https://twitter.com/45_Schedule/status/1122661005467820032
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12:45PM POTUS has lunch with the Vice President.
3:45PM POTUS welcomes the 2019 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball National Champions: The Baylor Lady Bears to the White House.
Alleged UAE spy under investigation for possible links to Jamal Khashoggi killing found dead in Turkish jail
By Chris Mills Rodrigo - 04/29/19 07:45 AM EDT
https://thehill.com/policy/international/441093-alleged-uae-spy-under-investigation-for-possible-links-to-the-killing-of
An alleged spy for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) being investigated for possible links to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was found dead in his Turkish jail cell, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Turkish prosecutors on Monday said wardens had found the suspect, Zaki Y.M. Hassan, hanged inside his solitary cell in Istanbul’s Silivri prison, according to the newspaper, which added that prosecutors are calling for an investigation into the death.
Turkish authorities were reportedly investigating Hassan and another alleged UAE spy in connection with Khashoggi's killing in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.
The two alleged spies came to Turkey soon after the October 2 killing, according to the Journal.
They were detained on April 15 and have since then admitted to spying for the UAE.
Saudi Arabia has charged 11 people in the death of Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist.
U.S. intelligence services have blamed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was not one of the 11 charged, for ordering the killing.
Top senator: Mexico controls the border, 'we're the chumps'
by Paul Bedard
| April 29, 2019 07:39 AM
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/top-senator-mexico-controls-the-border-were-the-chumps
Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the committee that oversees homeland security, has just returned from a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border where he didn’t like what he saw.
A human crisis? Not really, said the Republican Wisconsin senator. “There is no humanitarian crisis,” he said.
U.S. Border Patrol chaos? No again. “We’ve learned, and have become pretty efficient, it’s still overwhelming, but we’re pretty darn efficient,” he said, complimenting officers that deal with thousands of illegal immigrants weekly.
In fact, on the U.S. side of the border, he said, “nothing really shocked me.”
It’s across the Rio Grande in Mexico that has his attention. That, he said, is where control of the border lies.
“We do have control of the border, on the Mexican side. It’s completely controlled by the drug cartels, the human trafficking cartels, the Mexican police, everybody gets their cut. Nobody, nobody comes into America without paying the fee,” he told Secrets.
Worse, he added, the Mexicans have figured out U.S. legal loopholes in immigration law to turn border officials into their helpers. “They are almost subcontracting that out for free,” said the two-term chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Johnson has been front and center in the debate over U.S. immigration policy, holding several recent hearings that have helped to change the pro-immigration view of his Senate Democratic colleagues. “I’ve seen a sea change” in the Democratic attitude, he said.
His new efforts on the issue came after he returned from a visit to the El Paso, Texas, border station where he saw how both sides have turned the illegal immigration crisis into an assembly line process. And he wants to end that.
“What I’ve been trying to convey, because I think the American people don’t fully understand this, is how effectively the human traffickers, some of the most evil people on the planet, how they are making hundreds of millions of dollars on this, how effectively they are exploiting our laws, using Border Patrol and ICE as part of the process in their conduit,” said Johnson, who approaches the issue with his matter-of-fact businessman’s style.
Johnson is hopeful of granting border officials more authority to make faster judgments on asylum claims so that undocumented immigrants aren’t released into the country — rarely returning for deportation hearings.
“The solution,” he said “is removal.” He said that if enough immigrants, some who pay $10,000 each, are sent home, fewer will try to get in.
That, he added, is more effective than a wall. “Not a wall, unfortunately that was not helpful, was too easily ridiculed and, by the way, is not the solution. It doesn't fix this problem,” he said.
The reason, he explained, is that the cartels are using loose immigration and asylum laws to send undocumented immigrants to the “front of the line” right through border gates.
“They don’t have to walk very far. The human traffickers, at least they are nice this way, they transport them up to right across the Border Patrol station in El Paso,” he said. “When the Border Patrol picks them up, no questions asked. They may just out of curiosity. But they immediately go through processing. Again, the system is so overwhelming that they are just moving people through,” he added.
His goal is to shift the debate’s political and media focus on walls and caged children to the sinister cartels and ways to help border officials act with authority to end the trafficking.
“We need to change the narrative in the press,” he said. “We need to change that narrative to the evil people, the true evil people in this equation, which are the human traffickers, and let’s paint the picture that we’re the chumps that are helping these human traffickers put hundreds of millions of dollars in their pocket because we’re too stupid to change the law and actually enforce what we should be enforcing so this doesn’t happen,” he added.
https://twitter.com/45_Schedule/status/1122850873909096449
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Kim Foxx subpoenaed to appear at hearing on Smollett special prosecutor request.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/kim-foxx-subpoena-hearing-jussie-smollett-special-prosecutor/
By Nader Issa@NaderDIssa | email
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has been subpoenaed to appear in court as a lawyer seeks the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Foxx’s handling of the Jussie Smollett case.
Retired appellate judge Sheila O’Brien, who filed the petition for a special prosecutor, also filed a subpoena for Foxx’s top deputy, Joseph Magats, and another document requesting Jussie Smollett appear at the hearing.
O’Brien requested Foxx, Magats and Smollett produce the original documents in the “Empire” actor’s criminal case to “assure” the public “that they have not been altered or destroyed and will not be destroyed throughout this case,” court documents show.
TIMELINE: The Jussie Smollett investigation
Smollett, who is black and openly gay, had told Chicago police that in late January in Streeterville, two white men yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him, poured bleach on him and put a noose around his neck.
After weeks of investigation, Smollett was charged with disorderly conduct; police said he staged the attack and filed a false report.
Then, at a surprise hearing March 26, all charges were dropped.
O’Brien’s petition for a special prosecutor claimed Foxx’s handling of the case was “plagued with irregularity.”
“Foxx’s conflict in this matter is beyond dispute,” O’Brien wrote, adding that Foxx should have sought appointment of a special prosecutor. “Instead, Foxx misled the public into believing that Smollett’s case was handled like any other prosecution and without influence.”
Emails and text messages turned over to the Chicago Sun-Times, in response to a records request, showed that weeks before Smollett was charged, and when the actor was considered by police to be a crime victim, Foxx had talked to Chicago lawyer Tina Tchen, who put her in touch with a relative of Smollett’s. Foxx also acknowledged urging CPD Supt. Eddie Johnson to turn the investigation over the the FBI.
Report: Illegal Immigration Is Earning Billions For Smugglers
A new report estimates cartels and smuggling networks are making billions off of Central Americans who are fleeing their countries in droves thanks to America's messed-up immigration laws.
By John Daniel Davidson
April 24, 2019
https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/24/illegal-immigration-depopulating-central-america-earning-billions-smugglers/#disqus_thread
If you don’t think the ongoing border crisis is benefitting criminal smuggling networks and Mexican drug cartels, you’re not paying attention. A new report from the RAND Corporation found that smugglers and cartels earned as much as $2.3 billion from Central American migrants in 2017.
The report, conducted by the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC), which is operated by RAND, analyzed the black market for human smuggling in Central America, Mexico, and along the southern U.S. border in hopes of understanding how it works and how much money is going to drug cartels—or, in government parlance, transnational criminal organizations (TCOs).
That’s obviously not easy to ascertain, since human smuggling is illegal and intentionally obscure. But it has become obvious that a substantial share of migrants’ expenditures on their journeys north are going to these TCOs, as well as a diverse array of smugglers and operators along the route.
Migrants generally pay smugglers and smuggling networks anywhere from $2,000 to $7,000 per person to get to America. A portion of that money ends up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels—TCOs—even though the cartels don’t directly participate in the smuggling. As the report explains:
Human smugglers and drug traffickers conduct similar activities — providing illicit transportation services across international borders — and do so along common smuggling corridors, suggesting opportunities for overlapping business. However, the researchers found little evidence that drug-trafficking TCOs engage directly in human smuggling.
Drug-trafficking TCOs do control primary smuggling corridors into the United States and charge migrants a ‘tax,’ known as a piso, to pass through their territories. In addition, drug-trafficking TCOs may also coordinate some unlawful migrants’ border crossings to divert attention from other illicit activities, and recruit or coerce some to carry drugs.
This last point has been well-attested by Border Patrol agents, whose time is increasingly spent processing and transporting large groups of migrants families that have turned themselves in while cartels move drugs across the border just a few miles away. Because these groups of families and unaccompanied minors often number in the hundreds, Border Patrol resources are almost completely diverted from law enforcement duties, giving cartels an ideal opening to conduct their cross-border business without interference from U.S. authorities.
That is, the asylum crisis is directly related to drug smuggling. It’s all one big black market, controlled at the border by people willing to enforce the rules of the market by violence. Given the number of people now making the journey north, which could exceed a million this fiscal year, the size of this black market is considerable.
As a testament to the clandestine nature of the human smuggling industry, the RAND report gives a wide range of total revenues from all types of smuggling, from $200 million to $2.3 billion in 2017. The revenue from the taxes, or piso, that migrants must pay cartels to pass through their territory and cross the border is thought to be anywhere from about $30 million to $180 million in 2017. (Keep in mind, 2017 was the lowest year for apprehensions in decades, so these amounts, whatever they are, are significantly larger than they were two years ago.)
A Mass Exodus from Central America
Meanwhile, entire communities in Central America are emptying out, especially in rural Guatemala, the leading country of origin among families and unaccompanied minors claiming asylum at the U.S. border. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that while the fertility rate in Guatemala remains high, “the population in rural areas is growing at a far slower pace because of migration.” The Journal’s reporter writes of a bustling Saturday market in the western town of Colotenango, where “most vendors are women, children or older men. Teenagers and men in their 20s are hard to spot.”
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than 132,000 Guatemalans were apprehended on the southern border from October to March, far more than from any other country. The total number of family units from Guatemala apprehended as of March exceeded 90,000, compared to about 50,000 last year and fewer than 25,000 in 2017 and 2016.
Part of what’s driving this exodus from rural Guatemala is severe drought. Mainstream media outlets have begun to take notice of this trend, with headlines like “How Climate Change Is Fuelling the U.S. Border Crisis” in The New Yorker and “Changing climate forces desperate Guatemalans to migrate” in National Geographic. All these reports note that, unlike Honduras and El Salvador, where most of the population is concentrated in cities, rural areas account for about half of Guatemala’s population. Drought in these parts of the country, where families rely on the annual harvest for both income and food, can be the deciding factor in choosing to sell everything they have and head for the United States.
But it often doesn’t go well for these families, even those who manage to make it to the United States without being exploited or abused by cartels and smugglers. One Guatemalan man, a farmer named Joaquin who was recently interviewed by the Dallas Morning News, sold all he had—“a small family plot of land, the three cows and four chickens”—and paid a smuggler to take him and his 10-year-old son to America. Because he was still short of the smuggler’s fee by a couple thousand dollars, he took out a loan to cover the cost, with a friend and cousin near Dallas co-signing his agreement with the smuggler.
Joaquin and his son eventually made it across the border, but it wasn’t like he was told it would be. Disillusioned with life in America and wanting to return to his wife and other children back in Guatemala, Joaquin is now saddled with ballooning debt and can’t afford to leave. “Had I known what I know now, I never would have made the decision,” he said. “Never.”
Joaquin just one among hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who are selling all they have and going into debt to finance illegal immigration to the United States. As the crisis drags on, we should be clear-eyed about who is benefiting from it.
https://twitter.com/45_Schedule/status/1122860395985866753
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8m8 minutes ago
Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein: "President Trump shared with me condolences on behalf of the United States of America, and we spoke about the moment of silence. And he spoke about his love of peace and Judaism, and Israel, and he was just so comforting."
See video on tweet
(sorry still don't know how to get a Twitter video over here- YT have no trouble)
Thank you anon! What do I do after I put the link in that box? It asks to download. Is there a place I can find the vid code to just put in here on the board–like with youtube?