A few key bits, to show the shape of the thing. Read the copious details at the link.
[ZeroHedge] On the campaign trail, Vice President JD Vance repeatedly chastised the Biden administration for allegedly losing track of some 320,000 minors who had crossed the border unaccompanied. “Our government, under the policies of Kamala Harris, has lost thousands of innocent children to sex trafficking, to drug trafficking, to human trafficking,” Vance said.
One year later, the fate of most of those children remains unknown. While the Trump administration has all but stopped the crush of migrants that occurred during Biden’s term, neither the government nor the nonprofits that were largely responsible for resettling this vulnerable population of unaccompanied minors have been able to tell RealClearInvestigations where they are living.
Experts say it’s likely that the overwhelming majority of unaccompanied minors remain off the grid because their parents, guardians, and caregivers do not want to draw the attention of immigration authorities. But they also acknowledge the likelihood that some of the migrant minors have been picked up by human traffickers and forced into exploitative labor and sexual roles – a criminal trend that’s on the rise in the U.S.
Nearly half a million unaccompanied minors under the age of 18 were apprehended at the border between 2021 and 2024, overwhelming the immigration system. Taxpayers spent more than $23 billion on a network of government agencies, construction companies, and nonprofits charged with finding them a safe place to live while sponsors were sought.
Now the entities that took the money are unwilling to address the whereabouts of the minors. Nor are they forthcoming about how they spent – or misspent – the funding that was supposed to avoid the very problem the nation faces of missing migrant children.
Lean on the “charitable” agencies and the people who were working at the agencies. Investigate them, jail them, fine them for each day each child they dealt with is not found and returned, dig into their bookkeeping and bank accounts, however incomplete the records. Make it cost them personally for having either carelessly dropped the ball or deliberately taken advantage of the children given in their care.
All told, the average annual number of unaccompanied children coming to the U.S. under Biden was nearly double the highest single prior year of 2019, ICE figures show. More than half of those who came each year since 2019 were 16 years old or younger, with nearly a quarter aged 12 or younger.
This year, monthly data indicates the problem of newly arriving unaccompanied minors has virtually disappeared. In October, the average number of “children in care” was 2,244.
“Sealing the border had made a huge difference,” said Laura Lederer, a former senior advisor on trafficking in persons for the State Department. “Stopping illegal immigration is essentially a human trafficking prevention program.”
RISE IN HUMAN TRAFFICKING
For undocumented minors already in the U.S., they are at risk of falling victim to predators who can take advantage of their separation from family and caregivers. Recent press accounts have described horror stories, with minors allegedly exploited from North Carolina to Los Angeles. Precise figures on victims of sexual trafficking or forced labor are impossible to find because the illegal operations are underground.
“For everyone we know about, there could be two, three, or even four times more,” said Lederer, a leading American researcher on human trafficking.
The process of illegal immigration, which has been a cash cow for smuggling organizations, also claims victims. Minors may fall prey to groomers or recruiters and be forced to function as lookouts, guides, or spies, according to the Department of Defense’s Combating Trafficking in Persons unit.
Even federal agencies involved in finding minors are tight-lipped about their operations. In recent weeks, a Memphis Safe Task Force, led by the U.S. Marshals Service and including teams from ICE and Customs and Border Protection, has rescued 116 juveniles. How many of those were unaccompanied minor border crossers is unclear. The U.S. Marshals Service did not respond to questions.
Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley has been following the issue for years. Federal whistleblowers at his hearings have described a haphazard system for caring for unaccompanied minors, in which information is not shared among federal agencies, contractors, and law enforcement. Last year, Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) whistleblowers said that contractors would release minors to sketchy, unverified partners, suspicious strip-mall businesses, and, in one Michigan case, in an open field.
Prompted by those reports, Grassley sent referrals to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regarding potentially criminal behavior by more than “100 suspicious sponsors” last year. But the Biden-Harris administration failed to fully respond to two-thirds of the subpoenas issued by law enforcement. In the last four years, there were more than 65,000 reports of possible illegal acts ignored or dismissed, of which roughly 7,300, or 13%, involved human trafficking, according to an Inspector General’s report.
The Trump administration claims it has processed some 28% of the backlog, leading to 36 investigations accepted for prosecution, seven indictments, 25 arrest warrants, 11 arrests, and three convictions.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
12/08/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1781 views]
Top|| File under: Human Trafficking
[YouTube] Using statistical analysis, we've calculated the total number of enslaved people across 5,000 years of human civilization—from Ancient Egypt to the Third Reich.
The results challenge what's taught in Western schools.
THE TOP 10 LARGEST SLAVING CIVILIZATIONS:
10 = Abyssinia (Ethiopian Empire) - 9-10 million
10 = Umayyad Caliphate - 10 million
9. Qing Dynasty (China) - 12.6 million (potentially 75-125 million)
8. Ancient Egypt - 13 million
7. Third Reich - 26 million
6 = Joseon Dynasty (Korea) - 28 million
6 + Byzantine Empire - 28 million
5. Delhi Sultanate - 36 million
4. Mali Empire - 57 million
3. Abbasid Caliphate - 63 million
2. Mughal Empire - 112 million
1. Roman Empire - 160 million
No place for the British, Portuguese, or any European colonial powers in the top ten.
#1
NOTE: Regarding #1.
According to several data sources, the Roman Empire peak population was around 75 million, with a peak slave population of 15 million slaves. Or, roughly 20% were slave.
The Democrat Empire
Total US Democrat Empire Slave State population in 1860 was 3,953,696. Which would have worked out to something like 48.82% of 8,097,463.
BTW: Democrats kept their slaves unarmed then also.
🤔
#5
This is why the Left seeks to destroy history. They don't want you to know the truth. Like it was white Christian Western Civilization that began the crusade to eradicate slavery in the 18 Century.
#6
Once I heard a lecture by a college prof about the African slave trade. She admitted that the African slave trade required Black Africans going into the interior and bringing slaves to sell to the Europeans. She also admitted that the African slave trade predated by centuries the arrival of the Europeans. She even admitted that the East Africa slave trade, run by Moslems, was bigger and lasted longer than the West Africa slave trade.
But she still managed to blame the Europeans and Americans almost exclusively.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/08/2025 10:18 Comments ||
Top||
#7
ergo the importance of AI and their fanatical desire to implement it quickly and holistically.
[ConservativeTreehouse] President Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy is outlined in a detailed 33-page report.
In addition to setting the priorities for the United States focus, the report details the Trump administration perspective on the world as broken down into specific regions. The report is a brutally honest review of the current state of geopolitical benefits, risks and threats as they pertain to vital U.S. interests.
Flexible Realism — U.S.policy will be realistic about what is possible and desirable to seek in its dealings with other nations. We seek good rlations and peaceful commercial relations with thr other nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories. We recognize and affirm that there is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in acting according to such a realistic assessment or in maintaining good relations with countries whose governing systems and societies differ from oursevrn as we push like-minded friends to hold our shared norms, furthering our interests as we do so.
Primacy of Nations — The world’s fundamental political unit is and will remain the nation-state. It is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty. The world works best when nations prioritize their interests. The United States will put our own interests first and, in our relations eith other nations, encourage them to prioritize their own interests as well. We stand for the sovereign rights of nations, against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations, and for reforming those institutions so that they assist rather than hinder individual sovereignty and further American interests.
[Full pdf Here]
In addition to outlining a critically renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere, the Trump administration also notes the practical position of Europe, as it pertains to NATO and dependency on the U.S.A.
In a brutally honest review of the situation, the Trump administration notes Europe is increasingly losing their own identity. The fear the Europeans express about being vulnerable to Russian strength is hypocritical, in the sense that in practical outcomes the EU is purposefully weakening itself and simultaneously demanding assistance against their own weakness.
Tucker Carlson is an illegal unregistered foreign agent who must be investigated.
If only more of these Hamas-loving Jew haters would move away and never come back.
BREAKING:
Tucker Carlson Is Buying Property In Qatar
Speaking on stage at the Doha Forum in Qatar, @TuckerCarlson told Qatar’s Prime Minister Al Thani that he is buying a place in Qatar this week because he’s an "American" and he will live and go wherever he wants.
THE ISLANDER @IslanderWORLD Europe Built a Digital Control Regime
Brussels insisted the Digital Services Act was harmless, a bureaucratic tune-up for the online world. But the moment enforcement began, the truth surfaced: Europe engineered a censorship machine. And the €120 million fine against X is the moment it got exposed.
The DSA foundations were poured in 2014, when Europe panicked over migration, populism, and the collapse of trust in its institutions. What began as back-room “voluntary codes” and secret content-moderation hotlines hardened into a full-blown weapon. A decade in the making. A decade of mission creep. A decade of unelected Eurocrats preparing to rule the digital public square.
Today, the regime is no longer theoretical, it is fully weaponized. And its first chosen target is the only platform arrogant enough, independent enough, not perfect but unmanageable enough to refuse obedience.
Brussels claims the €120M strike against X is about “transparency.” Anyone who has spent five minutes inside European politics knows the truth, this wasn’t enforcement. This was reprisal. A public beating disguised as a regulatory process. A message carved into the balance sheets of the entire tech sector: defy our censorship channels, expose our back-room demands, resist our narrative controls, and we will crush you financially until compliance looks like mercy.
Under the DSA, any platform with more than 45 million European users becomes a deputized censor, forced to obey the most restrictive speech laws in any one of the EU’s 27 member states. A German insult case in Munich? Suddenly enforceable in Madrid. A French hate-speech provision in Paris? Enforced in Prague, Dublin, Tallinn, and beyond. Brussels built the world’s first mechanism where the lowest speech standard becomes the universal one.
And then comes the extraterritorial bombshell... The DSA applies irrespective of where a platform is based. Meaning a bureaucrat in Brussels can dictate what an American in Texas sees. What a journalist in Nairobi writes. What a president in Latin America posts. Platforms will always choose to harmonize globally rather than run two moderation regimes under threat of a 6% revenue kill shot.
Europe has built an exportable ministry of truth, and everyone else is expected to obey.
The warnings are no longer coming from fringes or activists. They’re coming from constitutional scholars, former ACLU leaders, Princeton professors, the FCC, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, all saying the same thing: the DSA is a direct threat to global free speech. A supranational censorship model with no democratic accountability, no meaningful legal recourse, and no boundaries.
And now, with the fine against X, Brussels has moved from theory to force.
This is how power behaves when it feels its grip slipping. You build a censorship hierarchy: Digital Service Coordinators, trusted flaggers, opaque regulators, quasi-NGOs whose funding depends on finding ever more “harmful content.”
You force platforms to pre-censor under threat of annihilation. You redefine political speech as “risk.” You call dissent “manipulation.” You give yourself emergency powers to silence whatever you cannot defeat in open debate.
The fine isn’t the end, it’s the opening salvo.
Because once Europe proves it can financially strangle a platform for not censoring fast enough, every other company will do the math: It’s cheaper to silence users than resist regulators. It’s safer to delete speech than defend it.
And suddenly citizens aren’t silenced by law, they’re silenced by fear. Not by courts, but by algorithms tuned to please bureaucrats. By risk-assessment committees no one elected.
Speech erased by a foreign, Orwellian bureaucracy. Democracy throttled by a system you never voted for. A public square governed by fear, not freedom.
And unless this machinery is resisted, dismantled, or openly defied, the next message from Brussels will be even simpler:
UK’s Labour Censorship Initiative
As economic and cultural suicide stalk Western Europe, it has initiated efforts to hobble America's technological advantage and diminish our freedoms. The first documented attacks on our open dialogue came from the UK and began in 2018 when Morgan McGreevy, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff (then Labour Together’s managing director), began and funded an outfit called Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN). Recognizing that the online news purveyors could best be silenced by depriving them of funds, it first targeted UK outfits, but moved on in an attempt to starve U.S. outfits like American Thinker, Breitbart, Zero Hedge, and the Federalist of advertising revenue, and astroturfing defamation of such sites.
But it didn’t work — they’re still all here and thriving.
#3
Cut all funds to Europe, including NATO. Remove all US forces. Put a 500% tarrif on all European imports. End all visas and restrict travel from Europe. Tell them it will only end when Europe acknowledges that it cannot place rules on Americans. If they don't learn, they collapse.
I give it three months.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
12/08/2025 12:13 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Clarice Feldman on EU Censorship regime: 'Your speech ends when we say it ends.'
Those are fighting words. That's like telling a guy in a bar to shut up. You know what's going to happen.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/08/2025 13:37 Comments ||
Top||
[TurkiyeAnalyst] Turkey’s geo-political clout has steadily risen across Eurasia in the past half decade since Ankara’s decisive military assistance to Azerbaijan in the 2020 Karabakh War, propelled further in 2022 by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s ongoing military campaign. Turkey’s enhanced position in the wider Black Sea region has solidified its role as a geopolitical agenda-setter for Eurasian connectivity with Ankara proceeding to promote its long-aspired, Turkish-led connectivity program for greater economic integration with the Central Asia via Azerbaijan under the framework of Organization of Turkic States (OTS).
However, Turkey faces one force that poses a significant challenge to the realization of its strategic ambitions as a wider Eurasian power: Turkey’s own demographic decline. With the Central Asian republics’ experiencing robust demographic growth, enhanced strategic and economic integration among OTS members could result in a larger Central Asian Turkic influence on Turkey’s policy orientation and even a greater Central Asian Turkic presence with the Turkish population itself.
BACKGROUND: Turkey is starting to witness patterns of demographic decline resembling those experienced in the European Union (EU), where the death rate exceeds the birth rate by 32 percent and among the northeast Asian nations such as Japan, whose population is decreasing by over half a million people per year. The issue is not only population decline but the rapidly aging profile of Turkey’s population. Since 2001 when its total fertility rate was 2.38 children – healthily exceeding the replacement level of 2.1, Turkey has seen an astounding plummet in its fertility rate, declining to 1.48 in 2024. For comparison, the average fertility rate across the EU, last calculated in 2023, was 1.38, with eight of the 27 EU member states exceeding Turkey’s fertility rate and 19 member states with a lower fertility rate.
To grasp the magnitude and speed of Turkey’s demographic decline, a 1.48 fertility rate means that for every 100 Turks, there will be only 41 great-grandchildren, under the most optimistic circumstances. The accelerating nature of Turkey’s declining birthrates becomes apparent when mapping the geography of its fertility. Out of Turkey’s 81 provinces, 71 are below replacement level. Only the ten southeastern and eastern provinces of Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa, Diyarbakır, Mardin, Batman, Şırnak, Siirt, Bitlis, Muş, and Ağrı had rates above replacement level, with Şanlıurfa being the sole province with a fertility rate higher than 2.9. The geographic concentration of provinces with replacement level fertility in the southeast, means that the proportion of ethnic Kurds in the overall population is likely to grow significantly, affecting Turkey’s domestic politics and regional foreign policy. This dynamic is further compounded by the fact Turkey’s entire Black Sea coast, northern Anatolian region, and western region have fertility rates at or below 1.49.
More at the link
Posted by: badanov ||
12/08/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1772 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
