Lame-duck Biden’s gifts to America

President Joe Biden will leave office on Jan. 20, 2025, with a legacy of gifting. Unfortunately for us, that legacy will be a negative rather than a positive one. While some of this gifting is more obvious as it affects all of us on a daily basis, such as inflation, other gifts have been more subtle and, as such, far more dangerous for those actually experiencing them.

Of these, perhaps the two most prominent operate in the dark shadows, only revealing themselves to take action. They include secret Chinese police stations in the U.S. and the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA). This is not only the result of an open-border policy that has enabled millions of illegal immigrants to take up residence here but also of liberal “defund the police” campaigns suggesting U.S. law enforcement is not a priority for us.

Concerning these secret police stations operating outside of China, this situation was first reported in late 2022 by a Spanish human rights NGO, Safeguard Defenders. Entitled “Transnational Policing Gone Wild,” the report alleged there were at least 54 secret Chinese “police stations” operating in 21 countries.

While most of these stations are in Europe, several also exist in the U.S. The NGO reported that despite conflicting Chinese explanations for their existence when discovered, “The reality is these stations serve as overseas ‘police stations’ that harass, intimidate, and threaten Chinese dissidents and Chinese individuals that openly oppose the Chinese Communist Party. …”

Safeguard Defenders later issued another report – “Involuntary Returns” – that explained the nefarious ways China uses to “persuade” its people living abroad to return home. One option reportedly involved “the tracking down of the target’s family in China in order to pressure them through means of intimidation, harassment, detention, or imprisonment into persuading their family members to return voluntarily.” A second involved a “direct approach of the target through online means or the deployment of – often undercover – agents and/or proxies abroad to threaten and harass the target into returning ‘voluntarily.'” A third option was the kidnapping of targets …” although the NGO acknowledged at the time there were no substantiated cases of this.

Newsweek took up the story in December 2022 and in April 2023, reporting that seven such police stations existed in the U.S. – two in NYC, two in California, one in Minnesota, one in Nebraska and one in Texas. A Newsweek correspondent later indicated there were at least nine. In January 2023, the FBI raided one station in NYC that, three months later, shut down as two people operating the facility were arrested and charged with doing so in violation of U.S. sovereignty. The Department of Justice also “charged 34 officers from China’s national police force for allegedly creating fake online personas to harass dissidents abroad.”

As China was obviously encouraged by the lax immigration policy Biden implemented to create such police stations, there are still 38,000 Chinese nationals in the U.S. who, despite being under orders to be deported, have not been, presenting us with yet another national security risk.

Turning to the gang issue, TdA originated in 2012 as a result of Venezuelan prisoners seeing an opportunity to work together in criminal endeavors on the outside. Like the wild herds in Africa attracted by greener pastures, TdA was attracted by the easy flow of immigrants able to move illegally from South America up into the United States. Another draw for the gang was the fact U.S. police forces were understaffed – some having even quit en masse due to the pressures and reduced funding triggered by the 2022 protests of George Floyd’s death in the hands of arresting officers. Such defunding created fertile conditions for the criminal herd.

TdA first gained national attention here during the 2024 presidential campaign. During an ABC interview, senator and vice presidential candidate JD Vance got into a tense exchange with the host after raising the issue that TdA members had brazenly taken over apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado. Initially downplayed by city authorities, the ABC host ridiculously endeavored to correct Vance, saying only one building was involved. He quickly underscored her outrageous response, reminding her this is America where such an incident should never occur even if just one building was involved. West Fargo, North Dakota, law enforcement recently asked for federal help as TdA has crossed over into their state as well.

TdA has been recruiting migrants living in various city shelters to join their herd. Together, they have been involved in kidnappings, acts of extortion, murders, assaults, robberies, gun smuggling and drug activities, understandably focusing primarily on sanctuary city targets.

TdA’s modus operandi is often to use many members in their crimes so as to overwhelm victims. In an example of the comparable low mentality demonstrated by U.S. supporters of defunding police, one gang was located in the Bronx by police simply because a member – arrested earlier and wearing a GPS monitoring device on his ankle – was located still wearing it in their hideout.

It is interesting that while a weaponized FBI was going after traditional Catholics, claiming, as stated in a 2023 congressional committee report, they were domestic terrorists, the federal agency has been slow to target TdA. It was the same flaw we saw happen concerning the Chinese police stations. Fortunately, local police departments are now cooperating with federal authorities in a coordinated effort to curtail these criminal activities.

The results of a December poll involving over 1,000 voters should come as no surprise. It used a somewhat unique method, asking voters which U.S. president they would place in the top two and the bottom two. Biden was placed in the bottom two by 44% of respondents; only 14% placed him in the top two.

As one looks back on Biden’s Oval Office tenure, it is difficult to identify much that qualifies as positive gifting. One might point to a bill he signed on Christmas Eve qualifying as such but which only reinforced something we have already been doing for 250 years. He signed legislation codifying the bald eagle as our national bird. Ironically, he served during the past four years while giving America “the bird!”