Immigration

Biden admin flying previously deported Cameroonians BACK into U.S.

Published

5 months ago

July 2, 2024

The Biden administration is reportedly flying previously deported Cameroonians, whose asylum claims were initially determined to be invalid, back into the United States. The development has been revealed through interviews with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staff and internal agency memos reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

This unannounced program appears to be a response to a February 2022 Human Rights Watch report that highlighted the alleged mistreatment of dozens of Cameroonians deported between 2019 and 2021. During that period, an estimated 80 to 90 Cameroonians were deported from the United States. However, recent actions indicate that some of these individuals are now being flown back under a program with little historical precedent.

All individuals deported under the previous administration were found not to have valid asylum claims. The decision to return them marks the latest in a series of reversals of the Trump administration’s immigration policies by President Joe Biden. On his first day in office, Biden rolled back several border policies, paused southern border wall construction, and ended the policy that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico before their court hearings. Critics argue these changes have contributed to a significant increase in illegal border crossings.

“Gutting deportations isn’t enough for the Biden administration, so now they’re apparently bringing back previously deported illegal aliens,” said Jon Feere, former ICE official and director of investigations at the Center for Immigration Studies. “These are people who have already had their cases closed, one way or another, and they’ve been returned home.”

Internal memos show ICE officials collaborating with outside nonprofits to facilitate the relocation of these Cameroonians. One email from earlier this year reviewed by the Free Beacon showed Fatma Marouf, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Texas A&M University, coordinating with an ICE official about the arrival of a migrant at Washington-Dulles airport in Virginia. According to ICE officials, airports around the country are being used as entry points for these migrants to keep the public unaware of the program and avoid concentrating the migrants in a single location. Marouf did not respond to a request for comment.

The official rationale for the program, as per the reviewed internal memos, is to avoid a “potential lawsuit.” There is pending litigation in New York concerning documents related to the alleged abuse of Cameroonian migrants, though no court has ordered their return.

“These individuals were deported by the order of a court after they were afforded all due process rights,” said Tom Blank, former ICE chief of staff. “For DHS to arbitrarily reverse court orders to satisfy complaints from an activist group makes a joke out of the entire legal immigration process. It looks like outside activist groups now run the DHS immigration process instead of the courts.”

Both current and former ICE officials expressed concerns that this program might set a precedent for future cases. Should any activist group threaten legal action regarding migrant mistreatment, they fear the Biden administration might opt to return the asylum seekers rather than face litigation.

Since Biden took office, more than eight million migrants have illegally crossed the northern and southern borders, with millions released into the nation’s interior, straining state and local resources. Left-wing activist groups have long challenged DHS policies, and in recent years, some of these groups have received federal funding for their operations.

For instance, Al Otro Lado, which recently sued Customs and Border Protection over an asylum program, received over $3 million in taxpayer funds between 2018 and 2022. If successful, their lawsuit could halt a federal program that denies border entry to migrants without an asylum interview.

According to a senior ICE official, at least four migrants have been flown back to the mid-Atlantic region since March, with up to 28 Cameroonians expected to be returned eventually. ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

The outlet explains that typically, the Department of Homeland Security only returns previously deported migrants in rare circumstances, usually requiring a judge’s order following a prosecution error. However, in the case of the Cameroonians, ICE appears to be working with nonprofits like the Immigrant Rights Clinic.

ICE staff have expressed frustration with the Biden administration’s policies since 2021, noting a significant drop in deportations. Fewer than 5 percent of the 3.2 million migrants encountered at the border were removed by the agency in 2023, a deliberate policy shift under Biden. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas revised the agency’s guidelines to prioritize deportations of individuals who pose threats to national security, public safety, and border security.

Despite these changes, immigration remains a significant concern for voters. A recent CBS News/YouGov survey found that over 60 percent of registered voters favor a new national program to deport all undocumented immigrants, highlighting the political sensitivity surrounding Biden’s border security policies as he approaches his reelection campaign.

Related Topics:deportation Featured Immigration Customs Enforcement

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Immigration

Sinaloa Cartel Offering Huge Pay Days to College Chemistry Students to Produce More Potent Fentanyl

Published

4 hours ago

December 5, 2024

Sara Carter Staff

An in-depth report conducted by the New York Times follows how the Sinaloa Cartel is recruiting young college students studying chemistry to make Fentanyl. The Times report included interviews with seven fentanyl cooks, three chemistry students, two high-ranking operatives and a high-level recruiter. All of them work for the Sinaloa Cartel, which the U.S. government says is largely responsible for the fentanyl pouring over the southern border.

The cartels “know we are now focused on the illicit trafficking of these precursor chemicals around the world,” said Todd Robinson, the State Department’s assistant secretary of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

But as the cartels gain greater control of the fentanyl supply chain, U.S. officials say, it will become more difficult for law enforcement in both countries to stop the industrialized production of synthetic opioids in Mexico.

The Times details the information it learned from one of the recruiters:

Before the Sinaloa Cartel ever approaches a recruit, it scouts out its prospect.

The ideal candidate is someone who has both classroom knowledge and street smarts, a go-getter who won’t blanch at the idea of producing a lethal drug and, above all, someone discreet, said one recruiter in an interview.

In months of searching, he said, he’s found three students who now work for him developing precursors. Many young people just don’t meet his standards.

“Some are lazy, some aren’t bright, some talk too much,” said the recruiter, a lanky middle-aged man with square glasses, who has worked for the cartel for 10 years. He described himself as a fix-it man, focused on improving quality and output in the fentanyl business.

To identify potential candidates, the cartel does a round of outreach with friends, acquaintances and colleagues, the recruiter said, then talks to the targets’ families, their friends, even people they play soccer with — all to learn whether they’d be open to doing this kind of work. If the recruiter finds someone particularly promising, he might offer to cover the student’s tuition cost.

“We are a company; what a company does is invest in their best people,” he said.

When the cartel began mass-producing fentanyl about a decade ago, the recruiter said, it relied on uneducated cooks from the countryside who could easily get their hands on what people in the business call “recipes” for making the drug.

The Times also writes about one of the students recruited to be a fentanyl cook by the cartel:

The cartel offered the student $1,000 as a signing bonus, the woman said. She was terrified, but she said yes. The lab where she works is about an hour’s flight from Sinaloa’s capital, on the small aircraft the cartel uses to transport cooks to work. Her bosses told her that her job was to manufacture more powerful fentanyl, she said.

The fentanyl coming out of Mexico has often been of low purity, a problem the recruiter attributes to the desperate rush to satisfy Americans’ appetite for the synthetic opioid.

“There was such an explosion of demand that many people just wanted to earn money, and those manufacturers just made whatever without caring about quality,” the recruiter said. But in a competitive market, he said, the cartel can win over more clients with a stronger drug.

The first-year student said she had experimented with all manner of concoctions to increase fentanyl’s potency, including mixing it with animal anesthetics. But none of her attempts at producing fentanyl precursors have worked.

A second student, who is a sophomore chemistry student, detailed how he had been recruited on campus, but had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. He said the lab was in the mountains, in the midst of trees and covered by a tarp that had been painted to look like foliage, so it couldn’t be seen from a helicopter.

After three days of work, he said, one of the men in charge told him that he wasn’t there to make fentanyl. He was the newest member of a research and development lab, where everyone was working to figure out how to make precursors from scratch. He said he immediately started worrying about inadvertently causing an explosion.

“They don’t tell you how to do it — they say, ‘These are the products, you’re going to make them with this, it could go wrong, but that’s why you’re studying,’” he said.