Noem reveals major milestone on border crossings amid Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced encounters at the southern border hit a record 15-year low on Saturday. “On Saturday, CBP encountered just 200 aliens at the US Southern Border. That’s the lowest single apprehension day in over 15 years,” Noem posted to X on Monday afternoon. “Thank you to President [Donald Trump] and our brave men & women of [Customs and Border Protection],” she continued. “Make America Safe Again.” The low figure comes amid sweeping changes in border policy since President Donald Trump took office last month, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and sending more service members down to the border. MAYOR ERIC ADAMS SAYS NYC’S ROOSEVELT HOTEL MIGRANT SHELTER WILL SOON CLOSE U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended just 29,116 illegal immigrants along the southern border during the month of January, down from 47,000 in December and hitting a low mark not seen since May 2020, when 32,349 arrests were made at ports of entry, according to a White House press release. Overall, CBP apprehended 61,465 illegal immigrants at the southern border in January, down 36% from the prior month, the release notes, citing new data. Last week, border czar Tom Homan touted how only 229 illegal immigrants were caught by federal authorities during a 24-hour timeframe, which was also considered to be a jaw-dropping number. “That is down from a high of over 11,000 a day under Biden,” he posted to X on Feb. 17. “I started as a Border Patrol Agent in 1984 and I don’t remember the numbers ever being that low. President Trump promised a secure border and he is delivering.” TRUMP ADMIN OUSTS TOP ICE OFFICIAL OVER CONCERNS ABOUT PACE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT DEPORTATIONS The swift policy changes resulted in a ripple effect nationwide. New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on Monday that the Roosevelt Hotel will no longer be used as a shelter for people who came to the country hoping to obtain asylum. “While we’re not done caring for those who come into our care, today marks another milestone in demonstrating the immense progress we have achieved in turning the corner on an unprecedented international humanitarian effort,” the Democrat said in a statement on Monday. NOEM MAKES AGGRESSIVE NEW MOVE TO RAMP UP ARRESTS, DEPORTATIONS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS “Now, thanks to the sound policy decisions of our team, we are able to announce the closure of this site and help even more asylum seekers take the next steps in their journeys as they envision an even brighter future, while simultaneously saving taxpayers millions of dollars,” he continued. Still, this could just be the tip of the iceberg for the administration, as Trump swapped out the acting leader of ICE in hopes of increasing deportation numbers even higher. Michael Lee contributed to this report.
Homan issues stark warning for illegals amid clash with sanctuary city officials: ‘We’re coming’
FIRST ON FOX: Border czar Tom Homan is firing back against attacks from local politicians in a major “sanctuary city” while warning illegal immigrants that they need to be “looking over their shoulder” in the days and weeks ahead. Fox News Digital asked Homan about comments made by Boston City Councilor Sharon Durkan, who responded to comments made by Homan at CPAC, who said he was “bringing hell” with him to Boston and criticized the police commissioner for not working with ICE. “She needs to put her U.S. citizen taxpayer constituency ahead of illegal aliens who rape children,” Homan told Fox News Digital. “I’m not coming for her, she shouldn’t be afraid of me. Who should be afraid of me are those in the country illegally. They need to be looking over their shoulder, because we’re coming.” BOSTON COUNCILWOMAN SOUNDS OFF AFTER TOM HOMAN’S CPAC PROMISE TO ‘BRING HELL’ “You’re not a police commissioner,” Homan said about Commissioner Michael Cox last week. “Take that badge off your chest. Put it in the desk drawer. Because you became a politician. You forgot what it’s like to be a cop.” Durkan responded by mocking Homan for serving as a police officer in the village of West Carthage, New York, in the 1980s before eventually heading Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and serving as a Border Patrol agent. “Laughable that someone who spent their career policing a town smaller than a Fenway Park crowd thinks they can lecture Boston on public safety,” Durkan’s post on X read. “Commissioner Michael Cox serves with distinction and earns trust with integrity,” the city official continued. “Tom Homan should know, we don’t scare easy.” “Yes, I understand that Tom Homan spent his career as a federal agent within Border Patrol & ICE, but that’s a world away from the realities of policing a major city,” she later clarified. “His background is in immigration enforcement, not community policing—where trust and accountability are key.” Speaking to Fox News Digital, Homan said Durkan should be grateful for ICE’s involvement. “ICE has recently arrested nine illegal aliens, sexual predators in Mass., and removed them from the streets of Mass. She ought to be thanking ICE for making the streets safer,” he said. “And me coming there saying, ‘I’m going to bring some law enforcement resources to keep removing sexual predators from their communities and protect their children.’ She ought to be applauding ICE. She ought to support us. She ought, as the representative of a community, ought to be begging the governor and state legislature to end the sanctuary city policies and help ICE remove significant public safety trust from the communities,” he said. Boston is one of a number of “sanctuary” cities that limits state and local law enforcement cooperation with ICE, meaning that illegal immigrants with convictions or pending charges will be released back onto the streets rather than being turned over to ICE custody. Proponents of sanctuary policies argue it encourages cooperation with police from otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants. CLICK HERE FOR MORE IMMIGRATION COVERAGE The Trump administration has ramped up interior ICE enforcement, with arrests skyrocketing compared to the same period last year. The administration has made international agreements to increase deportations and has taken certain Biden-era limits off ICE officers. Homan has been leading the charge. Homan has said repeatedly that the target of the operations are public safety threats but that no one in the U.S. illegally is off the table. Speaking to Fox, Homan said critics of ICE’s work should speak to the victims of illegal immigrant crime. “She ought to sit down and talk to a mother of one of these children that were raped by an illegal alien. This child will never be the same again. You would think she’d be putting them ahead of illegal aliens,” he said. He also dismissed the criticism of his background from Durkan. “As far as me starting my career as a town cop, I truly believe it’s the community that raises you, it takes a community to raise a child, and the community that raises you, the first thing you do is to serve that community,” he said. “I think it’s the right thing to do. It’s an American thing to do, and for a kid that grew up in a small community to become the ICE director – an agency of 21,000 law enforcement officers – I consider that the biggest honor of my life.” He also noted that ICE enforces hundreds of laws, many that have nothing to do with immigration enforcement, including drug smuggling, firearms trafficking and weapons of mass destruction. “I want her to understand that ICE is a well-rounded federal enforcement agency, one of the biggest agencies,” he said. “We’ve got over 400 statutes we enforce.” Fox News’ Andrea Margolis and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
Deadline for Musk’s ultimatum to federal workers hits, but consequences remain vague
The deadline for federal workers to respond to Elon Musk’s request to verify their weekly work output passed on Monday night, but the consequences of declining to respond remain vague. Musk confirmed shortly before Monday’s deadline that federal workers would be given another chance to respond, and that failure to do so “will result in termination.” Several government agencies, including those led by loyalists to President Donald Trump, told their employees not to respond to the original request from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). While Musk himself suggested on social media that refusing to respond to the email would be “taken as a resignation,” the actual email from OPM made no mention of such consequences. “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” the OPM request read, making no threats of termination. ELON MUSK SAYS FEDERAL EMPLOYEES MUST FILL OUT PRODUCTIVITY REPORTS OR RESIGN The FBI and Department of Defense, led by Trump allies Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth, also instructed their employees not to respond, citing the confidential nature of their work. “When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses,” Patel wrote to FBI employees. TRUMP RATTLES OFF ‘FLAGRANT SCAMS’ UNCOVERED BY DOGE, TAKES AIM AT FORT KNOX IN CPAC SPEECH Trump argued there was no rift in his administration despite the conflicting orders, however. “They don’t mean that in any way combatively with Elon,” he told reporters late last week. “Everyone thought it was a pretty ingenious idea.” “What he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’” Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday. “And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist.” Musk nevertheless appeared angry at the lack of response to the request, turning to X to express his frustration just hours before the 11:59 p.m. Monday deadline. “The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!” he wrote. “Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent? Makes old Twitter look good. Didn’t think that was possible.” Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is in the midst of auditing various federal agencies in search of wasteful spending, corruption and mismanagement. DOGE’s work comes as President Donald Trump ordered the federal workforce to return to the office after five years of remote work stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, and has vowed to clean house of bad actors within the government and ax overspending.
Texas governor announces crackdown on massive illegal immigrant community near major city
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that state authorities working with the Department of Homeland Security are conducting an immigration and law enforcement operation in Colony Ridge, a huge development known for attracting masses of illegal immigrants. “Colony Ridge is being targeted today,” Abbott, a Republican, announced on X on Monday. Colony Ridge, which is less than an hour’s drive from Texas’ biggest city, Houston, is a housing development that advertises in Spanish for quality land for low down payments. There are believed to be thousands of illegal immigrants living in the community, which also reportedly has significant cartel activity and very little police presence. DEM AND GOP GOVERNORS URGE TRUMP TO ‘LET THE STATES PLAY A ROLE’ IN IMMIGRATION DECISIONS The governor said Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers and special agents were cooperating with Homeland Security Investigations in an operation in Colony Ridge this morning, “targeting criminals & illegal immigrants.” Abbott said he has been working on this operation with President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, “for months.” In response to concerns that his post would endanger law enforcement’s operation in Colony Ridge, Abbott said the operation began hours before his post and that “long before my post anyone in the area would’ve known about the operation.” A spokesperson for DHS, however, declined to comment on the operation, citing the need to preserve secrecy about the details of the operations and concerns for the safety of the agents involved. ALLEGED FENTANYL-SMUGGLING IMMIGRANTS LEAD POLICE ON DANGEROUS CORNFIELD CHASE Local outlet ABC13 reported that officials at the nearby Liberty County Sheriff’s Office further confirmed that DPS and ICE operations were underway. Another outlet called The Vindicator reported that at least one local man, Roberto Alfaro, 24, saw “undercover” agents he believed to be from ICE “forcefully” arresting a Mexican national outside his house. CLICK HERE FOR MORE IMMIGRATION COVERAGE Alfaro told The Vindicator he had never seen anything like the operation underway in Colony Ridge before and that it “feels scary.” He mentioned his concern that his mother and father would be deported back to Honduras and El Salvador. He also said he and some others were “chasing” ICE so “we could go behind them and warn others.” TRUMP FREEZES APPLICATIONS FOR BIDEN-ERA MIGRANT PROGRAMS AMID FRAUD, NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS The Trump administration has unleashed a slew of immigration enforcement actions since taking office last month, one of the most notable being a string of ICE raids in cities across the country. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Homan announced that in Trump’s first month in the Oval Office, ICE arrested 21,000 illegal aliens. “I’m happy with the numbers,” he said. “But I’m not going to be satisfied until every criminal alien gang member, every criminal alien, every Tren de Aragua [gang member] is eradicated from this country and [we’ve] sent their a– to Gitmo, where they belong.”
1984 anti-Sikh riots: Former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar gets life sentence, court tells why it took 40 years
1984 anti-Sikh riots: Special Judge Kaveri Baweja delivered the verdict in the case where Kumar is found guilty of inciting a mob to kill father Jaswant Singh and his son Tarundeep Singh in Delhi’s Saraswati Vihar
Why two border counties are joining Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star after migration slows
The counties hope to access state money to help pay for some criminal justice work, such as prosecuting drug cases and overtime.
“We’re in competition”: An East Texas school district faces hard choices as education options grow
The Lufkin school district says it must do a better job of promoting itself amid growing competition from charter schools and homeschooling.
Department of Veterans Affairs cutting more than 1,400 employees in another round of dismissals
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is cutting more than 1,400 probationary workers occupying “non-mission critical positions,” according to a Monday news release. “Those dismissed today are bargaining-unit probationary employees who have served less than a year in a competitive service appointment or who have served less than two years in an excepted service appointment,” the VA noted. The cuts will save over $83 million annually, the VA indicated. TRUMP ADMIN ORDERS AGENCIES TO LAY OFF PROBATIONARY WORKERS IN LATEST PUSH TO SHRINK GOVERNMENT As a result of the financial savings, the VA said it will be able to “redirect all of those resources back toward health care, benefits and services for VA beneficiaries.” “As an additional safeguard to ensure VA benefits and services are not impacted, the first Senior Executive Service (SES) or SES-equivalent leader in a dismissed employee’s chain of command can request that the employee be exempted from removal,” the VA noted. MUSK OFFERS ‘ANOTHER CHANCE’ TO RESPOND TO PRODUCTIVITY EMAIL, BUT WARNS FAILURE AGAIN MEANS TERMINATION This newly announced round of cuts comes after the VA previously announced the elimination of more than 1,000 workers earlier this month. “These and other recent personnel decisions are extraordinarily difficult, but VA is focused on allocating its resources to help as many Veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors as possible,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in the Monday news release. VETERANS AFFAIRS HOSPITAL CHAPLAIN ALLEGEDLY SANCTIONED OVER SERMON, FIGHTS BACK WITH DEFENSE OF FREE SPEECH CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP The VA specifically said these decisions to let some employees go “will not hurt VA health care, benefits or beneficiaries” and even noted that veterans will “notice a change for the better.” “In the coming weeks and months, VA will be announcing plans to put these resources to work helping the department fulfill its core mission: providing the best possible care and benefits to Veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors,” Collins said.
CAG report tabled in Assembly REVEALS Delhi government suffered losses of Rs… due to liquor policy
The report, one of 14 on the previous Aam Aadmi Party government’s performance to be tabled by the new Rekha Gupta-led dispensation, has also flagged violations in the process of issuing licences.
How Murthal, a small Haryana town, became capital of dhabas famous for its parathas
There were only a few unnamed dhabas at Murthal in the 1950s. As was the norm then, dhabas did not have a name. It was a whole different time with a starkly contrasting geopolitical scenario. Murthal was still part of Punjab as Haryana had not been carved out yet.