At the recent rally of his supporters in Orlando, Florida, President Trump strongly denounced the policies of Democrats on illegal immigration.

He stated, “On no issue are Democrats more extreme and more depraved than when it comes to border security. The Democrat agenda of open borders is morally reprehensible. It is the greatest betrayal of the American middle class and, frankly, American life. Illegal mass migration brings in millions of low-wage workers to compete for jobs, wages, and opportunities against the most vulnerable Americans — cutting off their path to the American dream. ”

Read more at breitbart.com

Ken Cuccinelli, newly appointed acting Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, is wasting no time in getting down to the business he was hired to do. In the past week, he emailed officers in his agency charged with interviewing asylum seekers, admonishing them to hold would-be asylees to higher standards than has been common recently. Citing the wide divergence between asylum seekers admitted and those eventually granted asylum, Cuccinelli instructed the officers to employ a stricter reading of the “credible fear” standard when evaluating  a migrant’s application.

Asylum is a special status granted to persons who have fled their home country because of a credible fear of persecution. It is not intended and should not be granted to persons leaving for other reasons, such as economic.

A 2017 survey of migrants from the “Northern Triangle” countries of Guatemala, Honduras , and El Salvador showed that fewer than 4% exclusively said they were fleeing violence.  Matt O’Brien, a FAIR official, told the Daily Caller, “The vast majority of current Central American asylum seekers—by their own admission—are economic migrants who do not qualify for asylum, because they are not subject to persecution….”

It is this fact that Cuccinelli is instructing his asylum officers to address and to discontinue the essentially rubber-stamp process currently being employed.

Ken Cuccinelli had a good reputation among immigration hawks coming into his job. Actions like the above are a good start, but they will be met by plenty of opposition from the open borders enthusiasts. Let’s hope he sticks to his guns.

For more, see BuzzFeed.

Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson cited the numerous ways California is becoming a dysfunctional state, with a dwindling middle class and a high level of poverty. He described it as the symbol of “everything that’s gone wrong with America.” Immigration advocates claim that immigration is always culturally and economically enriching. California is the state with both the highest percentage and number of immigrants. So where’s the enrichment?

Read more at foxnews.com

Last night, President Trump tweeted the following:

So far, that’s all we really know.  All else is speculation.

The Washington Post speculates that Trump is referring to the implementation of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) blitz of illegals that has been in preparation for months. The administration has learned to keep such operations secret because local officials in “sanctuary cities” are prone to tipping off their illegal populations.

According to the Post, Trump and  senior immigration adviser Stephen Miller have been encouraging Homeland Security officials to “arrest and remove thousands of illegals whose deportation orders were expedited by the Justice Department this year as part of a plan known as the ‘rocket docket.'”

The paper further speculates that Acting ICE director Ronald Vitiello and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen were removed from their posts when they hesitated to implement that plan, fearful of public outrage at the sight of its being applied to migrant children.

Former FBI and Border Patrol official Mark Morgan, who replaced Vitello, has said publicly that his agency will pursue the removal of illegals who have been issued deportation orders and that this will include families with minor children.

DHS officials say that virtually all family units that have entered the United States illegally since 2017 are still here. Some are still awaiting adjudication on asylum claims, but most have simply skipped out on court hearings and disappeared into the country.

We’ll see what the sweep is able to do.

For more, see the Columbus Dispatch.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation banning sanctuary cities and counties in Florida. A sanctuary jurisdiction is one that city is a city that forbids its employees to cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement.

DeSantis stated,  “I am proud to sign the bill presented to me by the Florida Legislature to uphold the rule of law and ensure that no city or county jurisdiction can get in the way of Florida’s cooperation with our federal partners to enforce immigration law. This is about public safety, not about politics. We must do everything within our power, and use all the tools available to us, to ensure that our communities are safe.”

Read more at foxnews.com

The deal struck by President Trump with Mexico that avoided implementation of his threatened tariff–a deal that has been roundly criticized on the left and the right–may be bearing some fruit.

This weekend appeared to show an uptick in immigration law enforcement within Mexico and on her borders.

Armed soldiers wearing black armbands signifying the newly created Mexican National Guard were spotted checking identification and removing undocumented passengers at a checkpoint near Ciudad Cuauhtémoc, in Chiapas.  Elsewhere in Chiapas, National Guardsmen searched for migrants and smugglers among backroads in the darkness.

In the gulf coast state of Veracruz, 791 illegal migrants were removed from tractor-trailer trucks and the drivers arrested.

Outside Comitán in Chiapas on Sunday, National Guardsmen manned roadblocks, and illegal Honduran migrants could be seen in a nearby holding cell.

Also on Sunday, National Guardsmen were spotted patrolling along the Suchiate River, which forms Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, an area that previously had been open to illegal border crossers.

Although these are for the most part merely anecdotal reports from individual reporters, they are welcome signs.  So far, however, they might indicate only a token effort on the part of the Mexican government to present a show of cooperation. The deal struck between the U.S. and Mexico  set into motion a 45-day clock, during which Mexico must show effective migrant control to avoid the tariff.

The use of the National Guard, which had recently been created for more domestic crime prevention, is an apparent indication of good faith.  Another such indication is a change at the top of Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM), the federal agency charged with controlling migration within the country.  On Friday, the director of that agency, a sociologist named Tonatiuh Guillen, resigned, and was replaced by the former head of Mexico’s prison system, Francisco Garduno. The INM  then announced that  1,000 immigration agents had been deployed in the north and south of Mexico and that by Tuesday, 6,000 National Guard troops would be patrolling the southern border with Guatemala.

We hope the Trump administration is verifying these moves and that they keep up the pressure. The clock is ticking.

For more, see ABC News.

About three weeks ago, on May 23, we reported (rather confidently) that President Trump would appoint an “immigration czar” imminently and that he would be former Virginia attorney general and immigration hawk Ken Cuccinelli.

In doing so, we forgot the first rule of reporting on this administration: never be confident.

Cuccinelli, who no doubt would have been a fine choice for the largely undefined role, was instead on June 10 named Acting Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that manages legal immigration.

Ken Cuccinelli (l), Tom Homan (r)

(This announcement was greeted by criticism from both parties–or, we should say, both left and right wings of the single ruling party, owned and financed by wealthy donors–and there was widespread speculation that he could never get Congressional approval if nominated for the “official” post. He has been too critical of too many high-level potentates in the Republican wing and for the Democrat wing he’s little short of the Antichrist. Texas Republican Senate John Cornyn charged, “He’s made a career attacking other Republicans,” which should disqualify him for doing almost anything.  And Kamala Harris, who is running for president, said his appointment was “a threat to our country’s ideals.”)

So Cuccinelli is out for the czarship and maybe for any non-Acting role of any sort.  Enter Tom Homan, former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). On Friday, June 14, in an interview with Fox News, Trump (prematurely, it turns out) announced that Homan was coming back into the administration as “border czar.”

This, apparently, was news to Homan, at least according to CNN, for what that’s worth.  Homan, now a Fox News contributor, told his colleagues after Trump’s announcement that details were still being worked out. Originally offered the then ill-defined position by former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, he had rejected the appointment because he felt it lacked sufficient authority.  The details still under consideration probably refer to the shortcomings he saw in the original proposal.

Will he or won’t he? Like so much in the Trump era, it remains to be seen.

For more, see Fox News.

The Coast Guard has announced that since October of last year it has intercepted 4,500 persons, most of them Haitian and Dominican along with about 300 Cubans, while attempting to reach the U.S. by boat.  Since May 20 alone, approximately 2,474 Haitian migrants have attempted to “illegally enter the U.S. via the maritime environment.”  This week the Guard released a video discouraging the growing practice of “asylum seekers” to take small and often un-seaworthy craft, manned by inexperienced sailors, to cross the hundreds of miles across open water from the islands of Hispaniola or Cuba to, typically,  the Florida coast.

Still from Coast Guard Video Showing Overloaded Haitian Boat

On Monday an overloaded 30-foot boat containing  36 Haitian males and 14 Haitian females was interdicted  about 46 miles north of Cap-Haïtien, Haiti.  That same day, 12 Cuban migrants were  interdicted 12 miles off of Villa Clara Province, Cuba.  On Tuesday, 18 Dominican migrants were returned home after being apprehended the previous day off the coast of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. On Wednesday,  a Coast Guard cutter intercepted an overloaded 45-foot wooden freighter, filled with 177 Haitian migrants,  in the Bahamas. On Thursday, another cutter intercepted a 20-foot vessel with 14 Haitian migrants and two suspected smugglers aboard, roughly 46 miles east of Boca Raton.

Clearly, in addition to their missions of marine rescue and drug law enforcement, the Coast Guard is being kept busy intercepting would-be illegal migrants. Fortunately, migrants apprehended on the high seas are typically returned to their homeland, while smugglers are arrested.

For more, see the Migrant Interdiction section of the Coast Guard News.