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After a campaign in which Joe Biden expressed supreme confidence that he could bring an end to, or at least substantially curb the damage wrought by, the coronavirus pandemic, his administrations handling of the pandemic has left much to be desired. Rewind back to last fall. Biden was giving speeches about how while he trusted vaccines in general, he didnt trust Donald Trump, and was thus skeptical of the coronavirus vaccines in particular. Bidens running mate, then-senator Kamala Harris, said that shed be hesitant to take a vaccine that came out during Trumps term. When pressed about whether she would do so if Dr. Anthony Fauci and other reputable health authorities endorsed it, she doubled down: Theyll be muzzled; theyll be suppressed. By December, it was clear that the vaccines were in fact on the brink of FDA approval, and that by the time Biden and Harris took their respective positions atop the executive branch, distribution would be well underway. Biden received the Pfizer vaccine mid-month, and Harris got it just before the years end. It was only right that the principals of the incoming administration should be protected. But it remains the case that Biden and Harris, without basis, undermined confidence in a medical miracle for their own political benefit and then jumped to the front of the considerable line for it. After receiving the vaccine, Biden moved into the White House with a mandate to get the pandemic under control. He announced his moonshot plan for national vaccination: administering 100 million shots by his 100th day in office. This was a dishonest PR ploy. During the week of Bidens inauguration, the U.S. averaged 983,000 vaccinations a day, meaning the administration was setting itself a benchmark it could already be assured of hitting. Naturally, the public noticed, and almost immediately Biden was forced to increase his goal: He would now be aiming for an average of 1.5 million vaccinations a day at the end of his first 100 days. Already, weve reached that higher target, and not because of the Biden administrations novel efforts. As National Reviews Jim Geraghty has reported, the Biden administrations vaccination plan includes new federal sites, but no more doses of the vaccine. This presents not an opportunity to expand vaccination efforts there are already plenty of places where people can be inoculated but a bureaucratic obstacle that has made things harder on the states, some of which were not even aware that additional doses would not be made available at the new sites. Even worse, yesterdays Morning Jolt noted that theres still a substantial gap between the number of vaccines provided by Pfizer and Moderna and the number of vaccines actually being administered: As of this morning, according to the New York Times, Moderna and Pfizer have shipped more than 70 million doses to the states, and somehow the states have gotten only 52.8 million of those shots into peoples arms. The Bloomberg chart has a slightly better figure, showing states have administered 54.6 million doses, out of roughly the same total. That leaves anywhere from 15.4 to 17.2 million doses either in transit or sitting on shelves somewhere. The country is vaccinating about 1.67 million people per day according to the Times data, 1.69 million per day on the Bloomberg chart. Not great. The Biden administration has been similarly lackadaisical in its approach to school reopenings. White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced last week that its goal was to have 51 percent of schools open at least one day a week. This target suffers from the same problem as the vaccination target: Its already been met, and exceeded. Around 64 percent of school districts were already offering some kind of in-person instruction when Psaki spoke. The objective, given the enormous costs of virtual instruction on students, should be to open up the remaining 36 percent and turn partial reopenings back into full-time ones. To some extent, Biden walked Psakis stunningly slothful goal back during a CNN town-hall event on Tuesday, saying I think many of them [will be open] five days a week. The goal will be five days a week, and calling Psakis statement a mistake. Questions remain, though: If it was only a mistake, why did it take a week for it to be corrected? And why is the correction so vague as to leave room for fudging? How many, exactly, constitutes many to the Biden administration? Bidens expectations game is a symptom of a greater problem: He never had the plan for handling the pandemic that he said he did. His campaign-season contention that he did was always a smoke-and-mirrors act that had more to do with tone and messaging than it did policy. To cover up the absence of tangible changes that its brought to the table, the new administration has tried to flood the zone with already achieved objectives and then tout their achievement as accomplishments. Dishonesty has many forms, and the Biden administration has proven itself no more forthright than its predecessors, even if its deceptions are sometimes more artful.

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Retired Texas sheriff warns of illegal immigration spike as Biden reverses Trump policies - Yahoo News

The Biden administration announced this week that it opened a soft-sided facility for immigrants in Donna, Texas, as Republican lawmakers warn of a "rising crisis" at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a statement to Fox News, a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said the agencys Centralized Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, is undergoing renovation, necessitating the additional facilities.

The primary purpose of the Donna location will be to process individuals in U.S. Border Patrol custody.

"The Donna location was chosen because it is central to Border Patrol stations throughout the Rio Grande Valley Sector," a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said.

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION REOPENING TEXAS HOLDING FACILITY FOR MIGRANT CHILDREN

As previously reported by Fox News, the Department of Health and Human Services also plans to reactivate a temporary Influx Care Facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, for the potential care of unaccompanied alien children detained at the countrys Southwest border.

The facility will initially be able to accommodate about 700 migrant children, though capacity can be added if necessary. The government expects to begin housing unaccompanied alien children who have been cleared of COVID-19 quarantine in Carrizo Springs in slightly over a week. It will not house children under the age of 13.

The centers areopening as apprehensions at the border climb amid hopes of a loosening of restrictions under the current administration, aspreviously reported by Fox News.

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The Department of Homeland Security noted that there has been a steady increase in border encounters since April, triggered by conditions brought on by the pandemic and natural disasters.

House Republicans wrote a letter to Biden this week cautioning of a "rising illegal immigration crisis" at the southern border. Lawmakers said CBP officials have seen average daily flow increase to 3,500 from 2,000 earlier last month.

Bylaw, the government is required to provide care for unaccompanied alien children who have no immigration status in the U.S.no legal guardian in the U.S., and who are not yet 18 years old.

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Biden admin erects tent city in Texas to handle influx of illegal immigrants - Fox News

Deputy Chief of Border Patrol, Raul Ortiz, says that since Joe Biden took office there has been a massive increase in how many illegal immigrants have attempted to cross the border illegally.

ICE has also expressed their anger at how Biden plans to allow illegals in the country with little to no screening. Biden also ordered a halt on deportations and arrests of illegal immigrants.

Former ICE Acting Director Tom Homan, says Bidens immigration actions have declared the U.S a sanctuary jurisdiction and will mean more tragedies are going to come.

According to ICE, the policy change means officers can no longer seek deportations for immigrants arrested for drunk driving, assault, fraud, drug offenses, theft, and many others. ICE says the new policy will weaken ICEs ability to arrest wanted immigrants at correctional facilities.

In 2020, Homan says more than 90 percent of illegal immigrants who were captured and arrested had criminal records. He said the nonsense spoken by those on the left who say most illegals do not have criminal records is completely inaccurate.

ICE wrote, ICE ERO conducted 185,884 removals during FY 2020, a 30 percent decrease from FY 2019. This decrease primarily resulted from a sharp decline in CBP apprehensions at the Southwest Border due to the use of authority under 42 U.S.C. 265 and 268 to expel aliens from the United States to prevent the introduction of COVID19, though it was also impacted by a decline in ICE ERO interior arrests. The vast majority of ICE EROs interior removals 92 percent had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, demonstrating ICE EROs commitment to removing those who pose the greatest risk to the safety and security of the United States. Additionally, despite the overall decrease in removals, ICE ERO assisted CBP with 17,000 air charter expulsions under Title 42, and also saw increases in removals to several countries that were previously uncooperative with removal efforts.

Homan says that Biden has now undone everything former President Donald Trump put in place and law-abiding citizens are going to pay the price. He says the numbers do not lie and the new administration is not relying on facts.

Homan said, Biden administration officials fail to mention the surge at the border is of their own making because of their promises and their enticements, thats why theres a surge at the border.

On Friday, February 12, the Biden administration announced plans for tens of thousands of illegal immigrants waiting in Mexico to be allowed into the United States.

On February 19, Biden says the first 25,000 of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants will be allowed in the U.S. They plan to start slowly with two border crossings each allowing up to 300 people per day to cross the border. Officials refused to name where the entry points will be located out of fear that thousands more will overrun the entry point.

Homan says Biden has been putting America last his entire political career and in just his few short weeks a president has shown that Americans come last.

He said so far Biden has eliminated tens of thousands of jobs and plans to give billions of dollars to foreign governments.

Bidens plan to give billions to foreign governments has been written into the COVID-19 stimulus package.

Homan says that the Biden Administration has preached transparency but has been everything but transparent.

Officials said, Theyve abolished ICE without abolishing ICE . Adding, Crime is going to skyrocket. This is not fear tactics, it is an absolute certainty.

The Biden administration also plans to offer illegal immigrants free government benefits.

Officials said none of this makes any sense.

Biden suggested Florida be restricted for travel but then opens the borders to illegals, said Gov. Ron DeSantis. This is a political attack on Florida.

Biden, Nancy Pelosi, AOC, and the rest of the squad have been labeled as hypocrites after allowing a fence and the National Guard to surround the Capitol, but remove border protections for the rest of Americans in the U.S while preaching gun control.

Texas filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration when they first ordered arrests and deportations to halt.

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Biden administration making US a sanctuary jurisdiction, allowing illegal immigrants to begin entering next week - ocalapost.com

There is no evidence that illegal immigrants and refugees have a higher proportion of COVID-19 infections compared to the general population, said the Minister of Immigration Policy, Notis Mitarakis.

The minister said Of course they will be vaccinated.

At the same time, Mitarakis announced a bill to tighten return procedures.

Regarding immigration policy, he noted that out of the 37 existing migrant camps, 34 are SYRIZAs creation.

The decongestion on the islands has been completed. We reached 34,000 [illegal immigrants] during SYRIZA. Now its 12,000, he told MEGA.

Finally, he announced that there would be new migrant departures to Germany.

140 people will leave on Wednesday. Within 1-2 months, 1,000 people would have left via direct flights from Lesvos to Germany, he said.

READ MORE: 85-year-old man dies in Crete minutes after receiving COVID-19 vaccine, doctors suspect no link to jab.

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Refugees And Illegal Immigrants Will Receive COVID-19 Vaccine - Greek City Times - GreekCityTimes.com

The notice from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to pay a $59,126 fine didnt bolster Hilda Ramrezs confidence that she could soon leave the church where she and her son had received refuge for almost five years.

I dont have one cent to pay this, said Ramrez. Why are they doing this?

Ramrez, 32, a native of Guatemala, is among dozens of immigrants facing deportation who have found sanctuary in recent years in houses of worship across the United States.

She is also one of a handful of high-profile female sanctuary beneficiaries all of them indigent and barred from working legally in the United States whom the Trump administration hit with fines of tens of thousands of dollars for ignoring deportation orders.

Hilda and Ivn Ramirez are shown at St. Andrews four years ago, when the boy was 10. Theyve taken refuge at the church since 2016.

(Eric Gay / Associated Press)

Now, these activists and allied immigration advocates, joined by congressional Democrats, are calling on President Biden to rescind the fines which, in Ramirezs case, were most recently dated December 2020, though she didnt receive the official notice until after Biden took office and lift all deportation orders against immigrants in church sanctuary. Theyve sought out church protection because U.S. immigration policy has long proscribed enforcement at houses of worship.

Those in sanctuary have suffered enough, stated a Jan. 26 letter to Biden from more than two dozen representatives and senators. Your Administrations actions can bring them the relief they need and deserve.

A federal lawsuit, filed a day before Biden took office last month, demands that Washington cancel fines of about $60,000 each levied against Ramrez in Austin and women housed in churches in Salt Lake City; Columbus, Ohio; and Charlottesville, Va. The suit against the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement labels the fines excessive and retaliation for the womens public advocacy on behalf of sanctuary. It also alleges violations of constitutional rights of freedom of speech, association and religious practice.

Ivn Ramirez, playing outside St. Andrews when he was 10, is now 14 and attending middle school in Austin.

(Eric Gay / Associated Press)

The intent of the fines was never really to collect money; it was to intimidate women who had taken sanctuary and spoke out, said Alina Das, co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law. ICE was signaling: We may not bash down church doors, but we will do something that prevents you from ever having a normal life in this country.

The Justice Department has yet to respond to the suit. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

The Biden administration is in the process of reviewing scores of Trump-era immigration policies that critics have labeled draconian. Biden has also vowed to pursue legislation that would provide a path to citizenship for some 11 million immigrants authorities estimate are living in the country illegally. The population of sanctuary beneficiaries is limited about 40 to 60 families across the United States, some with children who are U.S. citizens or legal residents, according to estimates from advocacy groups and Congress.

But the sanctuary movement, which began in the 1980s as a kind of modern-day underground railroad as churches offered shelter to Central Americans escaping Cold War-era conflicts, still resonates deeply. Religious leaders revived sanctuary in the 2000s as immigration enforcement intensified, including during the Obama administration, when formal deportations spiked. (Immigrant advocates are hopeful that Biden is not as aggressive on enforcement as his former boss.) Underlying the concept are biblical tenets to welcome the stranger.

This is central to what we do, said the Rev. Jim Rigby, longtime pastor of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, where Ramrez and her son have resided since 2016, prior to Trump taking office. You dont mistreat the sojourner. I hope we can finally get back to the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

Ramrez, a woman of slight stature who speaks Spanish with traces of the Mam tongue that is her first language, said she fled Guatemala with her son in 2014, escaping from domestic abuse and what she calls discrimination against Indigenous people of Mayan ancestry. Following a well-worn path, she traversed Mexico overland and made her way to the Rio Grande, where she said she crossed into Texas in 2014 and surrendered to Border Patrol, requesting political asylum.

In an interview last year with the Spanish-language Univision network, her son, Ivn, recalled his thoughts at the time, when he was 8.

It was an adventure for me, Ivn said. My mother told me we are going to a better place, a beautiful place. I imagined a house with butterflies.

Instead, he and his mother were held for 11 months in a privately run immigration lockup in south Texas. The conditions, she said, were wretched.

The place looks nice from outside, but inside it was horrible, Ramrez recalled during an interview at the Austin church. My son got sick from eating rotting food. He had a fever and was vomiting. I was afraid he was going to die.

She and other female detainees launched a hunger strike that made headlines. She credits the action and ensuing publicity with pressuring authorities to release her in 2015. She was outfitted with an ankle monitor to track her whereabouts as her asylum case made its way through the system.

Initially, Ramrez lodged in a shelter in Austin, the state capital and a liberal bastion in deep-red Texas. But she and her son were not shielded from eventual arrest there. Activists helped the two move into St. Andrews.

Hilda and her son were just bright lights, recalled Peggy Morton, who heads the Austin Sanctuary Network and first met the mother and son while they were in detention. I was very impressed by her, and heartbroken about her situation.

Hilda Ramirez, pictured in 2017, uses the kitchen at St. Andrews. She helps out at the church, fighting off occasional bouts of depression.

(Eric Gay / Associated Press)

In the final year of the Obama administration, lawyers representing Ramrez managed to secure a temporary reprieve from the deportation order issued after her asylum petition was rejected. The stay allowed her to leave the church grounds and travel with advocates to Washington, D.C., and lobby for her case and those of other sanctuary recipients. She also visited an older sister who had settled in Oklahoma with her three children.

The Trump administration, however, did not extend her reprieve, and she was again forced to remain on the church premises to avoid arrest and deportation. Other sanctuary beneficiaries across the country also lost temporary stays against deportation. By then, Ramrez had become one of the public faces of a revived nationwide sanctuary movement.

Overarching policies of sanctuary, with its scriptural provenance, were an especially vexing concept for Trump. He frequently railed against so-called sanctuary cities, jurisdictions across the country that have curtailed cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. His administration sought, mostly without success, to deny federal funds to pro-sanctuary cities and towns in California and elsewhere. At one point, Trump even mused on Twitter about shipping illegal immigrants en masse to sanctuary cities.

Behind the rhetorical bombast, activists allege, was an official campaign of surveillance and retribution targeting high-profile sanctuary beneficiaries, including Ramrez.

In the summer of 2019, ICE levied fines of up to $500,000 against Ramrez and other sanctuary recipients for failing to comply with deportation orders. The Trump administration turned to a seldom-used legal provision imposing financial penalties for each day someone refused to comply with orders to leave the country. ICE later reduced the levies to about $60,000 per person.

I first thought it was some kind of joke, Ramrez said of the fines. Then I realized that they were going after all of us who raised our voices against injustice.

Earlier this month, Ramrez received an invoice from the Department of Homeland Security, dating from the last weeks of the Trump administration; she owed $59,126 in civil penalties. Payment is due March 3.

Hilda Ramirez, shown with Ivn in 2017, became a public face of the nationwide sanctuary movement. Former President Trump railed against so-called sanctuary cities.

(Eric Gay / Associated Press)

Ramrez spends her days caring for her son, helping at the church and sewing small dolls and masks embroidered with traditional indigenous patterns. She fights off occasional bouts of depression. Reared an evangelical Christian, she says she has embraced the Presbyterian faith community at St. Andrews. The pandemic has resulted in the suspension of Sunday services and other activities that once enlivened the church. Visits from advocates and others help blunt the loneliness.

Its very difficult, very stressful, said Ramrez. There are moments when I would like to just run away from here, when I think of abandoning everything. But then I think of my son. I want him to have a better life.

The school bus stops weekdays outside the church to pick up Ivn, an animated seventh-grader who turns 15 in April. A tutor visits the church to help with his lessons. The youth is on track for a special visa for juveniles to remain in the United States, advocates say. But mother and son cannot contemplate being apart. The specter of separation haunts them and is ever-present.

Ivn has posted online videos documenting his familys plight, the struggle to attain legal status, to remain together. Recently, Ivn accompanied activists to a protest in front of ICE headquarters in San Antonio.

When my classmates in school are worried about doing their homework, he told reporters, I am worried if my mom is going to be there when I come back from school.

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What will become of sanctuary beneficiaries in Biden era? - Los Angeles Times