Comments by "Ego Brain" (@egobrain7349) on ""Witch-Hunt In The Making": Top Senate Republican Defends Bill Barr From Democrats' Criticism" video.
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@ruthharris123 Criminal Penalties for Improper Entry to the U.S.
For the first improper entry offense, the person can be fined (as a criminal penalty), or imprisoned for up to six months, or both.
For a subsequent offense, the person can be fined or imprisoned for up to two years, or both. (See 8 U.S.C. Section 1325, I.N.A. Section 275.)
But just in case that isn't enough to deter illegal entrants, a separate section of the law adds penalties for reentry (or attempted reentry) in cases where the person had been convicted of certain types of crimes and thus removed (deported) from the U.S., as follows:
People removed for a conviction of three or more misdemeanors involving drugs, crimes against the person, or both, or a felony (other than an aggravated felony), shall be fined, imprisoned for up to ten years, or both.
People removed for a conviction of an aggravated felony shall be fined, imprisoned for up to 20 years, or both.
People who were excluded or removed from the United States for security reasons shall be fined, and imprisoned for up to ten years, which sentence shall not run concurrently with any other sentence.
Nonviolent offenders who were removed from the United States before their prison sentence was up shall be fined, imprisoned for up to ten years, or both.
What's more, someone deported before a prison sentence was complete may be incarcerated for the remainder of the sentence of imprisonment, without any reduction for parole or supervised release.
(See 8 U.S.C. Section 1326, I.N.A. Section 276.)
Civil Penalties
Entry (or attempted entry) at a place other than one designated by immigration officers carries additional civil penalties. The amount is at least $50 and not more than $250 for each such entry (or attempted entry); or twice that amount if the illegal entrant has been previously fined a civil penalty for the same violation. (See 8 U.S.C. Section 1325, I.N.A. Section 275.)
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@ruthharris123 In a bombshell report yesterday, the Justice Department Inspector General found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation made “fundamental errors” and persistently deceived a secret court to authorize surveilling a 2016 Trump presidential campaign official.
Perhaps the most jolting revelations in the IG report detail the FBI’s efforts to secure a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) search warrant to use against the Trump campaign after suspicions were raised of Russian collusion. A FISA warrant is the nuclear bomb of searches, authorizing the FBI “to conduct, simultaneous telephone, microphone, cell phone, e-mail and computer surveillance of the U.S. person target’s home, workplace and vehicles,” as well as “physical searches of the target’s residence, office, vehicles, computer, safe deposit box and U.S. mails,” as a FISA court decision noted. The FISA court is extremely deferential, approving 99% of all search warrant requests.
A litany of missteps by the FBI
The IG report concluded FBI officials made 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in its submissions to the FISA court to secure warrants to target former Trump advisor Carter Page: “FBI personnel fell far short of the requirement in FBI policy that they ensure that all factual statements in a FISA application are ‘scrupulously accurate.’ We identified multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed.”
OPINION
Inspector General report on FBI's FISA abuse tells us one thing: We need radical reform.
James Bovard
Opinion columnist
In a bombshell report yesterday, the Justice Department Inspector General found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation made “fundamental errors” and persistently deceived a secret court to authorize surveilling a 2016 Trump presidential campaign official. Inspector General Michael Horowitz did not find that the FBI’s actions were spurred by political bias but that conclusion is not necessarily shared by Attorney General William Barr. Unfortunately, this is only the latest episode of decades of FBI misconduct before America’s most powerful secret court.
Perhaps the most jolting revelations in the IG report detail the FBI’s efforts to secure a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) search warrant to use against the Trump campaign after suspicions were raised of Russian collusion. A FISA warrant is the nuclear bomb of searches, authorizing the FBI “to conduct, simultaneous telephone, microphone, cell phone, e-mail and computer surveillance of the U.S. person target’s home, workplace and vehicles,” as well as “physical searches of the target’s residence, office, vehicles, computer, safe deposit box and U.S. mails,” as a FISA court decision noted. The FISA court is extremely deferential, approving 99% of all search warrant requests.
A litany of missteps by the FBI
The IG report concluded FBI officials made 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in its submissions to the FISA court to secure warrants to target former Trump advisor Carter Page: “FBI personnel fell far short of the requirement in FBI policy that they ensure that all factual statements in a FISA application are ‘scrupulously accurate.’ We identified multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed.”

The FBI refrained from launching a FISA warrant request until it came into possession of a dossier from Christopher Steele, a former British intelligent agent. The Steele dossier played "a central and essential role in the decision by FBI [Office of General Counsel] to support the request for FISA surveillance targeting Carter Page, as well as the FBI's ultimate decision to seek the FISA order," the IG report concluded. The FBI "drew almost entirely" from the Steele dossier to prove a “well-developed conspiracy” between Russians and the Trump campaign. The IG found that FBI agents were “unable to corroborate any of the specific substantive allegations against Carter Page” in the Steele dossier but the FBI relied on Steele’s allegations regardless.
The FBI withheld from the FISA court key details that would have undercut the dossier’s credibility, including a warning from a top Justice Department official that “Steele may have been hired by someone associated with presidential candidate Clinton or the DNC [Democratic National Committee].” The FBI also deceived the FISA court by wrongly claiming that Steele’s prior informant work had been “used in criminal proceedings” by the Justice Department. The CIA disdained the Steele dossier as “an internet rumor,” one FBI official told IG investigators. The IG report obliterated the credibility of the Steele dossier.
So, the infamous "Steele dossier," which was paid for by the Clinton campaign and conducted by a firm that specializes in peddling campaign dirt.
Once the origins of the Steele dossier became known, Democrats and the press insisted that it played little or no role in convincing federal judges to approve wiretaps on Carter Page.
For good reason, too. The idea that the FBI would use political propaganda paid for by one presidential campaign to launch a high-level investigation against the other in the middle of an election is horrifying.
So, they consistently downplayed the dossier's importance.
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee asserted in February that the FISA application "made only narrow use of information from Steele's sources about Page's specific activities in 2016." Media reports said that any of the information that the FBI did use had been independently corroborated.
But now, with the application documents in hand, even the Washington Post admits that the dossier played "a prominent role" in the wiretap request. And we know that the FBI had corroborated none of the dossier claims before filing its application.
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@ruthharris123 from By negotiating safe-third-country agreements and getting Mexico to crack down on caravans, Trump reduced the number of border encounters reported by Border Patrol -- they plummeted to their lowest point since the beginning of Trump's presidency in mid-2020. Reported encounters from May 2019 to April of the following year fell by 88%.
Now, two months into his presidency, Biden has undone all of that, manufacturing a crisis of migrants flooding our southern border. And yes, that means he is locking kids up in cages that approach full capacity.
According to internal documents from the Department of Health and Human Services obtained by Axios, Border Patrol put an average of 321 children per day in HHS custody by the beginning of March -- those would be the "cages" once maligned by the media -- in contrast to just 47 per day on average during the first week in January. HHS also reported child migrant facilities at 94% capacity "and expected to reach its maximum this month."
So amid a global pandemic, ICE says that we're set to see a deluge of migrants the size of which we haven't experienced in "over 20 years." And, whereas a negative COVID test is required for entry to the U.S. via air travel, Border Patrol has been releasing migrants into the country without any tests at all.
In January, Border Patrol reported more than twice as many border encounters as they had in January of 2020. This is a humanitarian crisis compounded by a pandemic due. It is going to get drastically worse, and Biden is responsible for that.
Thanks to Trump's safe-third-country agreements and negotiations with Mexico, he drastically ameliorated the "kids in cages" crisis. Instead of lockups in the U.S., families could remain together in civil society in Mexico while their asylum claims were processed.
But by giving migrants a clear path to our border and revoking the Remain in Mexico policy, Biden must either keep adult migrants in CPB facilities or revert to catch and release. Biden is currently doing a mix of both.
If he had kept Trump's diplomatic deterrents from inviting this surge, Biden wouldn't have to make this decision at all. But as long as the courts continue to refuse family reunification because it incarcerates minors, his dilemma will persist. But Biden asked for this, and now hundreds of thousands of migrants and Americans along the southern border will suffer as a result.
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@ruthharris123 After recent reports of overcrowding at a temporary U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in Donna, Texas where unaccompanied immigrant children are held, the Biden administration allowed a few members of the media to tour the facility on Tuesday. The photos and videos taken by journalists from inside the facility paint a dark picture of the overcrowded and inhumane conditions that these children are facing.
The Donna facility was divided into smaller “pods” by thick plastic walls, each of which was designed to only hold 32 kids each, but the pods seen by the reporters were currently holding between 500 and 700 children, CNN reports. Young children were kept in a smaller playpen area, which is also where they sleep at night. Although the children in the facility wore masks, they are only tested for covid-19 if they start to display symptoms, despite being forced to live in extremely close quarters. Currently, the covid-19 positivity rate at the Donna facility is approximately 14 percent.
The facility is currently housing 4,100 migrant minors—more than 10 times over its CDC-mandated pandemic capacity of only 250, said acting Executive Officer for Rio Grande Valley Operational Programs Division Oscar Escamilla. Of those immigrant children, 3,400 were unaccompanied, and more than 2,000 had been kept at the facility for over the 72-hour legal limit within which unaccompanied children must be turned over within 72 hours to the Department of Health and Human Services. Migrant children spend an average of 133 hours at the facility, and at least 39 of the children had been in the Donna facility for over 15 days.
According to Escamilla, about 250 to 300 children typically enter the Donna facility each day, but far fewer are released into the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which has quickly led to the extreme overcrowding that they are now experiencing.“We’re way overcapacity. We’re like 700% overcapacity,” Escamilla said.
The HHS has announced the creation of a number of new border facilities to accommodate immigrant children, with plans to build up its capacity to 13,500 beds, which doesn’t do much for the hundreds of new unaccompanied children who are detained along the border daily.
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