Immigration
‘MISSING AT THE BORDER’: Scalise crafts milk carton with Harris’ face for her failure to visit border amid crisis
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) brought a milk carton with Vice President Kamala Harris‘s picture and the words “MISSING AT THE BORDER” to the Capitol on Wednesday.
A throwback to the “missing child” advertisements plastered on many U.S. milk cartons starting in the early 1980s, the tongue-in-cheek prop criticizes her for refusing to visit the U.S.-Mexico border yet amid a record-breaking surge in migrants crossing it, especially unaccompanied children. It also slams her for what Republicans argue is the Biden administration’s lack of urgency in handling the massive influx of people.
MORE ON THE BORDER: Number of unaccompanied minors at border hits all-time high in March
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden tapped his No. 2 to spearhead his administration’s effort to manage the flow of migrants illegally crossing into the U.S. through Mexico. However, administration officials subsequently specified that Harris’ role would focus on the Northern Triangle nations of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, from which most of the migrants are fleeing.
Biden, like Harris, has neither visited the border nor the overcrowded migrant detention facilities yet since the crisis began to kick into gear during February.
MORE ON THE BORDER: VP Harris goes 18 days without a press conference on the border crisis after assuming role
Explaining on Wednesday to “Fox Across America with Jimmy Failla” why he brought the milk carton to a press conference at the Capitol about the border crisis, Scalise said it was to “maybe just shame her into going”.
“Biden put Vice President Harris in charge of this crisis and she won’t even go see it,” the Louisiana Republican said. “And so after calling on her to go multiple times, and she just continues to say she’s not going to go, I said let’s put a milk carton with her picture on it saying ‘MISSING’ and maybe just shame her into going, because what you see down there is alarming. It’s disgusting what they’re doing to these young children, it’s abusive and neglectful.”
Migrants, especially thousands of unaccompanied children, have been placed in overcrowded detention facilities with poor accommodations, in spite of the CDC’s COVID-19 guidelines.
MORE ON THE BORDER: Border crisis ‘goes way past politics’: Border official discusses dangers migrants face on the journey to the U.S.
“We should have put an 800-Number or something on there so she could call me and I’ll take her down there myself,” Scalise remarked. “She’s got her own plane. I mean, she’s got a pretty fancy plane. So she could get down there to see that if she wanted to.”
“But in all seriousness,” he said, shifting his tone, “the fact that she’s the Vice President of the United States and President Biden put her in charge of this crisis and she won’t go down and see it, it’s one thing to say, well, she’s going to go down to maybe Venezuela or one of the other South or Central American countries. You don’t have to have any negotiation. They created this crisis in Washington, D.C. The problem can be fixed in Washington, D.C., but at a minimum, go see it in Texas. Go see the mess you’ve created in the United States of America before you start, you know, traipsing off to other countries.”
Scalise added that he’ll “sign the milk carton and give it to her if she just does her job and goes to the border and actually sees the national disgrace they’ve created, both she and President Biden with this policy that’s abusing and neglecting these kids.”
You can follow Douglas Braff on Twitter @DouglasPBraff.
Immigration
Sinaloa Cartel Offering Huge Pay Days to College Chemistry Students to Produce More Potent Fentanyl
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.
-
Immigration7 days ago
‘Times’ Up’ For Tren de Aragua Members, Major Arrest in NYC
-
Media6 days ago
THE POOR DEARS: White House Reporters Claim They’re Already ‘Exhausted’ by Second Trump Administration
-
Immigration6 days ago
CNN Host’s Reaction to Tom Homan Comments About Denver Mayor Speaks Volumes (VIDEO)
-
Politics6 days ago
Biden Omits God From Thanksgiving Message