Update: ICE is planning to enter New York City shelter hotels to arrest gang members known to be staying there in violation of New York laws. Some of these shelters have 5000 people. ICE is telling NYPD that if the cops go get these criminals, the Feds won’t have to. This is an issue because if ICE goes in there, they will also grab people who flunked or skipped their asylum hearings. They might also arrest people who committed crimes since arriving. The fear is that they will eventually grab people with future court dates and give them expedited hearings right now, which would deport over 90% of them.

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By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Thursday, January 30, 2025 - 12:30 pm: Edit

From a speech yesterday,
Possible expansion of Gitmo (30k beds),
to hold criminal aliens that countries refuse
to take back...
(An idea I've pondered for a long time)....

Videos of smaller jet liners (possibly 737s),
with South American airline names written on them,
story is governments are sending aircraft to pick up their citizens....

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 30, 2025 - 04:55 pm: Edit

30,000 sounds good to provide a buffer.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Thursday, January 30, 2025 - 12:25 pm: Edit

DHS has stopped all grants to NGOs that use the money to help illegal aliens stay in the US.

Personally, I find the term NGO very misleading, considering many are funded by the Government....

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 30, 2025 - 04:58 pm: Edit

They aren’t owned by the government, but many get funding from many sources.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Thursday, January 30, 2025 - 09:07 pm: Edit

Research the funding...

Are the Cartels providing any funding for some of these groups?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 30, 2025 - 10:47 pm: Edit

Trump has cancelled temporary protected status for 600,000 Venezuelans in the US.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Friday, January 31, 2025 - 07:13 pm: Edit

There was a news story earlier this week with a US Citizen in New Mexico or Arizona who lost his job and with his identity protected openly admitted to working for the cartels and that folks are paying 10-15K per person to the Cartel (he gets 2k for each person he brings across). He lost his job during the pandemic and has been doing this instead. Anyone else see it?

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Sunday, February 02, 2025 - 05:33 pm: Edit

Ukraine has recently increased the pace of attacks on Russia's energy industry. Targets have included oil refineries and oil pipeline pumping stations.

These ramped up somewhat after the US election and increased further in early January, with no sign of letup since.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Sunday, February 02, 2025 - 06:59 pm: Edit

Poses a question to me, Verybadcat...

Is this due to easing of foreign pressure on how Ukraine is allowed to prosecute the war, or an attempt by Ukraine to strengthen its position for expected upcoming ceasefire/peace talks?

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Sunday, February 02, 2025 - 07:53 pm: Edit

or an attempt by Ukraine to strengthen its position for expected upcoming ceasefire/peace talks?

I suspect, with less pressure to keep conflict limited to Ukrainian, probably more about hurting Russia financially (considering Oil is a major part of Russia's GDP)..
Everything else is part of the equation, hurting Russia financially would do more to limit Russia's ability to rebuild their military once the shooting stops....

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, February 02, 2025 - 10:33 pm: Edit

Venezuela has agreed to accept all 600,000 of its citizens who are currently in the US as illegal aliens.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, February 02, 2025 - 11:27 pm: Edit

Considering how bad F.YE.O. Has documented Venezuela economic, social and security has gotten, many may not want to go back.
if The standard is held to concentrate on criminal offenders first deported, then it may be only a small percentage of the total end up getting deported.

There have been many stories posted that non criminal deportees are in general only being apprehended in blue states where they are found in the company (sometimes in the same building) where a illegal alien with a criminal record was located.

Curious, the law of unintended consequences may result in more deportations in blue states precisely because of the policy decisions to not cooperate with ICE or other federal law enforcement authorities.

Interesting that it might end up, that more illegal aliens get deported from blue states than red states, and that the incremental increase of net deportations in blue states are concentrated on non criminal aliens who are gainfully employed and tax payers.

For those few not following the logic, what it boils down to is red states will have higher tax revenue compared to blue states because, as a direct result of the policy decision to not cooperate with the federal government, blue states lose more working class workers (who are also illegal aliens) than red states lose.

Weird.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, February 03, 2025 - 03:46 am: Edit

It isn’t really a red state blue state thing.

If the local authorities allow ICE to pick up illegals from jail (almost all red states, a few blue states) there are fewer instances of arresting in the field.

There are criminal illegals at large in every state and ICE teams in every state have conducted in-the-field arrest raids. When conducting in-the-field raids ICE identifies everyone at the scene and arrests everyone who is an illegal and sends them to deportation camps. This has happened in red states and blue states.

Note that people pending judicial dates are technically legal (if they have not committed other crimes) but those who skipped or flunked court appointments are illegal, arrestable, and deportable in red and blue states.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, February 03, 2025 - 09:36 am: Edit

SVC:
Technically, we will not know whether or not the policy in Sanctuary Cities/States makes any difference until the final statistics are posted.

Until then it is all conjecture or speculation.

ICE procedures are not really new, just a resumption of prior practices that were (looking for a phrase that wouldn’t offend those who are politically sensitive…)

Well, I can’t really defend the prior administration for not actually doing the job that they were sworn to do (execute the laws of the United States.)

If it does turn out to be a blue state vs red state thing, it really doesn’t matter in the long run. Just a footnote when the economic history of the era gets written.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, February 03, 2025 - 09:50 am: Edit

In other news, the Panama government (per a MSM site report) has decided not to renew the belt and road initiative that they signed with China in 2017. It is a three year agreement, and it was last renewed in 2023. Which means it has until 2026 to expire.

No word on when the Chinese Nationals (PLA) personnel will leave the country.

Nor did it announce any change in pricing. (U.S. ships are charged significantly more than other nations vessels are charged for using the canal.)

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, February 03, 2025 - 12:52 pm: Edit

Jeff,

What's your source for the information that U.S. ships are charged significantly more? I've heard that's not true, but haven't really researched it.

I believe that different sizes and types of ships are charged differently. So if U.S. ships pay higher prices on average than ships of other nations, it might be simply because a larger percentage of U.S. ships are in the higher-cost categories, and have nothing to do with discriminatory pricing. But I don't know. Hence, my question.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, February 03, 2025 - 01:07 pm: Edit

OK, I decided not to be lazy, and looked up the Maritime Tariff List for the Panama Canal. (The list is from 2023 and if a more recent one is now in effect, I haven't seen it.) I did note that some ship types are charged a flat rate while others are charged per ton. Among ships charged by the tonnage of displacement, military vessels are near the top (though still a bit less than some "neopanamax"-rated ships). So if the U.S. sends a higher percantage of warships throught the canal than other nations do (which seems likely), that would result in a high average cost for U.S. vessels.

There may be things I'm missing, but so far, the claim that U.S. ships are charged a discriminatory rate seems... questionable.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, February 03, 2025 - 01:34 pm: Edit

Looking at the Maritime Tariff List a bit more and it's... more complicated. Ships may be charged higher rates depending on what they are carrying (oil or chemicals, for example). And ships may be charged a "Disruption" fee if they transit the canal with certain "deficiencies" (missing anchor or inoperative anchor windlass, for example) that may increase the risk, or just the difficulty, of the transit.

There's a lot about the pricing structure I still don't understand. But I still don't see anything to suggest U.S. ships pay a higher rate just because they are U.S. flagged.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Monday, February 03, 2025 - 03:36 pm: Edit

A disproportionate number of merchant ships fly the Panamanian flag; the technical term is "Flag of Convenience" and it refers to being registered in a nation that has looser (and thus less expensive) regulations for safety and what-not.

(That's why Liberia has so many merchant ships flying their flag.)

By contrast, U.S. flagged merchant ships have among the heaviest regulations put on them, plus just GETTING a U.S. registration is awfully expensive. The only real advantage is that only U.S. flagged freighters are allowed to move goods directly from one U.S. port to another without going to another (non-U.S.) port in between those two stops.

Does Panama have a reduced rate for Panamanian flagged ships to use the canal...

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, February 03, 2025 - 04:08 pm: Edit

My first knowledge of the discrimination on fees assessed to U.S. flagged vessels and those of non- U.S. flagged carriers (cargo carriers, not aircraft) came from a speech of a person that Web Mom refuses to allow to be named on the bbs.

I did find an article posted by the hill, that had a breakdown on the fee structure, low of $0.50 USD to a high of $300,000 USD. With an additional foot note that certain cruise ships are assessed a berthing fee for passengers that appears to be variable based on the national registry of the ship. That one had a high of $300.00 USD per berth.

Some cruise ships passenger capacity are quite large, numbering up to 5 digits.

But in general, when I looked at the recent Google searches, there were not very many with details as to the specific issues raised by a certain person that we dare not name.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, February 03, 2025 - 04:12 pm: Edit

The Maritime Tariff List does not seem to indicate they do, unless I am misreading something. But then, what am I misreading?

And regardless of nationality, a poorly maintained ship is more likely to be charged a bunch of Disruption fees, since it is more likely to have "deficencies".

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, February 03, 2025 - 04:15 pm: Edit

Jeff,

Your first... knowledge... derives from unsupported claims made in a speech by a... politician.

Good...

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, February 03, 2025 - 04:35 pm: Edit

Naval Air: Japanese Kaga Introduces F-35Bs
February 3, 2025: In early 2017 Japan put into service a second 27,000 ton destroyer, the Kaga DDH 184 that looks exactly like an aircraft carrier. Actually, it looks like an LPH, an amphibious ship type that first appeared in the 1950s. This was noted when Izumo, the first Japanese LPH, was launched in 2012 and entered service in 2015. The Izumos can carry up to 28 aircraft which includes twelve F-35Bs and a dozen or so helicopters or fixed wing surveillance aircraft. These ships are armed with two Phalanx anti-missile systems and a launcher with sixteen ESSM missiles for anti-missile and anti-aircraft defense.
The Izumos are the largest LPHs to ever enter service and are now being converted to aircraft carriers that can operate two dozen F-35B short take-off, vertical landing, STOVL aircraft. Japan is currently modifying the Izumo and Kaga to be just aircraft carriers. This means no accommodations for a battalion of soldiers or transport helicopters to get the troops ashore and landing craft to put vehicles and other heavy equipment ashore. These modifications will be finished by 2028 and the two ships should be operational with their full complement of aircraft and anti-submarine helicopters.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, February 03, 2025 - 04:37 pm: Edit

Weapons: Zircon Joins The Russian Navy
February 2, 2025: In late 2024 Russia was able to finally install Zircon anti-ship missiles on one of its frigates, the Admiral Golovko. The Zircon missiles are nine meters long and 60 cm in diameter. They have a maximum range of 1,000 kilometers and can operate at altitudes up to 28 kilometers. Max speed is 3.1 kilometers a second or Mach 9. In addition to frigates, there is a submarine launched version of the missile. Russia is developing a land based version for Zircon, which provides shore defense capability. Zircon has capabilities that should be able to get past current American naval and land based air defense systems.
Zircon joins an earlier system, Avangard, which entered service in 2019. Avangard is carried aloft on Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles or ICBMs and put into orbit where it relies on its momentum and ability to maneuver to find and hit a target. The one ton Avangard travels at speeds in excess of Mach 20 and, using that speed, the Avangard hits a target with the equivalent of 21 tons of explosives. This capability has long been used by all manner of high speed missiles lacking any explosives. As the old saying goes, Speed Kills.
FYEO