Job advertisement stokes fears of mandatory quarantines.
The Washington Department of Health is advertising job opportunities for employees to work in quarantine and isolation facilities that will be used to house Americans who are unable to quarantine at home, prompting fears that the program could eventually be used to forcibly detain people.
Titled ‘Isolation & Quarantine Team Consultants’ – the job offers “continuous” employment with a salary of up to $4286 dollars a month.
The facility is located “within a motel in Lewis County” and employees will be tasked with providing for COVID infectees “transportation to and from the facility in vans that have been altered to separate air flow to protect the driver.”
“Team members provide for all aspects of the guest’s stay to include providing laundry services, delivering hygiene products, delivering ready-made foods or microwaveable foods to the guests,” states the job description.
“People who test positive for COVID-19 or who are exposed to someone who tests positive are asked to isolate or quarantine (I & Q) away from other people for 10 to 14 days in order to reduce risk of transmitting the virus to others,” states the Washington Department of Health website. “Most people are able to isolate or quarantine in their own homes. In Washington State, providing for I & Q is the responsibility of local jurisdictions.”
“The state Isolation and Quarantine facility was created for individuals who are not Washington residents but are traveling in our state and test positive for COVID-19 or who have been exposed to someone who tests positive and do not have a residence or other location in which to spend their 10-14 day isolation or quarantine period.”
The advertisement for people to work in quarantine facilities follows the CDC’s publication earlier this summer of a COVID-19 planning document that suggested relocating “high-risk individuals” to “green zones” or “camps” in order to keep them away from the rest of the population.
The document is called Interim Operational Considerations for Implementing the Shielding Approach to Prevent COVID-19 Infections in Humanitarian Settings and was originally published on the CDC’s official website on July 26, 2020.
“Holy shit. The CDC actually put together a document to discuss putting high risk people into camps to “shield” low risk people from them,” Candace Owens tweeted.
Holy shit.
The CDC actually put together a document to discuss putting high risk people into camps to “shield” low risk people from them.
No— this is not a joke, and yes, every single person who has made a reference to 1930’s Germany is vindicated. https://t.co/II6gjGtb5e
The purpose of the strategy document is “to reduce the number of severe COVID-19 cases by limiting contact between individuals at higher risk of developing severe disease (“high-risk”) and the general population (“low-risk”).”
According to the CDC, in order to achieve this, “High-risk individuals would be temporarily relocated to safe or “green zones” established at the household, neighborhood, camp/sector or community level depending on the context and setting. They would have minimal contact with family members and other low-risk residents.”
Respondents on Twitter expressed concern that the program in Washington State will eventually be used to forcibly quarantine Americans who break COVID-19 isolation rules.
Did you know the @WADeptHealth has a job listing for "ISOLATION AND QUARANTINE team consultants"?
— Freedom Foundation (Parler: @FreedomFoundation) (@FreedomFdtn) September 22, 2021
Who wants a job at the new gov't camps? Nothing unusual here, totally normal to list a job 18 mos after it all started. The job may last a year…hmm, what is going on a yr from now? In 2022? Need a hint? Maybe it involves #ImpeachBidenHarrisPelosiNOW https://t.co/kSsJ7FiRcD
A video posted to Twitter shows a ‘COVID Quarantine Site’ being built in Eatonville, WA for purposes similar to that described in the job advertisement.
As we highlighted last year, Authorities in Quebec City, Canada announced they will isolate “uncooperative” citizens in a coronavirus facility, the location of which remains a secret.
New Zealand also announced plans to placed COVID infectees and their family members in “quarantine facilities.”
Back in January, German authorities also announced they would hold COVID dissidents who repeatedly fail to properly follow the rules in what was described as a ‘detention camp’ located in Dresden.
Conservatives are accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of being under the influence on Twitter after she exhibited strange behavior during a press conference.
A video clip of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) during a press conference has left many online questioning whether or not she was sober at the time. In the video, Pelosi stutters, giggles, randomly says “hi” to someone, and puts her mask on upside down before walking away from the podium in an exhibition of strange behavior that has been making rounds on the internet.
“And that’s why I said that. Yeah, [inaudible],” Pelosi says as she strangely grins at the audience erratically nodding her head and giggling. “Thank you all very much.”
“It’s going to be a very eventful day,” Pelosi continued as she quickly turns her head to the right of the crowd, raising her eyebrows. “Perhaps I will see you along the way. Hi! So [inaudible] see you along the way. Think positively, okay?”
Pelosi then put her mask on over her eyes, quickly realizing that it is fashioned upside down. “It goes this way,” Pelosi told herself as she readjusts it just before walking away from the podium.
Users online noticed the strange behavior and were quick to suggest that the House Speaker was under the influence. “Umm Xanax and Valium?” tweeted one user. “I wanna say drugs,” tweeted another. “Pelosi is drunk on the job again,” tweeted a third user.
The Argentinian Philosopher Carlos Bernardo González Pecotche surmised that the world is in turmoil because people don’t know where their thoughts originate. The ideas of others enter their heads, and those people feel like the thoughts are their own. Not realizing that they’ve been programmed.
David Hogg is a professional anti-gun activist and current college student at Harvard. He’s one of the founding members of the March for Our Lives organization, a non-profit that aims to seem like an organic grassroots movement of young people against firearms ownership, which is almost entirely propped up by donations from the top 1% of the country and billionaires like Michael Bloomberg.
Recently, Hogg has been on a tweetstorm, and it’s caught headlines in the firearms media world. Here’s what he had to say:
Ask yourselves in the history books we will write about you how do you want to be remembered?
Weak and corrupt people that worked to protect people like the 19 year old that killed my classmates and teachers OR as people that protect our kids and teachers right to not be shot?
You can practically see the mental pat on the back that he’s giving himself while writing the tweet. But immaturity isn’t necessarily the point here. This is also how Hogg makes his living. Saying ridiculous things on the internet as bait for others to react keeps him from fading into irrelevancy.
Experts Agree Political Ruling By Democrat Judge Is 100% Unconstitutional Statement by attorney Norm Pattis “The trial court’s entry of a default in these cases is stunning. It takes no account of the tens of thousands of documents produced by the defendants, the hours spent sitting for depositions and the various sworn statements filed in these cases. What’s more, these cases are currently before the United States Supreme Court where we have asked for review of the Texas Supreme Court’s denial of motions to dismiss. “We are distressed by what we regard as a blatant abuse of discretion by the trial court. We are determined to see that these cases are heard on the merits. Nothing less than the fundamental right to speak freely is at stake in these cases. It is not overstatement to say the first amendment was crucified today.”
I’d like to take a second to address David Hogg and respond to this tweet. I’m assuming that he thinks that he’s speaking for young people in general, or maybe young liberals. Either way, I believe that he’s first wrong to assume he’s in the majority and second, naive to think that people don’t have differing political views from himself—especially young people.
I’m 27 years old. I grew up with Liberal baby-boomer parents and am a product of the early 2000s. I had school shooter drills in high school, bomb threats, and more. I am staunchly pro-gun. Many more people my age are as well. Interestingly, younger people are increasingly opposed to gun control, with the percentage of people under 30 that support stricter gun laws dropping from 65% to 45% since 2018.
Gun owners are incredibly diverse. Young and old, people of all cultures, races, and political opinions own firearms. I’m not sure if anything that supersedes cultural and political divides, like the right to own a gun.
And if the recent surge in gun buying has shown us anything, when the chips are down, and it’s time to take self-defense seriously- people who were once opposed to guns buy guns. We experienced a ton of that firsthand here at TMGN. Nationwide more than 9 million people became first-time gun owners in 2020 and 2021, which continues to rise.
The pandemic, social unrest, the tensions over the 2020 election, and inauguration all brought people closer to their second amendment rights, especially young people.
March for Our Lives is not a grassroots organization. Major million-dollar donations almost entirely fund it. Only 0.5% of their entire revenue is from donations totaling less than $5,000. Some real journalists looked at the group’s 990 tax form showing that out of the $18.6M that March For Our Lives collected in donations during 2018, $17.8M originated from about 74 people donating between $5000.00 and $3,504,717.00.
So, David Hogg would like us to believe that there’s some army of young progressive anti-gun voters out there looking to wipe away these evil old boomers. (Who are some of the most prominent supporters of gun control ironically.) Yet 78 wealthy donors mainly support his entire organization. (If you dive into the data, 36 donors made donations between $100,000 and $3.5M, so maybe it’s just 36 people who support Mr. Hogg)
David Hogg is just a pawn in a much larger game, though. As long as people are divided and blaming each other for their problems, they won’t look up and see who’s pulling the strings.
Since around 2011, the corporate media have been creating tons of artificial problems for the average person to be upset about to get them fighting with each other. The media has started to pit people against each other based on immutable characteristics like race and gender.
If you don’t believe me, here’s a graph of how many times The New York Times mentioned the word “racism” in an article since 1980:
Despite racism being way worse in previous years than it is now, the use of the word in media since 2011 has skyrocketed. The same goes for mentions of “Political Correctness” and many other divisive terms.
What does this all have to do with David Hogg, you may ask? Well, everything. He’s a pawn in a game that he doesn’t understand. One that pits ordinary people against each other for the hope that they’re too preoccupied to realize the standard of living has decreased exponentially over the past few years. One that convinces people to trade their freedoms for the promise of false security.
The idea that gun owners will simply “die out” is false. As millennials get older and start to bear more responsibility in their lives (read: “The Trend Has Flipped: Millennials Are Actually Buying Guns”), the right to own a firearm becomes more and more important. The recent gun-buying craze (read: here & here) sparked by the pandemic and social unrest has begun to truly express younger Americans, minorities, and women’s Second Amendment rights like never before. These new gun owners are across the political spectrum, suggesting that Hogg’s movement is falling into darkness.
“And you presume to tell somehow, over a hundred million Americans who have survived COVID, that we have no right to determine our own medical care. You alone are on high high, and you’ve made these decisions, a lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree.”
Sen. Rand Paul grilled Biden regime HHS secretary Xavier Becerra during a Congressional hearing this week, pointing out that the latter has been making sweeping and grandiose claims about unvaccinated people despite having no scientific background or medical degree.
“Are you familiar with an Israeli study that had 2.5 million patients and found that the vaccinated group was actually seven times more likely to get infected with COVID than the people who had gotten COVID naturally?” Paul asked.
Becerra responded, “Senator, I have to get back to you on that one, I’m not familiar with that study.”
“Well, you think you might wanna be if you’re gonna travel the country insulting the millions of Americans, including NBA star Jonathan Isaac, who have had COVID, recovered, look at a study with 2.5 million study and say ‘Well, you know what, it looks like my immunity is as good as the vaccine or not,’ and maybe in a free country you oughta be able to make that decision,” Paul replied. “Instead you’ve chosen to travel the country calling people like Jonathan Isaac and other, myself included, ‘flat earthers.’ We find that very insulting, it goes against the science. Are you a doctor or a medical doctor?”
Senator Rand Paul tears into HHS Sec. Xavier Becerra:
"Are you a doctor?…You ignore history & science to shame the 'flat-earthers,' as you call them. You should be ashamed of yourself & apologize to the American people for being dishonest about naturally acquired immunity." pic.twitter.com/yDt3hX4DsS
A visibly nervous Becerra leaned in and said, “I’ve worked over thirty years on health policy.”
“You’re not a medical doctor, do you have a science degree?” Paul continued, unfazed, later noting “And you presume to tell somehow, over a hundred million Americans who have survived COVID,, that we have no right to determine our own medical care. You alone are on high high, and you’ve made these decisions, a lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree. This is an arrogance coupled with an authoritarianism that is unseemly, and un-American. You ignore history & science to shame the ‘flat-earthers,’ as you call them. You sir, are the one ignoring the science.”
Paul noted, “You should be ashamed of yourself & apologize to the American people for being dishonest about naturally acquired immunity.”
Val Verde County, which lies directly above the border between Texas and Mexico, announced Tuesday it will seek to form a coalition of southern border counties and cities to sue President Joe Biden over his failure to enforce U.S. immigration laws.
The unanimous vote of Val Verde’s county commissioners came after the city of Del Rio, located in the county, saw a surge of tens of thousands of migrants, mostly from Haiti, Townhall’s Julio Rosas reported.
A makeshift migrant camp, reaching at its peak 15,000 people, formed under the International Bridge at Del Rio earlier this month, which border officials cleared last week, releasing most of the migrants into the United States to await immigration proceedings to determine their status, according to Dallas-Fort Worth CBS affiliate KTVT-TV.
NEW: From our @FoxNews drone, a look at the migrant camp under the international bridge in Del Rio this morning, where thousands migrants remain after they crossed into the US illegally. pic.twitter.com/06sUY2XCi5
“Fifty percent of the population of this city was sitting underneath our International Bridge. How is a town of this size, with our tax base, supposed to deal with that problem?” Val Verde County commissioner Beau Nettleton said at Tuesday’s meeting.
“It is time that we get together with other counties and cities along the border and stand up and do something,” he added.
“I don’t have the answer to whether a lawsuit solves this problem, but it draws attention to this problem.”
Nettleton argued that the Biden administration needs to do its job and enforce the nation’s immigration laws.
“They took the same oath of office that I did, which was to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States and the laws of the state of Texas. That was the oath that I took. They took the same oath,” he said.
The commissioner added that he’s all for people entering the country legally, but the current chaotic mess cannot continue.
#BREAKING Val Verde Co. to form coalition w/other border counties/cities to sue @POTUS “for failure to enforce the laws of the Constitution of the United States & failure to abide by his oath of office” & failure to protect/defend border. Vote was unanimous among commissioners. pic.twitter.com/GItZCvyyAT
“It is inexcusable,” Nettleton said, and the entire system must be reformed.
He contended that a lawsuit is “our chance to stand up and do something, to make a statement and make a point that enough is enough. This needs to end.”
The number of those apprehended crossing the southern border illegally during the fiscal year 2021 exceeds the population of 11 American states.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, so far there have been over 1.5 million encounters of people crossing the southwest border through August.
That number will go up by 200,000 or more when September’s encounters are included, if recent trends continue.
By comparison, there were just 458,000 encounters during all of the fiscal year 2020.
Last week, 26 Republican governors — including border Govs. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Greg Abbott of Texas — sent an urgent letter to Biden seeking a meeting to discuss the border crisis within 15 days.
NEW 🚨 26 GOP Governors Demand Biden End The Border Crisis
In a Newsmax interview this week, James Carafano, a national security expert with the Heritage Foundation, argued that what happened in Del Rio has now become part of the playbook for illegal entry into the U.S.
“They’ll just throw a camp up on the border, put thousands of people there and then the Biden team will be so anxious to get it off of the news cycle, they’ll just take those people and ship them right into the interior,” Carafano said.
“Look, we’re going to wind up with not millions, but if we keep this up, ten of millions of people coming in,” he predicted.
Carafano argued that the Biden administration really wants open borders, despite anything officials might say to the contrary.
“They’d like to hide that fact as much as possible from the American people,” he said, “but at the end of the day, when the open-borders people say, ‘Do this,’ they jump.”
A new congressional report shows that the tax increase bill approved by the House Ways and Means Committee would increase taxes on millions of taxpayers making less than $400,000. That would violate a pledge President Joe Biden has made repeatedly.
The House tax bill would raise taxes by $2.1 trillion, making it the largest peacetime tax increase in U.S. history. It contains 45 separate tax increases and would raise taxes on individuals, small businesses, companies, family farms, and other estates. Analysis by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation shows that a substantial number of taxpayers at all income levels would pay more in taxes.
According to the Joint Committee numbers, more than two-thirds of all taxpayers in 2023 would experience either no tax benefit or a tax increase. About 35% of taxpayers earning between $100,000 and $200,000 would face a tax increase. By 2027, more than 85% of taxpayers would receive either no benefit or see a tax increase.
Middle-income taxpayers would be hit hard. Nearly 60% of taxpayers earning between $75,000 and $100,000, roughly the national median family income, would face a tax increase.
then, the average tax rate for every income level above $40,000 would be higher than it is today. That’s $40,000 — not $400,000!
A separate analysis by the Tax Policy Center found that 58% of all households would pay more in taxes in 2022. Seventy percent of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would face higher taxes. This study shows that 76% of all taxpayers would face a tax increase in 2026. Millions of these taxpayers earn far less than $400,000.
Again, it’s a direct violation of the Biden pledge.
It gets worse. Under this bill, most taxpayers would face not only higher taxes but also higher consumer prices, lower wages, and lower retirement savings. The higher taxes would slow economic output and disrupt economic recovery, and the higher spending would increase the national debt to record-high levels.
Put simply, a vote for this bill would be a vote for the largest expansion of taxes, spending, and debt in history. Congress should vote it down, and Biden should keep his word.
Inflation unexpectedly accelerated in August, as shortages of a wide range of consumer goods and services drove up prices.
The Personal Consumption Price Index for August increased 4.3 percent from one year ago, reflecting increases in the prices paid by consumers for both goods and services, Commerce Department data showed Friday. That is the fastest pace of inflation since January 1991.
Energy prices increased 24.9 percent from the depressed levels of a year ago. Food prices jumped 2.8 percent.
Core PCE prices, excluding food and energy, rose 3.6 percent compared with a year ago. That is also the fastest pace since 1991.
Compared with a month earlier, the PCE Price Index rose four-tenths of a percentage point. Analysts had forecast a three-tenths gain, which would have represented a one-tenth of a point slowdown from the July figure.
Core prices rose three-tenths of a point from July, matching the previous months gain and above the consensus forecast for two-tenths.
Inflation picked up for both goods and services. The index for goods rose 5.5 percent compared with a year ago, up from 5.3 percent in July. Durable goods prices jumped seven percent, up from 6.9 percent in the prior month. Prior to May and June of this year, inflation in durable goods has not run this hot since 1981. Nondurables rose 4.6 percent, up from 4.4 percent.
Services prices rose 3.6 percent, up from 3.5 percent. That is the fastest rate of inflation in services since 2006.
Speaking on a panel organized by the European Central Bank Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said he still expects inflation to ease eventually, but now expects high inflation to run into 2022. This spring Powell had declared high inflation would be transitory, which many Fed watchers understood to mean lasting just a few months.
“It’s also frustrating to see the bottlenecks and supply chain problems not getting better — in fact at the margins apparently getting a little bit worse,” he added. “We see that continuing into next year probably, and holding up inflation longer than we had thought.”
“How can I get hold of ivermectin in case I get sick?” is probably the most common email inquiry I receive daily. It’s a shame we didn’t make this safe, Nobel prize-winning drug as available as we do needles in San Francisco for the injection of dangerous drugs. Perhaps we can ask the Mexican cartels to get into ivermectin production.
In all seriousness, given the data behind ivermectin, it is shocking how our government refuses to even embark on a study. In the meantime, insurers refuse to cover it and pharmacists refuse to dispense it — and that’s if you can get hold of a doctor willing to prescribe it.
Until now, despite dozens of studies and doctors all around the world with no financial gain at stake vouching for its efficacy, our government has balked at ivermectin because, it claims, the studies are too small. Well, the Argentinian Provincial Ministry of Health just published the results of a retrospective study of a trial of over 21,000 participants. The results were unmistakable among those participants above age 40, all non-vaccinated. Overall, when adjusting for confounding factors like less healthy people joining the ivermectin group, those in the ivermectin group had a 66% lower ICU admission rate and a 55% lower mortality rate than those in the control group. Anyone in the ivermectin group was treated with a dose of 0.6mg per kg of weight one time a day for five days.
This is just the latest study, but the key is to look at the preponderance of the evidence. A meta-analysis posted earlier this week of 65 total studies netted the following pooled results.
As the author notes, while many of the studies are small sample sizes, taken together, “The probability that an ineffective treatment generated results as positive as the 65 studies is estimated to be 1 in 403 billion.”
So many people, including actor Louis Gossett Jr., are human testimonies to ivermectin being more than a theoretical statistical benefit. They are alive today, even after having used it at a late stage. The war on ivermectin and the embargo against early treatment are truly a crime against humanity.
Ultimately, it’s important to keep in mind that this has never been about any one treatment. Imagine if along with making ivermectin cheap and available, our government had helped empower people to raise their vitamin D levelsand exercise more rather than gaining a ton of weight over the pandemic. Imagine if our government had encouraged doctors to treat this early and often with a cocktail of several drugs plus made the monoclonal antibodies available for everyone the minute they came out, over one year ago, in addition to the successful nasal irrigation techniques using povidone-iodine sprays. Well, then the reduction in mortality would have been closer to 100%.
Vitamin D alone could have saved anyone who has gotten seriously ill recently, a year and a half after our government should have been encouraging people to take high-dose supplements. There are now at least 113 studies vouching for the correlation between high vitamin D levels and positive outcomes. The results of a recent systematic review and meta-analysis of eight vitamin D studies showed that the risk of COVID mortality for people with D levels at 50 ng/ml is close to zero.
Then, of course, there is exercise and obesity. Weight is such a strong factor in determining risk of serious illness that BMI is now being used as a way of vetting people for eligibility for the monoclonal antibodies. Yet our government encouraged a lifestyle that caused obesity to skyrocket. The rates have gone up so quickly that, according to the latest CDC data, 16 states now have obesity rates of 35% or higher, an increase of four states in just one year.
Rather than encouraging people, in addition to seeking early COVID treatment, to pound vitamins, exercise, and eat right — which would induce a cascading confluence of benefits in every other area of health and wellness — they placed all of their eggs in the vaccine basket. Now what do they have to offer those people getting infected despite taking on so much known and unknown risk from the shots?
Finally, more than any one drug or therapeutic, it’s about the art of practicing medicine, which involves having a competent doctor prescribe the right course of action for the right patient for the given symptoms at the right time. Every primary care doctor should have been encouraged, rather than discouraged, to treat this virus early with their respective patient workloads. Each drug alone might have a 30%-60% efficacy rate, but a good doctor putting it all together achieves close to 100% success.
Drs. Brian Tyson and George Fareed posted a summary of their patient outcomes after treating thousands of COVID patients in Imperial County, California, since last March. Out of 6,000 patients they treated, they never lost a patient who came to them within the first week of symptoms. What Dr. Tyson explains is so simple, yet eloquent:
“We started seeing inflammation, so we used anti-inflammatories,” Dr. Tyson explains. “We saw blood clots, so we used anti-coagulants. We saw patients having trouble breathing, so we used asthma medications. … It wasn’t just one drug. It was the art of what we see and how those patients responded to what we gave them.”As Tyson notes, if you are not in favor of early treatment, that’s fine, but why do you have to attack others who try to treat the virus? “If I’m wrong, people are still going to die,” asserted Tyson. “But if I’m right, how many thousands of lives would have been saved?”
Used as a tool to demonize contrarians and anyone on the right.
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has blasted the site for its slide into “leftist propaganda,” accusing it of long since abandoning impartiality and simply becoming an amplifier for mainstream news narratives.
Sanger co-founded Wikipedia with with Jimmy Wales in 2001.
During an interview with the Epoch Times, Sanger noted that the online encyclopedia began with noble intentions but is now just another tool to demonize people who challenge the consensus.
“Wikipedia made a real effort at neutrality for, I would say, its first five years or so,” said Sanger, adding, “And then … it began a long, slow slide into what I would call leftist propaganda.”
Wikipedia is run by around 125,000 volunteer editors, the vast majority of whom are leftists, with a further 1,000 administrators who enjoy special privileges to block others who go against the grain.
Sanger explained how Wikipedia now serves not just to skew information, but to viciously demonize anyone on the right or anyone deemed to be a “contrarian.”
Wikipedia “casts them as conspiracy theorists, are far right or whatever, when they and their friends and people who know them well would never describe them in that way,” Sanger said.
After banning sources such as Fox News or the Daily Mail, Wikipedia now relies almost entirely on far-left outlets and legacy media sources to determine truth.
“More recently, they’ve gotten rid of almost all conservative news sources as sources for their articles,” he said
“And so as the news media has shifted, and as the establishment, frankly, has shifted more to the left or to the left, the content of Wikipedia has followed suit.”
As we previously highlighted, a perfect example of Wikipedia’s extreme political bias was evident when the website’s editors deliberately sought to bury links between convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton.
The fact that Clinton flew on Epstein’s ‘Lolita Express’ private jet at least 26 times, which was reported by the media multiple times back in 2016, disappeared from Wikipedia before it was added back in after an outcry.
Editors also sought to scrub any of Epstein’s links to Clinton while amplifying his links to Donald Trump, which were less direct and less damaging.
Panamanian Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes made the remarks during a visit to DC this week
She said that another 60,000 mostly Haitian migrants are likely headed toward the US border
Mouynes said 85,000 migrants have passed through Panama so far this year, a huge increase
She expressed frustration saying Panama has been warning leaders including Biden for months
‘We’ve engaged with every single authority that we can think of,’ the exasperated Mouynes said
Panama’s foreign minister has warned that another wave of some 60,000 migrants, mostly Haitian nationals, is now headed toward the southern US border.
Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes expressed exasperation during a visit to Washington DC this week, saying that Panama has been warning the Biden administration for months about the recent surge in irregular migration.
‘We sounded the alarm when we should have,’ Mouynes told Axios. ‘We’ve engaged with every single authority that we can think of, that we can come across, to say, “Please, let’s pay attention to this.”‘
In recent weeks, shocking scenes of human misery emerged from a squalid migrant camp near the border in Texas, which swelled to 15,000 at the height of the crisis, as the unprepared Border Patrol scrambled to stem the flow of illegal crossings.
Most of the Haitian migrants had been living in South American countries like Chile for years, but headed toward the US when they learned that President Joe Biden was halting deportations of Haitian nationals already in the country.
Traveling by land from South America, they must pass through the isthmus country of Panama, with many making the trek through the treacherous jungles of the Darien Gap. Panama Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes expressed exasperation during a visit to Washington DC this week, saying that Panama has been warning the Biden administration for months about the recent surge in irregular migration
Haitian migrants rest as they cross the jungle of the Darien Gap, near Acandi, Choco department, Colombia, heading to Panama on Monday, on their way trying to reach the USHaitian migrants cross the Guati River during their transfer to a camp where they will sleep to start their journey to the Darien Gap, in Acandi, Colombia, on TuesdayMost of the Haitian migrants headed for the US are actually coming from Chile and Brazil, where they have been living for years as refugees following the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti. They must pass through the Darien Gap in Panama
Panama is expecting 27,000 more migrants to cross through the Darien Gap this month, more than were encountered in all of 2019.
‘Let’s recognize that they all are heading toward the US,’ said Mouynes, calling on the Biden administration to help enforce a coordinated strategy with countries across the region.
Mouynes said that more than 85,000 migrants have passed through Panama since January, most of them Haitians.
Roughly 20,000 to 25,000 Haitians have already reached the U.S.-Mexico border, with most being allowed to enter the United States. That leaves another 60,000 are most likely still on their way north, the minister said.
Panama is usually the first country to provide migrants humanitarian and medical assistance as they make their way north, Mouynes said.
‘When we receive them on the Panamanian side, they’re malnourished. The children are in terrible condition, so even getting them up to a healthy state takes time,’ the minister said.
Meanwhile, some 16,000 migrants are stuck in the northern Colombian beach town of Necocli, awaiting their turn on limited boat transport toward the Darien Gap, where smugglers guide groups through one of the most dangerous and impassable regions of Latin America.
The journey can be deadly. On Thursday, Panamanian officials buried a group of migrants who perished in the jungle, using a bulldozer to cover the mass grave.
A priest attends the burial of a group of migrants who died trying to cross the Darien gap, at the Guayabillo cemetery in Agua Fria, Panama on Thursday, highlighting the deadly dangers of the treacherous jungle trek
A bulldozer dumps dirt a group of migrants who died trying to cross the Darien gap, at the Guayabillo cemetery in Panama
Haitian migrants are sprayed with a disinfectant as they leave the pier and then move to a camp where they will sleep to start their journey to the Darien Gap in Colombia on Wednesday
Haitian migrants cross the Guati River during their transfer to a camp where they will launch their trek into the Darien Gap
Colombia and Panama agreed last month that 500 migrants could cross per day, but local officials have repeatedly urged them to raise the quota, saying it is far too low to keep pace with the up to 1,500 migrants who arrive in town daily.
Panama’s President Laurentino Cortizo told the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday that more than 80,000 irregular migrants have traveled through Panama this year. He called for international assistance, saying his country is spending its limited budget on migrant care.
So far this year, 88,514 migrants have entered Panama through the Darien jungle, according to figures from the National Migration Service, and Panama went from receiving an average of 800 migrants in January to 30,000 in August.
US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reportedly asked his officials whether the department was ready to handle the possibility of up to 400,000 migrants, nearly double the 21-year high seen in July, crossing the southern border in October.
Despite public attempts to appear in control of the situation at the southwest border, a phone call between Mayorkas and senior officials earlier this week shows a Biden administration scrambling to contain a growing crisis.
Mayorkas asked on the call if the border was ready for a worst-case scenario of 350,000 to 400,000 migrants crossing the border next month, two DHS officials told NBC.
Even the lower estimate would be record breaking, but 400,000 border crossings is nearly double the 21-year high hit in July of 210,000. August saw more than 208,000 encounters at the southwestern border.
Haitian migrants arrive at a jetty in Colombia as they prepare to start their journey to the Darien Gap on Wednesday
October’s border surge could potentially shatter records already set for border crossings this year
The officials said the estimates weren’t based on internal intelligence. Instead Mayorkas and others within DHS are worried about a spike in migrants crossing the border if a court-ordered repeal of the Title 42 expulsion policy takes effect today.
Title 42 is a Trump-era Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order that enables any border officer to immediately turn asylum-seekers away during the pandemic regardless of their status.
The Biden administration has rolled back its enforcement of the policy somewhat to allow exceptions for unaccompanied minors and some families with young children.
But immigrant advocacy groups and some of Biden’s fellow Democrats are outraged at the White House’s continued enforcement and defense of the rule.
DHS is concerned that with Title 42 gone, however, migrants may misinterpret the shift to mean the border is wide open even as Mayorkas himself insisted last week ‘our borders are closed’ during a contentious Senate hearing.
US District Judge Emmet Sullivan gave the White House 14 days to comply with a September 16 ruling that decided the Trump administration’s policy didn’t give Biden the authority to block migrants seeking asylum.
Sullivan issued the order after advocacy groups sued the White House.
The administration appealed the ruling but so far the US Court of Appeals has not moved to stop it from expiring.
Biden considered lifting Title 42 in July but officials issued a dire warning: ‘We could have a rush at the border. It would be catastrophic.’
The officials who revealed the Mayorkas call said Customs and Border Protection has been given no guidance on what to do when Title 42 ends.
Meanwhile a new caravan of more than ‘15,000 migrants led by smugglers’ is in Mexico and headed for the US border, according to a letter sent to President Biden from Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Marsha Blackburn on Thursday.
The GOP lawmakers say they and thousands of other migrants who have crossed the border this year ‘are emboldened’ by Biden’s more relaxed policies compared to his predecessor.
‘We call on you to immediately send a clear and concise signal to the massive caravan en route that they must turn around. Smuggling and trafficking should not be tolerated by the United States,’ Graham and Blackburn write.
Senators Lindsey Graham and Marsha Blackburn sounded the alarm on the worsening border crisis, urging President Biden in a Thursday letter to ‘send a clear message’ to a caravan of 15,000 migrants reportedly headed toward the border
‘We cannot continue to surrender our southern border to drug cartels and coyotes. An open border like ours is a green light to those who see human life as a commodity.’
Biden’s ‘continued capitulation constitutes an unconscionable threat to our national security,’ they claim.
They end the impassioned letter with another direct appeal to the president to tell the caravan to ‘turn around,’ adding that ‘failure to do so would be patently reckless.’
It comes the same day Mayorkas issued extensive new guidelines on deportations to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In a seven-page memo, the DHS chief instructs ICE officers to use discretion and determine whether an undocumented immigrant ‘poses a current threat to public safety’ in deciding whether to deport them.
Mayorkas privately expressed concern over whether the Department of Homeland Security could handle the border surge
‘The fact that an individual is a removable noncitizen should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them. We focus our resources because they are limited, and because of our dedication to doing justice,’ Mayorkas wrote.
It comes after a week that saw more than 25,000 Haitian migrants arrive in the border city of Del Rio, Texas, quickly overwhelming local officials there.
Border officials worked to quickly clear them out from an encampment under a bridge where many of the thousands had settled.
Mayorkas told the Washington Post that removing a farmworker ‘breaking his or her back to pick fruit that we all put on our tables’ would undoubtedly take resources away from apprehending someone who poses a public threat.
Others he instructed ICE to pass over are the elderly and migrants who speak out at public demonstrations, according to the memo obtained by the same outlet.
‘It instead requires an assessment of the individual and the totality of the facts and circumstances,’ the memo reads.
It leaves little room for ICE to deport anyone other than violent criminals.
For migrants who’ve been apprehended by ICE and have committed crimes, Mayorkas said agents should consider a broad range of factors: How serious their offense was, whether they used a weapon, past criminal history and even when they arrived in the US or have a mental condition.
He also wants them to look at how the deportation would affect the person’s family.
However, Mayorkas is also giving them more room to weigh all the information for themselves. He’s overwritten temporary guidance issued in February that requires ICE supervisors to approve of some deportation cases to ensure agency compliance.
On Wednesday, Mayorkas’ department tried to put an end to former President Donald Trump ‘s so-called ‘Remain in Mexico ‘ policy combatting illegal immigration after a federal judge ruled last month that the move to end the program was unlawful.
DHS released a statement Wednesday announcing its intent to issue a memorandum terminating the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the ‘Remain in Mexico’ program.
The order, according to the statement, will come in the next few weeks.
‘A new memorandum terminating MPP will not take effect until the current injunction is lifted by court order,’ the DHS press release reads. ‘In issuing a new memorandum terminating MPP, the Department intends to address the concerns raised by the courts with respect to the prior memorandum.’
In June 2021, DHS issued a memorandum terminating the MPP that a Texas district court ruled in August violated the law and issued an order requiring the agency to restart the Trump-era program.
In another blow to the Biden administration’s attempt to shut down the program, the Supreme Court in August rejected the Justice Department’s request to put the policy on hold while litigation over Biden’s efforts to rescind the policy was resolved in the courts.
Panama Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes expressed exasperation during a visit to Washington DC this week, saying that Panama has been warning the Biden administration for months about the recent surge in irregular migration
Haitian migrants rest as they cross the jungle of the Darien Gap, near Acandi, Choco department, Colombia, heading to Panama on Monday, on their way trying to reach the US
Haitian migrants cross the Guati River during their transfer to a camp where they will sleep to start their journey to the Darien Gap, in Acandi, Colombia, on Tuesday
Most of the Haitian migrants headed for the US are actually coming from Chile and Brazil, where they have been living for years as refugees following the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti. They must pass through the Darien Gap in Panama
