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‘It Was Unprecedented’: Retired Border Patrol Chief Blows Whistle On How Biden Admin Hid Migrant Crisis

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Jason Hopkins

 

“There was a gag order put on us literally within minutes of the Biden administration taking office”

Retired Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott blew the whistle to the Daily Caller News Foundation on how the Biden-Harris administration allegedly went to great lengths to hide the immigration crisis from the public, just days after a sector chief made similar claims.

Aaron Heitke, a former chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector, testified before a House committee on Sept. 18 and claimed that the White House ordered agents to hide information on arrests of special interest aliens (SIAs), move masses of illegal migrants out of sight of the press and give other instructions to disguise the true level of the border crisis. Scott, who led Border Patrol from roughly the last year of the Trump administration to the first seven months of the Biden administration, told the DCNF he was given similar orders.

“There was a gag order put on us literally within minutes of the Biden administration taking office,” Scott told the DCNF.

“The chief of staff for Customs and Border Protection, when she arrived, one of her first orders was to forbid us from talking to the public, or doing press releases, or doing media without the White House clearing our statements,” Scott continued. “Not only were they not cleared, when they finally did give us talking points, they weren’t even accurate. They weren’t truthful.”

Scott’s tenure as Border Patrol leader overlapped with Vice President Kamala Harris’ assignment to address the root causes of illegal immigration from Central America. The retired chief confirmed to the DCNF that Harris never once spoke to him, even after her designation as “border czar.”

Having worked in Border Patrol since the early 1990s, Scott has experienced multiple changes in the administration. The longtime officer said higher-ups clamping down on communication to the public was nothing new, but the sheer level of control handed down by the Biden-Harris administration was nothing he had experienced before.

“No press conferences were approved, all border tours were shut down,” Scott said. “It was unprecedented. I’ve never seen a gag order that tight.”

Scott’s comments to the DCNF follow the testimony given by Heitke, where the former San Diego sector chief agent said he was prohibited from talking about the rising number of SIAs — migrants who potentially pose a national security risk to the U.S. — unlawfully crossing the border.

“Prior to this administration, the San Diego sector averaged 10–15 SIAs per year,” Heitke told the House Homeland Committee. “Once word was out that the border was far easier to cross, San Diego went to over 100 SIAs in 2022, way over 100 SIAs in 2023 and more than that this year.”

“These are only the ones we caught. At the time, I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIAs or mention any of the arrests,” he continued. “The administration was trying to convince the public that there was no threat at the border.”

Heitke also went into detail about the alleged steps the Biden-Harris administration would take to hide masses of migrants from reporters, accusing the White House of portraying “fiction” to the public.

“Each time we asked for help in dealing with a new issue, it fell on deaf ears,” Heitke said. “At times in San Diego, we had 2,000 or more aliens sitting in between the fences asking to turn themselves in. I was told to move them out of sight of the media.”

This is not the first time agents have accused the Biden-Harris administration of intentionally trying to cover up the extent of the border crisis from the media. Ahead of Harris’ first trip to the border in El Paso, Texas, in 2021, administration officials gave explicit instructions to clear the area of migrants in order to put on a “show” for the vice president, according to Border Patrol sources who spoke to the New York Post.

While an executive order issued by President Joe Biden in June led to a steady decline in illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, his administration had overseen a major wave of illegal immigration into the country after issuing a slate of executive orders that largely dismantled the Trump administration’s border agenda.

Border Patrol agents have encountered more than seven million migrants illegally crossing into the U.S. since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The massive wave of illegal migration has strained the resources of major sanctuary cities such as New York City and Chicago, but also smaller towns in the country’s heartland such as Springfield, Ohio.

Scott commended his former colleague for speaking out, noting that doing so puts his ability to make an income at risk. Many retired agents don’t speak out because companies and other private contractors that work with the federal government want to avoid the publicity that can come with working with or hiring whistleblowers, according to the retired Border Patrol chief.

“I think it’s very problematic that the administration is trying to hide so much relevant information from the public,” Scott said. “I’m very, very grateful that Chief Heitke stepped up and decided to share that information with the public because that really hurts his ability to get contract jobs in the future.”

“[Heitke is] not only taking a risk, he’s knowingly cutting his family’s income by standing up for what’s right,” he continued.

The Department of Homeland Security and the White House did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

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Daily Caller

USAID Quietly Sent Thousands Of Viruses To Chinese Military-Linked Biolab

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Emily Kopp

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) shipped thousands of viral samples to a lab in Wuhan over the course of a 10-year program even though it had no formal agreement with the lab in place, according to previously unreported documents.

The documents show that USAID funded the exportation of 11,000 samples from Yunnan Province, where some of the closest relatives of the COVID-19 virus circulate, to Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic, with no apparent plan for ensuring the samples were not misdirected to bioweapons and remained accessible to the U.S. government.

$210 million USAID public health program called PREDICT, steered by the University of California-Davis, collected viral samples in countries throughout the globe but lacked long-term storage when funding dried up, according to rudimentary plans in 2019.

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USAID’s sample dispensation plan for China is sparse: “No need [sic] information from Yunnan. They were never an official lab partner for PREDICT. All samples they helped collected [sic] are sent to, tested, and stored in Wuhan.”

The “lab” refers to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). WIV was a close partner of USAID contractor EcoHealth Alliance and a slated partner for a PREDICT-like program supported by the State Department. The lab has poor biosafety practices and ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). 

One of the closest known relatives of the COVID virus is among the viruses sampled with USAID funding.

“Investigations involving USAID’s former funding of global health awards remain active and ongoing,” a senior State Department official said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The American people can rest assured knowing that under the Trump Administration we will not be funding these controversial programs.”

The internal documents were obtained through a FOIA lawsuit brought by U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit newsroom and public health research group.

The shuttering of USAID – which was officially completed Tuesday – has ignited a debate about its net impact on global health. A study in The Lancet projected an association between a dropoff in USAID funding and 14 million deaths based on an epidemiological model.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement Tuesday that USAID spending has often undermined rather than strengthened American interests.

“Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War,” Rubio said. “Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown.”

The now-defunct agency’s connection to the Wuhan lab complicates its global health legacy.

“The USAID $210 million contract for PREDICT should have included contractual terms that required all samples, or at least copies of all samples, be transferred to and stored by a US government facility,” said Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright told the DCNF. “The PREDICT grift did none of this.”

UC Davis did not respond to a request for comment. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Did USAID Fund COVID’s Ancestor?

Many of the viruses stored at the lab in Wuhan may have been sampled with U.S. funding yet remain out of reach for U.S. government entities investigating the origins of COVID.

The samples were set to be preserved for testing – with human samples preserved for 10 years – the documents show. But the documents suggest that requirement was never incorporated into a formal contract with USAID.

The two scientists supervising the samples were: Ben Hu, a virologist at the WIV, who reportedly became sick with COVID-like symptoms in 2019; and Peter Daszak, a scientist who was debarred from federal funding after the U.S. government deemed him a threat to public safety for inadequate oversight of the research in Wuhan.

Hu and Daszak did not reply to requests for comment.

The documents show PREDICT contractors discussing viral samples taken from wildlife and stored in India, Liberia, Malaysia, the Republic of Congo and China. Some of the samples were stored in virus-transport media (VTM), which allows researchers to store live viruses for later use in the lab.

“It’s not rocket science to require a contract and supporting paperwork which establishes a relationship, testing protocol, and chain of custody, when one is sending out lab samples,” said Reuben Guttman, a partner at Guttman, Buschner & Brooks PLLC who specializes in ensuring the integrity of government programs, in an interview with the DCNF. “In any scientific endeavor, you need confidence in your results. That requires paperwork to prove your methodology is sound.”

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Trump Issues Order To End Green Energy Gravy Train, Cites National Security

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Audrey Streb

President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for the end of green energy subsidies by strengthening provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on Monday night, citing national security concerns and unnecessary costs to taxpayers.

The order argues that a heavy reliance on green energy subsidies compromise the reliability of the power grid and undermines energy independence. Trump called for the U.S. to “rapidly eliminate” federal green energy subsidies and to “build upon and strengthen” the repeal of wind and solar tax credits remaining in the reconciliation law in the order, directing the Treasury Department to enforce the phase-out of tax credits.

“For too long, the Federal Government has forced American taxpayers to subsidize expensive and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar,” the order states. “Reliance on so-called ‘green’ subsidies threatens national security by making the United States dependent on supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries.”

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Former President Joe Biden established massive green energy subsidies under his signature 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which did not receive a single Republican vote.

The reconciliation package did not immediately terminate Biden-era federal subsidies for green energy technology, phasing them out over time instead, though some policy experts argued that drawn-out timelines could lead to an indefinite continuation of subsidies. Trump’s executive order alludes to potential loopholes in the bill, calling for a review by Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent to ensure that green energy projects that have a “beginning of construction” tax credit deadline are not “circumvented.”

Additionally, the executive order directs the U.S. to end taxpayer support for green energy supply chains that are controlled by foreign adversaries, alluding to China’s supply chain dominance for solar and wind. Trump also specifically highlighted costs to taxpayers, market distortions and environmental impacts of subsidized green energy development in explaining the policy.

Ahead of the reconciliation bill becoming law, Trump told Republicans that “we’ve got all the cards, and we are going to use them.” Several House Republicans noted that the president said he would use executive authority to enhance the bill and strictly enforce phase-outs, which helped persuade some conservatives to back the bill.

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