andrew blake
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apblake.bsky.social
andrew blake
@apblake.bsky.social
310 followers 450 following 120 posts
Used to report here and there about the internet and stuff. Now occasionally posting words, photos and sounds. Fan of things. SUPREME COMMANDER bassist.
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apblake.bsky.social
…and some solid moonage over the Niagara River this evening.
February 2, 2026 at 1:23 AM
Reposted by andrew blake
dell.bsky.social
Trump claimed TdA had “thousands” of members in the US. But internal CBP records show when officials couldn’t support that figure with evidence, they resorted to statistical sleight of hand to reach a number more in line with the president's claim, which was 30x higher than what CBP could prove.
Elsewhere, the CBP report undercuts assertions that the government had a clear picture of TdA’s footprint in the US. It notes that it was “difficult for US law enforcement and the intelligence community to ascertain the exact number” of TdA members due to a “lack of determinate indicators” and the “adoption of the TdA name by unaffiliated groups and persons.” Ultimately, those limitations became justification for bending statistics to support the administration’s framing of a US-based terrorist threat numbering in the “thousands.” Over a 22-month period, CBP’s own detection methods identified no more than 83 known TdA members at the border. To reach a much larger figure, the record shows analysts relied on a “sample set of interviews,” extrapolating that “upwards of 3,000” TdA members must have crossed the border during that same period—an estimate based on the assumption that roughly “one-half of one percent” of all Venezuelan migrants who entered the US through the southwest border had ties to TdA. The same assumption underlies the report’s treatment of Venezuelan asylum communities, which it frames as potential risk environments shaped by “sanctuary city” policies and jurisdictions the agency views as “weak” on enforcement.
January 14, 2026 at 4:06 PM