Alito’s Emergency Deportation Dissent Misrepresents the Most Crucial Fact in the Case
What the Justice Department actually said in court reinforces the wisdom and necessity of the Supreme Court’s dramatic move.
Trump Scores a Key Win Against the Immigration Industrial Complex
Did you know that your tax dollars funded the housing and transportation of illegal aliens across the country? President Donald Trump has moved to stop this phenomenon, and his efforts recently met with an important success.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced that it would not renew agreements with the federal government relating to children’s services and refugee support.
As I wrote in my book, “The Woketopus : The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” the USCCB formed one arm of the Immigration Industrial Complex, the network of NGOs receiving federal funds to move illegal aliens across the country.
Some of this work may be noble—it involved finding homes for unaccompanied alien children and those freed from human trafficking—but it also abetted the border crisis , on an industrial scale.
The Immigration Industrial Complex
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted in an April 2022 memorandum that his plan for “border security” involved “bolstering the capacity of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to receive noncitizens after they have been processed by [Customs and Border Protection] and are awaiting the results of their immigration removal proceedings.”
The Biden administration released millions of illegal aliens on parole , giving them court dates to adjudicate their immigration status, but these aliens routinely miss their court dates and move to live elsewhere in the country.
In 2022, The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center teamed up with the Oversight Project to track where illegal aliens move . They traced cell phones detected at federal immigration facilities, finding that these devices moved across the country.
Illegal aliens in facilities maintained by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, for example, moved to 433 out of America’s 435 congressional districts.
As a reminder, at least 9 million illegal aliens entered the United States under President Joe Biden. Only 11 U.S. states have populations greater than 9 million, and even left-leaning “sanctuary city” mayors lamented their inability to deal with the influx of illegal aliens.
Many faith-based NGOs that launched to help legal immigrants in previous eras of U.S. history revamped their efforts in recent years, helping immigrants apparently regardless of legal status. These Immigration Industrial Complex groups likely would not exist without federal funding.
Global Refuge, formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, for example, received $180 million in government grants, more than seven times what it received in “all other contributions” ($25 million), in 2022. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants reported receiving the vast majority of its revenue ($117.4 million of $121.7 million) through government grants in 2020.
Chapters of Catholic Charities received at least $1.13 billion under Biden through the Refugee and Entrant Assistance State/Replacement Designee Administered Programs grant from the Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services, for example. Catholic Charities USA received $1.4 billion of its $4.7 billion in revenue from government support in 2022—more than the $1 billion it received in private donations.
The Trump Freeze
The Trump administration froze tens of millions of dollars in grants in order to conduct a program integrity review. This seems eminently reasonable. While Americans of faith like myself may support programs that care for the less fortunate—particularly legal immigrants and refugees— we should not be forced to pay for these charitable programs with our tax dollars, much less have our tax dollars spent to help relocate illegal aliens across the country.
The administration should ensure that these programs do not abet the immigration crisis and incentivize more illegals to enter the country.
Predictably, however, the Immigration Industrial Complex responded with lawsuits.
USCCB sued the State Department in March to challenge the freeze on around $65 million in federal funding for refugee services. The Biden administration had provided the USCCB with $100 million annually, and the funding covered more than 95% of the bishops’ spending on those programs.
The State Department canceled two multimillion-dollar refugee resettlement contracts with USCCB last month, directing the bishops to “stop all work on these program[s] and not incur any new costs.”
Only in this context did the USCCB finally announce the end of its work with the federal government.
“Today, the USCCB makes the heartbreaking announcement that we will not be renewing existing cooperative agreements with the federal government related to children’s services and refugee support,” the bishops said . “This difficult decision follows the suspension by the government of our cooperative agreements to resettle refugees.”
In other words, the USCCB is claiming to take a pro-active action, but the announcement actually represents the USCCB’s recognition of reality—the administration had already made the determinative steps.
‘Rigorous Screening’
Notably, USCCB claimed, “All participants in these programs were welcomed by the U.S. government to come to the United States and underwent rigorous screening before their arrival.”
The Biden administration “welcomed” many immigrants outside the legal channels established by Congress, particularly through the program that imported people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The Biden administration chartered planes for these aliens and granted them parole to remain in the country, a protection the Trump administration will remove later this month.
Lora Ries, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, contested the vetting claim.
“The Biden administration demonstrated repeatedly that aliens and sponsors were not adequately vetted, whether that was Afghan evacuees, sponsors for unaccompanied children, sponsors for parolees, or others,” she told The Daily Signal .
“Lack of vetting was the reason for multiple Inspector General reports and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services pause of one of its parole programs,” Ries added.
A Critical Admission
Bill Canny, the executive director of USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Services program, told EWTN News that the program cannot continue without federal funding .
“You can’t replace the generosity of the [United States] taxpayer and how they help either needy people overseas or needy people domestically,” Canny told EWTN. “You can’t replace that, in this case, some $200 million a year, which it would have been this year. So we can’t replace it with private [money].”
Perhaps USCCB should create a new program that can be funded with private donations, to address the real human concerns that justified the original program. In that case, not only would the program be directed to the people who most need it, but it would also be able to survive without federal strings attached.
USCCB was fulfilling a few important charitable functions, but its old program formed part of a noxious Immigration Industrial Complex. I pray that it can establish a new program dedicated to helping legal refugees and human trafficking victims, without abetting the border crisis.
Americans of faith in general—and Catholics, in particular—are a generous people. Let’s allow them to fund charity with their own dollars, not by using the power of the state to force them to fork over the cash.
The post Trump Scores a Key Win Against the Immigration Industrial Complex appeared first on The Daily Signal .
The Founders Agree With Trump On Alien Enemies Act
Kilmar Abrego Garcia , an alleged MS-13 gang member and citizen from El Salvador, has become an avatar of The Resistance 2.0. The story of his deportation to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 has been twisted into an allegory for life under the second Trump administration. In the words of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y.: “Kilmar is all of us.”
Nevertheless, the Trump administration continues to plow forward with the application of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove criminal illegals from the country—even as lower court judges have tried to stop the practice and are now threatening the administration with criminal referrals.
Stephen Miller , White House deputy chief of staff for policy, has taken a primary role in arguing the administration’s justification for the use of the Alien Enemies Act . Miller’s argument centers on the president’s prerogative in foreign affairs as enshrined in Article II of the Constitution.
“The president of the United States and his administration reserve all rights under the Constitution to conduct national security operations in defense of the United States,” according to Miller . Thus, Miller has argued that “a district court judge can no more enjoin the expulsion of foreign terrorists to foreign soil, than he can direct the movement of Air Force One, than he can direct the movement of an aircraft carrier.”
While the main thrust of Miller’s argument focuses on Article II powers, the Trump consigliere has repeatedly incorporated a historical appeal to the founding era. The “Alien Enemies Act has been on the books and has been upheld for over 200 years,” Miller said. “And by the way, the fact that it’s a 200-year-old law makes it stronger. This was adopted by the founding generation of our country.”
Meanwhile, the Left has claimed the Trump administration is abusing presidential authority not only by contesting decisions from federal courts but by the employment of the Alien Enemies Act itself.
Under this line of argument, the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act is incumbent on a formal declaration of war by Congress or by foreign military action against the United States. Furthermore, the Left has argued the administration has stretched the meaning of “invasion” beyond the statute by applying it to gangs like MS-13 and Tren De Aragua.
These lines of attack against the Trump administration are in contradiction with one another. While the first line of argument asserts the need for a declaration of war from Congress to use the Alien Enemies Act, the other lines of argument clearly suggests there are circumstances in which a declaration of war is not necessary for its use. This is particularly clear with respect to their objection to the Trump administration calling the migrant crime crisis an “invasion.” Either the president has the ability to determine what constitutes an invasion, and can therefore use the Alien Enemies Act, or he does not, and that determination is solely left to Congress.
Therefore, the key question is whether or not the founding generation understood the Alien Enemies Act as providing the kind of power President Donald Trump is claiming now when they debated the legislation in Congress more than 225 years ago. An investigation into the Congressional record clearly shows that both the proponents and opponents of the Alien Enemies Act understood the legislation as providing broad powers to the president to remove hostile foreign nationals.
Congress debated the Alien Enemies Act from May through June of 1798 before President John Adams signed it into law on July 6 of that year. With the XYZ Affair — an attempted bribery of American diplomats by French officials — just a year prior, the United States found itself engaged in the Quasi-War with France. At the same time, revolutions in France and Haiti, at the time a French colony, were driving large numbers of French emigres into the U.S. from the east and the south. The early American republic’s state-controlled immigration system left the federal government without a mechanism to address problems presented by inflows of potentially hostile foreign actors.
Debate over the Alien Enemies Act was particularly fierce in the House of Representatives, where the legislation passed 46-40 after weeks of debate. Upon a reading of the legislation by Rep. Samuel Sewall of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, opponents of the Alien Enemies Act seized on some of its vagaries.
Rep. Matthew Lyon of Vermont—who would later become the first person to be tried, convicted, and jailed for violating the Alien and Sedition Acts and then the only person to be elected to Congress while in jail—claimed the legislation was “too vague to authorize the exercise of so great a power as was here given,” particularly with respect to the discretion given to the president. Others, such as Rep. Goodloe Harper of South Carolina, expressed similar concerns.
Sewall, however, argued the breadth of the presidential power was necessary despite its “good deal of uncertainty.”
“The select committee did not see any way of remedying the evil without making the law too mild in its operation,” Sewall claimed.
Later, Sewall would explain that it’s not the legislation that actually affords the president this power. Rather, it’s the president’s preexisting “executive Power” vested in him by the American people and his role as Commander-in-Chief in Article II of the Constitution.
Even still, that does not mean Congress could not serve a constructive role: “In all countries there is a power lodged somewhere for taking measures of this kind. In this country, this power is not lodged wholly in the Executive; it is in Congress,” Sewall said. “Perhaps, if war was declared, the President might then, as Commander-in-Chief, exercise a military power over these people.”
Sewall does not mean, however, that a declaration of war is necessary to use the Alien Enemies Act, just as the president is not Commander-in-Chief only in times of war. “The intent of this bill is to give the president the power of judging what is proper to be done, and to limit his authority in the war proposed by this bill,” said Sewall. “The president would be able to determine this matter by proclamation.” While the legislation’s opponents saw the Congress granting the president unchecked authority, Sewall saw the legislation actually placing guardrails on how the president might respond to hostile foreign actors.
Rep. Harrison Gray Otis of Massachusetts also advocated for a broad reading of the president’s powers under the Alien Enemies Act. It is nonsensical to argue Congress must declare war for the president to use the Alien Enemies Act because “the President would have the power, the moment war was declared, to apprehend the whole of these people as enemies, and make them prisoners of war.”
“And in the case of a predatory incursion, made on this country there might be as much reason for securing some of them as in the case of actual war or invasion,” Otis added. “An amelioration or modification of those powers which the President already possesses, as Commander-in-Chief, and which the martial law would prove more rigorous than those proposed by this new regulation.”
Rep. William Gordon of New Hampshire’s advocacy of the bill also reveals that the president retains these powers, endorsed by Congress through the Alien Enemies Act, without a formal declaration of war. “Is it not absurd to say, at a time when the United States are about to enter upon a war, and the country is filled with the natives of the enemy-country, that we do not possess power to send them out of the country?” he asked rhetorically. “That Congress may make war, but cannot do a less hostile act?”
Later remarks from Gordon are particularly prescient: “For suppose, at some future time, there shall be as many aliens of various nations as citizens in the United States… might not such a band of men, if suffered to remain, prove the destruction of the country? They certainly might, and no nation would act so unwisely as to give them an opportunity of becoming so.”
The post The Founders Agree With Trump On Alien Enemies Act appeared first on The Daily Signal .
‘Maryland man’ is the sort of thing that cost the media its credibility
Is there anything more useless than a journalist who deliberately muddles crucial facts?
Perhaps a four-cornered wheel?
The latest example of our press being supremely unhelpful comes in the form of one Salvadoran national named Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom ICE officials and deported to a Salvadoran prison earlier this year, against orders from a U.S. court.
The details of the case are complicated, both legally and morally, and, unfortunately, we don’t have a meticulous and thoughtful media to help readers develop informed opinions, giving them accurate descriptions and addressing obvious questions.
No one could blame you if your first brush with the coverage of Garcia’s story left you with the impression that the Trump administration had wrongly arrested and deported a U.S. citizen.
Our media bizarrely insist on referring to Garcia, a Salvadoran national, as a “Maryland man.” But he is not a “Maryland man.” He is a Salvadoran national who has been living in the U.S. illegally since 2011, most recently residing in the state of Maryland. Yet you’d hardly know this from casually following the news.
The unwillingness to distinguish between lawful and unlawful immigration — or perhaps the inability to do so, based on political changes to journalistic style guides — seems to have corrupted the media’s ability to tell this story at all.
“Outrage grows over Maryland man’s mistaken deportation to El Salvador prison,” reported the Associated Press.
Said the New York Times, “U.S. Renews Opposition to Bringing Back Maryland Man Wrongly Deported to El Salvador.”
“Bukele rejects returning Maryland man Trump officials mistakenly deported,” reported the Washington Post.
If one didn’t know any better, one would assume that this story was about bureaucratic incompetence or even racial profiling, resulting in the arrest and deportation of a Hispanic U.S. citizen.
But one would be wrong. This “Maryland man” tick is neither new nor exclusive to the Garcia case. Our press has previously deployed “Indiana man ” to describe an undocumented 43-year-old Mexican national. It has used “Athens man ” to describe the Venezuelan national who murdered University of Georgia student Laken Riley.
Also, a personal favorite: Members of the press have used “ice cream man ” to refer to a 71-year-old Lebanese national and suspected war criminal.
It is as funny as it is nonsensical.
For perspective, consider the case of U.S. “influencer” Sam Jones, who called down the collective wrath of Australia earlier this year after she forcibly removed a baby wombat from its mother. Australian authorities threatened Jones with immediate deportation. Rather than go through the rigmarole of legal removal, Jones fled the country. Now, let’s pretend Jones had insisted on staying, residing in Toowoomba. It’d be crazy for those covering the wombat story, including the threats of deportation, to refer to Jones as a “Toowoomba woman,” right?
The media were not so wedded to her having a natural right to reside in Australia. Instead, headlines from the New York Times to the Washington Post to the Associated Press accurately and succinctly referred to Jones as an “American,” because she is an American national.
Why, then, do these same organizations insist on referring to a Salvadoran national as a “Maryland man?” Why “Athens man” for a Venezuelan national? Why “ice cream man” for a Lebanese national?
It’s as if these people are intentionally trying to muddy the waters. Either that, or they’re so beside themselves with righteous indignation that they have forgotten how to clear the most basic hurdle of their chosen profession — presenting the facts clearly.
Consider political commentator Tim Miller of the Bulwark, who alleged of the Garcia case that the Trump administration had sent a “legal resident to a 3rd world ‘gulag’ … without trial.”
In response, my friend Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner correctly pointed out that García is an illegal immigrant. “He never got parole,” Carney added. “Was denied asylum. Wasn’t on [Temporary Protected Status]. His illegal status was never disputed by [García] or his attorneys.”
These are not insignificant details, especially in as determining the legality of the Trump administration’s actions. You would think a pundit who makes a living talking about politics would be at least somewhat concerned that he got a significant part of the story wrong. But one would be wrong.
“Is the problem the U.S. kidnapping people and sending them to a foreign torture prison w/ no recourse?” Miller asked. “Or is the problem that I called a kidnapee a ‘legal resident’ rather than an ‘undocumented resident with legal protection from deportation?’ Tim appears to think its the latter.”
Actually, it can be both. It can be that the García deportation is wrong (legally and morally), and also that it’s essential to keep facts straight. It helps no one to spread falsehoods or confuse the issue. It simply makes it more difficult for anyone to have an informed opinion.
And keeping people informed is sort of the entire point of the news and punditry business, isn’t it?
When it stops doing that, what happens then?
Becket Adams is a writer in Washington and program director for the National Journalism Center .