Free Republic

Senate Democrats will chop $1 billion from President Obama’s emergency spending request to secure the Texas border but have rejected Republican demands to change legal protections for child immigrants from Central America. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) told colleagues Tuesday that she will move a bill with $2.7 billion in emergency spending for the border, substantially less than the $3.7 billion requested by Obama, according to Democratic sources. The legislation will not include language demanded by Republicans and some centrist Democrats giving the administration more flexibility to swiftly deport children from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and other noncontiguous...

Over last weekend, it finally got out – despite suppression from the White House and the media – that the Mexican drug cartels/human traffickers are now firing .50 caliber ammo at our USBP Agents. These are bullets that can reach their targets as much as a mile away. This is an act of war. Yet, neither the Pretend POTUS and Dictator-in-Chief Barack Hussein Obama nor any of his minions comment on it at all. Neither does Obama try to stop the thousands of illegals (largely gang members, drug cartels/human traffickers and Islamists...not children) that he has invited into the country...

Obama quietly eliminated the NATIONAL DRUG INTELLIGENCE CENTER, that was monitoring terrorist activity on the border. Mexican cartel violence is at an all-time high along the increasingly porous southern border yet the Obama Administration has shut down a critical intelligence agency dedicated to identifying, tracking and severing the nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism. It’s a senseless move, which is why it was done very quietly. The only real way to discover that the Justice Department’s 19-year-old National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) has been closed is by trying to visit its website. It simply says that on June 15, 2012,...

The surge of Central American families and unaccompanied children into south Texas has focused public attention on one of the few recent revisions of immigration law, the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, or TVPRA, also known as the Wilberforce Act. Championed by congressional Democrats such as Senator Dianne Feinstein, the law was a hastily written attempt to improve the handling of trafficked children who came into the custody of immigration authorities, either at the border or within the country. In the face of public alarm over the Obama administration’s massive catch-and-release operation dispersing tens of thousands of illegal border...

Howdy everyone!! Reporting in LIVE from Murrieta, CA where we'll soon be joining the patriot protests against Obama's criminal human trafficking operation!! Reports and photos to follow. Woo hoo!! Meanwhile, our 3rd quarter fundraiser continues!! It'd be great if we could do it quicker, but 1% a day will keep the 404 away. Please keep those donations coming in, folks, so we can keep FR alive and on the air! FR is funded solely by contributions made by liberty loving people like you who enjoy and use it. We are beholden to no political party, no advertisers, no sugar daddies,...

Navy pilot, combat veteran, and Oklahoma Congressman Jim Bridenstine, who sits on the House Armed Services committee, was denied entry to the Health and Human Services facility housing over 1,000 unaccompanied alien children at the Fort Sill military base in Oklahoma. Appearing in an interview on Breitbart News Saturday with Editor in Chief of Breitbart News and host of the show Alex Marlow, Bridenstine recounted his experience on Wednesday when he visited the base to discuss military topics with the commanding general. Afterward, the Congressman drove over to the area at the base where illegal alien detainees were being held....

Not only does he refuse to enforce the law, but he openly invites this flood of illegal aliens to illegally cross the border into America while forcing the border patrol to stand down, and he looks to his criminal regime to give them safe harbor. Now he wants to dump them on the states against the will of the people. This is high crimes and treason and he must be held accountable. Obama is the most unlawful president ever! Congress must impeach!! These are just this morning's headlines on the Drudge Report: VIDEO: Coyote smuggles illegals across on jet ski...Migrants...

On Wednesday morning, NBC’s Today went beyond avoiding using the term “illegal” to describe the immigrants being bussed from Texas into California. The Peacock network has created a Twitter handle to show its support for the illegal immigrants. Following a report by NBC’s Miguel Almaguer, Today anchor Matt Lauer triumphantly declared: “We want you to weigh in on this. Share your comments using the #RefugeeRiders.” On Tuesday, July 1, the CBS Evening News was the only network to use the term “illegal” when describing the protests in Murrieta, California where the residents have objected to immigrants being bused into their...

'Boys and girls forced to cut off the fingers or cut off the ears of other boys and girls' Only days after the stunning report from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, of threats and torture illegal alien children endure en route to the southern U.S. border, a member of Congress is charging that President Obama, through his statements and actions, is complicit. Cruz’s statement came in a news conference after he, Rep. Michael C. Burgess, R-Texas, and others visited a dorm at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas that serves as a temporary home to some of the tens of thousands...

The documentary filmmaker and daughter of the House minority leader, Alexandra Pelosi, is promoting a new and heartbreaking documentary about the crisis at the southern border. Pelosi spent weeks speaking with undocumented migrants who have been led to believe that the United States is not only caring for women and children who cross the border but welcoming them to do so.“[A]ll the young vulnerable, migrant women who just got to America that I spoke with saw the Border Patrol as the heroes who came to assist them on their journey,” Pelosi recently wrote in an op-ed published on MSNBC.com....

At Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott emerged from a tour calling the situation a “humanitarian crisis” — the same way President Barack Obama has described more than 52,000 children who’ve entered the country illegally in recent months. “We are witnessing a humanitarian crisis unfolding that is the direct consequence of President Obama’s lawlessness,” Cruz said. “We just toured this Air Force facility, where up to 1,200 children are being cared for… but they have come through harrowing circumstances.” Cruz said his experience at the temporary shelter was...

Earlier today on Capitol Hill, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a Homeland Security oversight hearing and DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson testified. Johnson was pressed by lawmakers, specifically Republicans, about the ongoing humanitarian crisis of unaccompanied children on the southwest border with Mexico. Since President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] program was implemented in 2012, we've seen an alarming increase in the number of children trafficked into the United States without their parents. During the hearing, Texas Senator Ted Cruz reminded Johnson about exactly what we're dealing with here: children. “It’s important to understand what those numbers represent. These...

On an Internet forum where parents sought takers for adopted children they no longer wanted, a teenager from Haiti was offered more frequently than any other girl. Starting at age 14, Nita Dittenber was passed among four families over two years through a practice called "private re-homing."

HOUSTON - More than 100 immigrants were found at a suspected stash house in south Harris County, according to the Houston Police Department..... Police say a total of 94 men and 14 women were discovered, including one pregnant woman who was taken to a hospital for treatment. Cannon said all of the illegal immigrants had been held against their will for up to two weeks, locked inside of the home that had only one bathroom with a partially functioning toilet..... Authorities say 500 chickens were also found on the property. Photos and video at article link.

Data from the Polaris Project and other research studies indicate human trafficking in Virginia primarily takes place in the urban areas of state. Studies suggest northern Virginia, Richmond and the Hampton Roads region experience the most trafficking. The Virginia Free Citizen reached out to local law enforcement officials in these areas to investigate the presence of human trafficking in Virginia and their anti-human trafficking efforts. Last week we reported on Virginia’s statewide efforts. Northern Virginia Human Trafficking Task Force Receives $1 Million Grant to Combat Human Trafficking Detective Bill Woolf, with the Fairfax County Police Department, said human trafficking is...

It is difficult to estimate the number of cases involving human trafficking in Virginia since many cases probably go unreported and there are a plethora of charges that fall under human trafficking, such as prostitution, extortion, receiving money for procuring a person, cruelty and injuries to children and abduction. The Polaris Project tracks the number of phone calls the National Human Trafficking Resource Center’s hotline receives, but it is important to note that this is not a completely accurate way of tracking human trafficking because any citizen can call the hotline for information, and not all victims call the hotline....

Sixteen juveniles forced into working as prostitutes for the Super Bowl were rescued in the New York City area by the FBI in the weeks before the game, the agency said Tuesday. Officials said the children, some of whom had been reported missing by their families, ranged in age from 13 to 17. Six were found in Newark, N.J., six in New York City and four in New Haven, Conn. One of the minors, a 17-year-old girl, had spent the past two years with her pimp, said Michael Osborn, chief of the Violent Crimes Against Children unit at the FBI....

American pastor and missionary Thomas (Tom) Randall has been imprisoned in Manila, Philippines on allegations that an orphanage he and his wife founded in the country has been operating as a front for human trafficking and that dozens of poor children living at the facility had been suffering sexual abuse for years. Randall was on a mission trip in the country when state and social welfare authorities apprehended him and two workers on Jan. 12 at the Sankey Samaritan Orphanage in Lucena City, Philippines, reportedly on allegations that he had been negligent regarding alleged abuse and sex trafficking at the...

OTTAWA - Conservative MP Joy Smith hopes to convince her colleagues on both sides of Parliament the so-called Nordic model is the best way to replace Canada’s prostitution laws. The Supreme Court of Canada on Dec. 20 struck down as unconstitutional the laws prohibiting communication for the purposes of prostitution, living on the avails and running a brothel, but stayed the decision for a year to give Parliament time to come up with a new law. The Nordic model, which was implemented in Sweden and Norway after both countries experimented with legalization of prostitution, targets the market for prostitution by...

OTTAWA - Canada’s Catholic bishops will maintain their opposition to prostitution despite the Supreme Court of Canada’s Dec. 20 ruling striking down Canada’s prostitution laws. “The bishops of Canada and the CCCB will continue to teach Catholic values on the sacred role of sexuality in building a committed, loving relationship between husband and wife,” said Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops media relations director Rene Laprise in an e-mail. “As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains (no. 2355), prostitution injures the human dignity of all those engaged in it. Furthermore, it reduces human persons to instruments of profit and sexual...