New Consequences of an Open Border: "Bidenvilles" and "Mass Overdose Events"
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's movement of immigrants to Washington is genius, but another real cost of Biden's open borders is actually mass overdoses and death. Including kids.
Where do we start?
Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that he is busing immigrants from the Texas border to the nation’s Capitol, possibly creating a “Bidenville” at Lafayette Park, across from the Biden White House. While Biden’s press secretary called it a “publicity stunt,” she has also previously admitted that the Biden Administration is flying immigrants in the dead of night across the country.
Or perhaps Transportation Secretary, former South Bend, Indiana Mayor, and failed 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. On America’s most vapid, IQ-challenged broadcast program, ABC’s “The View,” he agreed with his spouse that Florida’s Parental Rights (corruptly derided as “Don’t Say Gay”) bill would “kill kids.” Prohibiting indoctrinating kindergarten through third-grade children about sexual orientation and gender identity will kill them? How did millions of us survive without that growing up? Or learning to pledge allegiance to a gay flag?
But: In just the last two months, reports the US Drug Enforcement Agency, there have been seven confirmed “mass overdose events,” resulted in 58 overdoses and 29 deaths.
In a way, they’re all related. Stay with me here.
It is well known (even reported) that we’ve been inundated with evidence of mass immigration at our southern border during the Biden presidency. Official statistics from the Customs and Border Police (CBP) report 1.7 million CBP encounters with immigrants at the southwest border in 2021 - a 380 percent increase from the previous year. They additionally estimate another 400,000 “got away” from CBP officers. And it has only gotten worse since. Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported that deportations were down to 59,000 in 2021, compared to at least 120,000 in 2020. Shifting priorities, it seems.
Meanwhile, we get stories like this one on March 12 from Law Enforcement Today:
ICE spokeswoman Alethea Smock stated that 39-year-old David Mora-Rojas overstayed his visa after entering California from his native Mexico on December 17, 2018, on a non-immigrant visitor visa.
She did not confirm when his visa actually expired, but because he overstayed his visa, ICE asked to be notified when he was released from jail after being arrested in Merced County for assaulting a California Highway Patrol officer.
Mora-Rojas was released from jail just five days before he committed the horrific murders of this family at a Sacramento church.
The Merced County Sheriff’s Office stated that under California’s “sanctuary state law,” known as the TRUTH Act and the California Values Act, it does not notify immigration officials about in-custody people who are being released.
So ICE was never notified when Mora-Rojas was released from jail.
The 2017 state law restricts local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal officials except when illegal immigrants are accused of “very serious crimes.”
And to be scrupulously fair, not all of these violent immigrants come from Mexico. Or Central America. A year ago, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy asked immigration officials to brief him about two Yemeni terrorists caught as part of the migrant surge at our southern border. Russian and Ukrainian immigrants are also arriving at our southern border.
Arizona Attorney General and GOP US Senate candidate Mark Brnovich has legally interpreted the immigrant surge as an “invasion,” complete with violent attacks, under the Constitution of the United States. From General Brnovich’s legal opinion:
The State Self Defense Clause in Article I, Section 10 provides that a State may defend itself when it has been “actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay,” and the State does not need the consent of Congress to do so. The Invasion Clause in Article IV, Section 4 provides that “[t]he United States … shall protect each [state in this union] against invasion.” These clauses provide dual protection against invasion broadly defined. This includes defending against actions by “foreign hostility [and] ambitious or vindictive enterprises of [a state’s] more powerful neighbors.” This encompasses defense against hostile non-state actors such as cartels and gangs operating at the border and entering into Arizona’s territory. James Madison specifically cited Virginia using its militia to stop smugglers as an example of a valid exercise of the invasion power, and there is every basis to conclude this sovereign power was retained as reflected in the State Self-Defense Clause. The Import-Export Clause in Article I, Section 10 also recognizes that States retain sovereign authority to execute inspection laws, which requires operational control of the border to channel entry of goods to authorized ports of entry.
That brings us to Gov. Abbott’s plan to bus immigrants released by the CBP into the nation’s interior to the nation’s capital. I agree with radio talker and constitutional law professor Hugh Hewitt that they should be dropped at Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House. A nice drop-off point is at the US Chamber of Commerce headquarters on H Street, NW. It is much harder to drop migrants off at the US Capitol. Still, if Lafayette Square gets too crowded, there’s plenty of room at other Lafayette-designed squares and circles throughout downtown Washington. There’s plenty of open space near the US Capitol’s Senate side separating it from Union Station, especially the “Hall of States” building, home to broadcast studios and outlets.
And it is about to get a whole lot worse. Even a few Senate Democrats are beginning to push back, finally. Sadly, my two Virginia US Senators are, once again, AWOL.
After all, DC doesn’t seem to have any problem with tent cities of homeless people on its public grounds. This is a photo from the city’s tony DuPont Circle area, near the north entrance of its Metro station.
I hope Texas provides plenty of water, food, and a nice tent for each migrant to make themselves home in America’s preeminent sanctuary city. There are others, of course, and the Department of Homeland Security has busily been transporting migrants by air and other means across the fruited plain without notice. So why would they object now to Texas helping move them to Washington, DC? It seems rather consistent with well-established Administration policy and actions, no?
But remember that the crush of immigrants at the southwest border is a “first-order” action. There are second and third-order consequences. Including mass overdoses and deaths from fentanyl, much of it from Communist China, being moved across the same border by violent Mexican cartels while CBP offices are distracted by human smuggling and immigration. Or, more accurately, the Biden Administration’s refusal to enforce immigration laws.
Last week, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) published a memorandum to local, state, and federal law enforcement partners. In the year ending October 2021, according to the DEA, 105,000 Americans died from fentanyl and synthetic opioid overdoses. That is nearly twice as many as the number of US combatants who died (58,281) in the Vietnam War over 13 years.
Most of the fentanyl that is killing Americans comes from China, much of it directly from or diverted through Mexico (and a small amount via Canada) or, increasingly, from Mexican criminal organizations (cartels). Opening the US southern border through failed immigration enforcement has opened the floodgates to killer drugs.
And speaking of third-order consequences.
GUILFORD, PA — A Franklin County woman is facing charges after police say she took drugs and fell asleep on her newborn son, suffocating him, according to a report citing Pennsylvania State Police.
Destinee Griffin-Bailey has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the May 2021 death of her 6-day-old son, Xander, the Chambersburg Public Opinion reported.
Griffin-Bailey told police she ingested a drug called "scramble" before feeding the infant a bottle, according to the Public Opinion. "Scramble" typically is a mixture of heroin and fentanyl, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Griffin-Bailey told police she sat cross-legged with the baby on her lap and "slumped over" him while holding a bottle in his mouth. She said she woke up and found the baby was unresponsive. The bottle was still in his mouth, reports said.
The infant's autopsy report showed he of "positional asphyxia," the Public Opinion reported.
This is your reminder that Homeland Security Secretary Tony Mayorkas is primarily responsible for border enforcement. And he has a dubious history of selling visas to wealthy Chinese and other investors, often at the behest of well-connected US politicians such as former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (both former Democratic National Committee chairs). The report by Obama’s Inspector General on the scandal has been removed from the Department’s website.
When Republicans gain control of Congress in 2023, they should make an investigation of Mayorkas’ leadership of this fentanyl and immigration disaster a top priority. Then when the GOP wins the White House in 2024, they can begin a criminal investigation.
Maybe, by then, Secretary Buttigieg can return to earth, wake up, discover reality, and realize what is “killing kids” isn’t the failure of our schools to indoctrinate them on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Who gets to tell Secretary Pete that most Americans support Florida’s parental rights bill?