanitarian and security catastrophe that is worsening by the day, and the Department has run out of capacity.”
While Sinema has been silent on the subject, her Republican colleague, Sen. Martha McSally responded quickly to the concerns of Phoenix leaders. According to Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio, his office “was the first in Arizona to sound the alarm over DHS’s practice of dumping people on our street corners and bus stops, and request action from the federal government.”