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BYRON YORK| Amarillo Globe-News

In the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump's highest-profile promise was to build the wall -- that is, to construct a barrier along about 1,000 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. Once elected, Trump's best chance to win money from Congress for a wall came in 2018, when Republican Speaker Paul Ryan controlled the House and Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell controlled the Senate.

It didn't happen.

Now, one of Trump's strongest supporters on Capitol Hill, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, is out with a new memoir, "Do What You Said You Would Do," on Nov. 23 that describes those months when GOP lawmakers fought over competing visions of immigration reform.

The battle was intense, it was passionate and it came to nothing. No stricter immigration laws were passed, and there was no significant funding for a wall. For that failure, Jordan points the finger of blame straight at then-Speaker Ryan. "Paul Ryan is not where the American people are," Jordan writes. "Paul Ryan's position on immigration is the same as the positions of the National Chamber of Commerce."

In the world of conservative immigration policy activists, accusing someone of siding with the Chamber of Commerce is about as harsh as it gets. As Jordan tells it, Ryan sabotaged Republican immigration reform by refusing to support a bill that the large majority of Republicans supported, instead pushing a weaker bill that the Chamber supported.

The result was that, facing united Democratic opposition, neither Republican bill passed. The bill promoted by Jordan and his colleagues in the House Freedom Caucus would have "ended family-based chain migration apart from spouses and children," Jordan writes. "It contained mandatory E-Verify language for employers and eliminated the visa lottery ... [it] also defunded sanctuary cities and appropriated $30 billion for construction of the wall."

The bill, Jordan argues, "was consistent with the message of the 2016 election." The bill supported by Ryan would also have funded the wall, albeit with $25 billion. "But it did nothing else to address the problems we were elected to solve," Jordan writes. "It had no language to address chain migration, E-Verify or sanctuary cities ... [It] also created a renewable six-year legal status for up to 2.4 million illegal immigrants and gave those individuals a path to legal citizenship."

Finally, while the bill ended the visa lottery, it "reallocated those visas to amnesty recipients." "Which bill do you think Speaker Ryan supported?" Jordan asks. "You already know the answer." Ryan, Jordan charges, did not want to allow the House to vote on the Freedom Caucus bill. He did so only after the group threatened to sink a big, must-pass farm bill if they didn't get a vote on immigration.

And then, the speaker declined to put pressure on -- or whip, as they say on Capitol Hill -- any Republicans to vote for it. And still, the conservative bill got 193 votes -- a solid majority of the 241 Republicans in the House at that time. Ryan did push for the other bill -- what Jordan calls the Chamber of Commerce bill -- but in the end it got only 121 votes.

"Why push for a bill that was 100 votes short of passing instead of a bill that got 193 votes and therefore was just a few votes shy of passing?" Jordan asks. "You already know why. Paul Ryan doesn't want the legislation President Trump and the American people supported."

The Jordan-Ryan clash was a classic Republican immigration debate. While Democrats are virtually unanimous in support of amnesty and more liberal immigration laws, the GOP is divided between a conservative faction, which favors more restrictive measures, and a business-oriented faction, which favors less restrictive measures and higher levels of immigration.

Trump's border wall proposal ran straight into that preexisting conflict. In the end, Trump found other ways to build some of the wall. By the time he left office and President Biden stopped construction, about 450 miles had been built, most of it replacing existing but dilapidated older barriers.

The Republican Congress' failure to fund a wall has had real-life consequences, most recently in the crisis in Del Rio, Texas, when 15,000 illegal border crossers waded across the Rio Grande and created a squalid migrant camp just inside the United States. The Biden administration allowed thousands of them to stay. It was a crisis that is sure to be repeated, probably in the near future.

But the story might have been different had Republicans not been so divided in that 2018 debate.

Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner. DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO

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York: The GOP fight that stopped Trump's immigration plan - Amarillo.com

Greece is increasing border guards along its border with Turkey in anticipation of a spike in illegal immigration brought on by the chaos in Afghanistan, officials said Monday.

In the comings months, some 250 officers will join the 1,500-strong border force and an additional 800 extra border guard personnel will also be hired to staff airports and regions close to the Greece-Turkey border.

FILE: Police officers patrol alongside a steel wall at Evros river, near the village of Poros, at the Greek-Turkish border, Greece. (AP)

Greece has toughened its migration policy and border policing over the last two years, extending a wall along its land border with Turkey and installing a high-tech surveillance network to try to deter asylum-seekers from making the crossing.

The recent increase in personnel was spurred in part by the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, authorities said.

WEST POINT GRAD BLASTS BIDEN ADMIN'S WEAKNESS IN TALKS WITH TALIBAN: COMPLETE EMBARRASSMENT'

Greece has also denied mounting allegations from human rights groups that migrants caught after crossing into Greece are being deported without being allowed to claim asylum.

Poland and Lithuania in recent months have been struggling to cope with a surge in migration, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, arriving at their borders with Belarus. They accuse Belarus' government of encouraging the flow of migrants to exert pressure on the entire EU.

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Greece, Poland, and Lithuania were among 12 countries that sent a letter to the European Commission last week to call for more extensive EU measures against illegal immigration.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Greece sending more guards to protect border amid fears over illegal immigration from Afghanistan - Fox News

The Floridian first reported that illegal immigrants that crossed over the southern border were getting transported to Florida back in March of this year, and now it appears as if more potential busloads of illegals are being sent into Florida.

The Biden administration recently said that Haitian immigrants caught crossing over illegally would be sent to Florida, and now a new video posted on Twitter by Bill Garber shows a small group of US Government buses traveling east on I-10 in Jefferson County, which is just east of Tallahassee.

@DHSgovis aiding and abetting a massive illegal migration across the southern border. This is impacting states and the nation, and represents a failure to faithfully execute the law, tweeted Gov. DeSantis earlier this year

Democratic Senator Jason Pizzo poked fun at DeSantiss assertion that the Biden Administration was bussing in illegal immigrants from the southern U.S. border with a tweet showing the distance between Brownsville, Texas, and Pensacola, Florida.

Pizzo and many other Democrats who questioned the federal governments relocation efforts of illegal immigrants appear to have been proven wrong.

To fill the void left by the federal government, Florida deployed its own law enforcement officers to the border, and theyve told that many of the illegal aliens apprehended there plan to end up in Florida, commented DeSantis, mentioning that Floridians welcome responsible immigration that serves the interests of our citizens, but we cannot abide the lawlessness that this administration is aiding and abetting, and frankly encouraging, on the southwest border.

An estimated 12,000 illegal Haitian immigrants are said to have entered the U.S. over the past couple of weeks, with tens of thousands more from other Latin American countries, having already crossed over after President Biden softened standing U.S. immigration policy.

Republicans contend that the waves of illegal immigrants coming to the U.S. are a direct result Biden winning the presidency over former President Donald Trump.

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Government Buses Potentially Filled With Illegal Immigrants Enter Florida - The Floridian

Americans may be divided on whether to impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on citizens, but when it comes to illegal immigrants jumping the border, theres little debate: Most people say the government should give them the shot.

A new poll sponsored by the National Sheriffs Association found the public overwhelmingly in favor of COVID-19 tests for those border jumpers, with 96% saying it is important to administer tests.

When it comes to giving them the jab, 74% said they want to see the feds require vaccination, compared to 15% who opposed the idea. The rest werent sure.

The poll, conducted by TIPP, surveyed 1,308 Americans, though the immigration questions were asked of a smaller subset of 766 people who said they were following the border situation either very closely or somewhat closely. The poll was conducted from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2.

Sheriff Mark Dannels, head of the associations border security committee, said in a memo on the poll results that sheriffs have prodded Washington over COVID-19 policies and the border. What theyve heard back isnt reassuring.

Federal officials often delegate this important responsibility to local non-profit groups who are already overwhelmed and underfunded, which has led to a surge in COVID-19 cases across the south and the country, Sheriff Dannels wrote.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently revealed to Congress that about 20% of illegal immigrants at the southern border are arriving ill.

Thats a staggering rate, and its prompted new questions about the way the Biden administration has handled the migrant surge.

President Biden has imposed a vaccine mandate on federal workers and contractors and has urged companies to do the same.

And as of Oct. 1, people applying for immigration benefits who must undergo a medical examination are now required to show proof of a COVID vaccination as part of that.

Yet the White House has refused to require illegal immigrants to meet the same standards.

Nonessential legal travelers have been blocked from the border since the start of the pandemic, leading lawmakers from across the political spectrum to chide Mr. Mayorkas for allowing tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to enter and be released into communities each month.

Fiscal year 2021 ended Sept. 30, and while final numbers arent yet available, it was flirting with the all-time record for the worst year on record in terms of Border Patrol apprehensions. It long ago shattered the record for most unaccompanied illegal immigrant children.

Experts say those arrests dont account for hundreds of thousands more known gotaways, whom the Border Patrol knows made it by them.

Nearly all of them end up paying smuggling cartels for the trip, with typical prices ranging from $7,000 to $12,000.

The Sheriffs Association survey found Americans overwhelmingly agreed with the statement that Mexican cartels are undermining U.S. safety.

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Americans want border jumpers to have to get COVID-19 vaccine - Washington Times

The recent series of violent marches in Chile against economic refugees, mainly from Venezuela, is the end product of a four-year anti-immigrant campaign whipped up by the right-wing government of the countrys billionaire president, Sebastian Piera. The most serious incidents occurred September 25 when a mob of 5,000 marched through the northern port city of Iquique. By the end of the day, the mob lit a large bonfire in the middle of a square and burnt the Venezuelans documents, prams, toys, clothes, tents and whatever other little possessions they had.

Based on reports, not one arrest was made even though there was a real danger of asylum seekers being lynched. The events indict the capitalist state, which has sanctioned and fostered the expressions of national chauvinism and xenophobia for electoral purposes.

That at a certain point fascist and ultra-nationalist dregs took the lead is obvious. Yet in the throng were also state officials. It has come to light that involved in the march were figures such as the mayor of Colchane, the director of a private school, and the government-appointed director of the Iquique Free Trade Zone, Felipe Hbner Valdivieso. More were surely lurking in the crowd.

Earlier in September, the government announced it would start expelling so-called illegal migrants on the basis of a new Migration Law enacted in April that facilitates deportations.

The Piera administration had already deported 321 refugees this year and intended to carry out 1,500 more deportations before the United Nations intervened to urge their suspension. This is because human rights and migration advocates revealed that Department of Immigration and the PDI carried out mass raids on immigrants, launched mass arrests without warrants, held them incommunicado, denied them legal representation and proceeded to expel them en masse disregarding constitutional norms and guarantees, including due process.

The Chilean government must immediately stop these collective expulsions of immigrants, as they have the right to an individual assessment of their cases, the UN office for Human Rights in South America stated.

Deportations cannot be carried out in a summary manner, but require an individual assessment, taking into account the humanitarian considerations, added Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, Felipe Gonzlez Morales.

Only the day before the march, Carabinero officers violently evicted 100 refugee families from Plaza Brasil, a public square in Iquique, on the grounds that their makeshift camp represented a health risk.

In announcing the reactivation of evictions, Interior Minister Rodrigo Delgado cynically remarked that it was not permitted to use public spaces for leisure and recreational purposes to set up temporary housing.

Several thousand undocumented Venezuelans, Haitians, Colombians, Peruvians and Bolivians who have entered through Chiles increasingly militarized borders have been stranded in Iquique and Aricathe northernmost town bordering Perufor months. Homeless, destitute and denied government assistance, theyve had to set up donated tents on public squares, on the beach or on barricaded streets without the most rudimentary amenities. The camp in Plaza Brasil had been occupied since 2020.

On Friday September 24, cops started to tear down our tents and here we were, standing on a corner, looking to see what we could grab, where we could spend the night with our children. Because we really have nowhere to sleep, we have nowhere to stay, Venezuelan refugee Mariana Contreras told El Ciudadano.

We witnessed the beating of minors and pregnant women, wrote social and human rights groups in a communiqu that called for the guarantee of refugee rights that the Piera government has brazenly trampled underfoot. In contrast to the Carabineros velvet glove approach towards Saturdays marchers, up to 14 asylum seekers were detained.

Aided by the media monopolies Grupo Copesa and El Mercurio, with their inflated and salacious reports of supposed migrant crime waves, drug trafficking and delinquency, the Piera government is attempting to recreate the same foul political atmosphere that brought it to power with the support of the extreme right in 2018. Piera has calculated that by dehumanizing migrantsthe poorest and most vulnerable section of the working class and oppressedhe may be able to increase his diminishing chances of winning the November presidential election.

During the last election cycle, right-wing and parliamentary left candidates ran on a platform calling for restrictions on migrant intakes, particularly excluding nationals from poverty-stricken Haiti and Venezuela. Piera accused migrants of importing evils like delinquency, drug trafficking and organized crime.

The outgoing government of Socialist Party president Michelle Bachelet set the stage for this anti-immigrant crackdown with a draft immigration bill that purportedly sought to update Chiles decades-old migration law, but in reality focused on strengthening border security.

The fact is that the Haitian migrants and refugees detoured into Chile in 2016 and 2017an estimated 150,000 Haitians arrived during this periodbecause their destination of choice, the US, was closed off by the resumption of mass deportations by the Obama administration, which only escalated under Trump.

Once in power, Piera put his program into practice with two executive decrees that particularly targeted Venezuelans and Haitians who were confronting a worsening economic and political situation caused primarily by Washingtons decades-long imperialist meddling.

The first decree ended the system that had previously allowed Haitians to go from being tourists to regular migrants once they obtained a job, and then to seek family reunifications. Now Haitians had to obtain a maximum 90-day tourist visa before entering the country and show bank statements, a criminal record check and a hotel reservation or notarized letter of invitation. Family reunification applications were limited to 10,000 and had a duration of 12 months, making a mockery of the concept. The calculated objective was to make conditions so unbearable and discriminatory that Haitians would leave.

The second decree affected the Venezuelan exodus. Piera unveiled his Democratic Responsibility Visa with anti-communist rhetoric directed against the bourgeois nationalist regime of President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas. Yet the purpose of this visa was also to stem the influx of Venezuelans by requiring a visa before entry for a 12-month stay, renewable once.

To put the issue into perspective, there were an estimated 489,000 migrants in 2017, increasing to 1.3 million in 2018; 1.45 million in 2019 and 1.46 million in 2020. In four years, migrants went from 2.65 percent of the population to roughly seven percent, but their numbers have remained stagnant since. Along with the anti-immigration policies, the 2019 mass anti-capitalist movement and the pandemic ground regular migration to a halt.

Migration nonetheless continued but through precarious and vulnerable irregular entries. Between January 2018 and January 2021, there were over 35,400 entries through unauthorized crossing points. In the first six months of this year this number increased to 23,675.

It is these desperate people, many of whom have travelled thousands of miles through the Amazon jungle and Andean plateau just to reach irregular border crossings into Chile, who are targeted in this cynical political exercise.

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Behind the right-wing, anti-immigrant marches in Chile - WSWS