Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said Wednesday that he disagreed with the Biden administration’s move to end border wall construction in early 2021, while arguing that infrastructure would help agents do their job.

Ortiz spoke at a Homeland Security Committee hearing in McAllen, Texas, and was asked by Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., about whether he supported wall construction, which had expanded dramatically under the Trump administration but was abruptly halted when President Biden entered office.

‘I do not believe in a wall from sea to shining sea, but I do believe in infrastructure and barrier systems in concentrated areas, especially urban areas,’ Ortiz said. ‘And it’s always been our practice, from 2006 when I was an agent in charge in West Texas to now. But I also don’t agree that we should tear down perfectly good barrier system to install something that is based upon requirements that we developed over the last few years.’

Ortiz said that Customs and Border Protection had ‘tore down perfectly good infrastructure system in some areas that we should have just left alone’ in places like Del Rio, Texas.

Brecheen followed up by asking Ortiz specifically about the wall that had been appropriated by the Trump administration but was then canceled by the Biden administration.

‘Under the prior administration, we had 200-plus miles of wall appropriated and…President Biden by executive order shut that down,’ he said. ‘Do you disagree with his decision to shut down construction?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Ortiz responded.

Ortiz was also asked if he supports the ‘Remain-in-Mexico’ policy — a Trump-era policy shut down by the Biden administration which kept migrants in Mexico for their hearings — and he responded that he ‘supports any policy that’s going to allow us to repatriate individuals back to their home countries.’ 

The remarks came in a hearing during which Ortiz told lawmakers that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not have operational control of the border.

He also backed agents who had been accused falsely of whipping Haitian migrants in 2021, and also suggested that policies were in place that were damaging Border Patrol’s ability to do their job.

Meanwhile, DHS said that the hearing ‘highlights the vital work the Department of Homeland Security does every day to enforce our laws, secure our border, and combat cartels and smugglers’ and pointed to testimony from Ortiz and other witnesses that showed ‘new programs, technology, and investments are making a real impact.’ 

‘Despite inheriting a dismantled immigration system and facing unprecedented migration that is affecting nations throughout the Western Hemisphere, this administration has surged resources to the border, reducing the number of encounters between ports of entry, disrupting more smuggling operations than ever before, and interdicting more drugs in the last two years than had been stopped in the five years prior,’ a spokesperson said.

‘The Department welcomes input from Congress, and looks forward to working with members on legislative solutions for our broken immigration system, which Congress has not reformed for more than 40 years.’

EXCLUSIVE: The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is raising questions about the funding source for the Penn Biden Center, and specifically whether foreign money might have found its way to President Joe Biden’s former think tank.

The Penn Biden Center is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, and on Wednesday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., wrote to the university to ask several questions about how money flows between the two entities. Smith also said press reports are leading to questions about whether foreign money from the school may have been directed to the Penn Biden Center, even though the center insists it ‘does not accept any contributions or gifts.’

‘Public reports have … raised questions about foreign direct investment in the University of Pennsylvania and the relationship between those investments and the creation of the Penn Biden Center,’ Smith wrote in a letter co-signed by Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C.

‘The timing of the Center’s creation along with the reported increase in foreign investment appears to coincide with members of President Biden’s family seeking business opportunities in China,’ the letter added.

The letter asked specifically how the university and the center are related legally and what percentage of the center’s annual expenses came from the university. It then asked for information about investments the university has in three ‘adversarial entities’ that are on U.S. government restricted lists.

Last year, the university told Republicans that it has three investments in entities on those lists, and Smith’s letter asked the university to identify those entities. It also asked the university whether it has any investments in the six Chinese entities that were added to these restricted lists after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon that flew across the country this year.

The GOP letter is a continuation of a probe into Biden’s arrangement with the Penn Biden Center. Biden was paid about $900,000 in the roughly two years he was there before his 2020 presidential run, and the letter appears to be seeking data that might help Republicans determine whether China or other foreign nations were signing Biden’s checks.

A Ways and Means Committee statement released Wednesday said the letter makes the point that Biden ‘appears to have been paid by university funds during his tenure at the Penn Biden Center during a period in which new questions have arisen about a range of issues, including foreign investment at the university … and the Biden family’s attempted business dealings in China.’

The Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., came under public scrutiny earlier this year when it was revealed that classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president were discovered in a locked closet there.

Biden had used the center for a private office for some years until he launched his 2020 presidential campaign. The files were found in November but not made public knowledge until early January.

The GOP letter also questioned why the university has made no apparent effort to divest from its questionable holdings.

‘In addition, the University’s June 23, 2022, response did not indicate any plans to divest, nor did it identify the entities that held such investments,’ the letter stated.

Republicans are demanding that university officials respond to the letter by March 28, outlining any efforts to divest from concerning investments and providing more information on the legal relationship between the D.C. think tank and the Ivy League school.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Penn Biden Center and the White House for comment but did not immediately hear back from either.

EXCLUSIVE: Dee Dee Sorvino slammed the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences for leaving her late husband, ‘Goodfellas’ actor Paul Sorvino, out of the In Memoriam segment during the Oscars on Sunday night, telling Fox News Digital she hopes his right-leaning politics didn’t play a role.

The televised segment honored late actors Olivia Newton-John, Ray Liotta and others, but noticeably left out Sorvino, who worked alongside Liotta as ‘Paulie’ in Martin Scorsese’s 1990 crime drama ‘Goodfellas.’

Sorvino died of natural causes in July at age 83.

His widow exclusively told Fox News Digital she ‘started crying’ and was instantly ‘sick to my stomach’ upon realizing the academy made the decision to leave her husband out of the televised memorial.

Instead, the academy shared a QR code that directed viewers to a more extensive online segment that included hundreds of names of late stars, including Sorvino. 

‘It’s so cold and callous,’ Dee Dee said.

She said her friends and critics on social media immediately assumed her husband’s past support for the Second Amendment and former President Donald Trump was a factor, but she’s not necessarily convinced.

‘I really hope not,’ she said when asked if his politics played a role in the academy’s decision.

‘My Republican friends said, ‘Oh, I bet it’s because he’s not liberal, or he’s not woke,’’ she said. ‘I had hundreds of messages saying, ‘Oh, that’s because he’s a Republican.

‘I don’t know if that’s the case… it’s just conjecture.’ 

Dee Dee described her husband as a ‘patriot,’ who was ‘pro-gun, and he was pro-Donald Trump, so that probably didn’t help with the academy.’

She argued that politics ‘shouldn’t matter.’

‘It should be a meritocracy,’ she said. ‘It should not be about that. And that is why it’s so upsetting, because nobody can say Paul is a bad actor. Nobody can say he was mediocre. Everybody said Paul was one of the best actors ever and that’s what he should be judged on.’

Dee Dee said she ultimately thinks it was an oversight by the academy, and that it wouldn’t be ‘fair’ to accuse it of snubbing her late husband over politics just yet.

‘I just want to give them the benefit of a doubt that it was just a mistake,’ she said.

The academy did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. However, a spokesperson defended the decision in a statement to another outlet.

‘The academy receives hundreds of requests to include loved ones and industry colleagues in the Oscars In Memoriam segment. An executive committee representing every branch considers the list and makes selections for the telecast based on limited available time. All the submissions are included on A.frame and will remain on the site throughout the year,’ the statement said.

‘Pathetic and ridiculous,’ Sorvino tweeted Wednesday in response to the statement.

Paul Sorvino was known just as much for mob roles with the late James Caan in ‘The Gambler’ and working with Alan Arkin in ‘The Rocketeer’ and Warren Beatty in ‘Dick Tracy’ as he was for playing a crime-fighting cop in ‘Law & Order.’ He died at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, after suffering health issues, according to his representative.

Dee Dee remembered how Fox News played a pivotal part in their relationship, as they first met in the green room while waiting for separate appearances on the network and even announced their surprise elopement while on Neil Cavuto’s show in 2015.

‘If not for Fox, we would not be married. And Neil Cavuto, we called him Dr. Love,’ she said. ‘We would always joke about this because Paul knew he wanted to marry me right away.’

Fox News Digital’s Tracy Wright contributed to this report.

Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., shared some good news on Wednesday amid his weeks-long recovery from a devastating ladder fall at his Sarasota home earlier this year.

‘I’m happy to report my doctor has cleared me to fly. I am looking forward to returning to D.C. later this month!’ Steube wrote on Twitter, announcing he would be returning to in-person work at the Capitol.

Steube was seriously injured in the 25-foot fall while doing yard work on Jan. 18 and was rushed to Sarasota Memorial’s intensive care unit, where he spent the following four days being treated for his injuries.

During an appearance on ‘Fox & Friends’ in January, Steube attributed his inability to fly to a punctured lung he sustained from the fall

A delivery driver named Darrell Woodie witnessed Steube’s fall and called 911 for help. Woodie said he went to Steube’s house to congratulate him on his recent election victory, but instead saw the fall. He told the dispatcher he didn’t think anyone else was home because only the congressman’s dogs came to the door.

Steube later saluted Woodie for being a Good Samaritan, and both attributed the positive outcome of the situation to ‘God’s grace.’

‘God’s hand was all over this,’ Steube said during an appearance on Fox News in February. ‘I just want to thank Woodie for healing the Word of God and being obedient to the Word.’

Steube was released from the hospital on Jan. 22, and spent the last few weeks recovering at home while working remotely. 

Fox News’ Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report.

Migrant encounters at the southern border in February dropped to their lowest level since January last year, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced Wednesday – with the Biden administration crediting border measures that it rolled out.

There were 154,998 migrant encounters at the southern border in February, down from the 166,010 encountered in February 2022 and down slightly from the 156,770 encountered in January 2023. In February 2021, there were 101,099 encounters and 36,687 encounters in February 2020.

While still relatively high for February, the latest numbers mark the lowest encounters since January 2022, something that the Biden administration is hailing as a turning point for the crisis at the southern border, which has seen record levels of migrants under its watch.

In January, the administration rolled out a number of measures, including a humanitarian parole program for Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua, which allows up to 30,000 migrants a month to fly in. It also expanded Title 42 expulsions to include those nationalities. The administration tied those measures to the recent drop in border numbers.

‘The new border enforcement measures kept February’s overall encounter numbers nearly even with January,’ CBP Acting Commissioner Troy Miller said in a statement.

He also said the agency was encouraged by the expansion of the CBP One mobile app, which allows for migrants to schedule hearings at ports of entry but has been plagued with tech issues.

‘The app cuts out the smugglers and decreases migrant exploitation. CBP continues to make improvements to the app to address feedback we have received from stakeholders,’ he said.

In its release, CBP said that 71.4% of encounters at the southern border in February were single adults. Of those encountered, 46.8% were expelled under the Title 42 order, which allows for the rapid expulsion of migrants due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That order is scheduled to end on May 11, along with the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, and has raised concerns about a possible fresh spike in migration ahead of the typically busier summer months.

The administration has said it has a plan in place to deal with the surge, with more resources, greater cooperation with Mexico and use of additional removal authorities. The administration recently announced a new proposed rule that would presume ineligibility for asylum if migrants cross illegally and have failed to claim asylum in another country through which they passed.

The move drew criticism from left-wing activist groups who have declared it similar to a Trump-era transit ban. But DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has stressed that the presumption is rebuttable and noted that there are significant exemptions.

Meanwhile, DHS and the White House have sought to blame Republicans for not providing additional border funding as requested as well as inaction on passing a sweeping immigration reform bill. Republicans have said that it is the policies of the administration, not a lack of funding, that caused the crisis.

Parents in Ohio are fighting a state constitutional amendment that they say would strip the rights of parents to give consent on abortion or gender-altering surgeries.

Protect Women Ohio (PWO), which describes itself as a ‘pro-woman, pro-parent coalition,’ launched a multi-million-dollar television and digital ad campaign statewide today aimed at defeating the ‘extreme amendment’ to the Ohio Constitution.

That amendment supported by Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom and Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights could be added to the November 2023 ballot. It was approved by the Ohio Ballot Board on Monday, meaning that proponents of the group now have to earn enough signatures to make it a ballot measure.

The amendment states that ‘every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion.’

‘While Republican politicians in Columbus and Washington are working overtime to implement extreme laws that would make abortion illegal, we’re committed to the work of getting commonsense abortion rights on the ballot and passed by a majority of Ohioans,’ said Ohio Democratic Party Chairwoman Elizabeth Walters, who supports the amendment.

Opponents of the bill like Judicial Crisis Network’s Carrie Severino and Frank Scaturo say the amendment would ‘effectively obliterate most limits to abortion or sex-change surgery, among its other far-reaching consequences.’

‘Headlines have largely framed the proposed amendment as a means of adding a right to abortion to the state constitution,’ the duo said in an op-ed Monday published in National Review.

‘The proposed amendment would outlaw virtually any restrictions on abortion and all other procedures, including sex-change surgeries, that touch on reproduction, for both adults and minors,’ they said.

‘It would cancel out not only parental-consent laws but also mere parental notification for minors’ abortions or sex-change surgeries; strike down health protections for people of all ages who undergo these procedures, including requirements that a qualified physician perform them; and erase any meaningful limits on late-term abortions.’

‘Moms and dads will be cut out of the most important and life-altering decisions of their child’s life, if this passes,’ said Molly Smith, PWO board member said Wednesday.

‘This extreme amendment eliminates any current or future protections for minors requiring parents be notified and consent before their child undergoes a procedure like an abortion or sex change surgery.’

PWO says it will spend $5 million on advertising in the state over the next four weeks for this first phase of its effort to defeat the amendment.

A Texas judge hearing a case that could throw into jeopardy access to the nation’s most common method of abortion is a former attorney for a Christian legal group who critics say is being sought out by conservative litigants because they believe he’ll be sympathetic to their causes.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who’s considering a lawsuit aimed at putting a nationwide halt to use of the drug mifepristone, was appointed by President Donald Trump and confirmed in 2019 over fierce opposition by Democrats over his history opposing LGBTQ rights. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone in the body and is used with the drug misoprostol to end pregnancy within the first 10 weeks.

Kacsmaryk heard arguments in the case on Wednesday, days after he took the unusual step of telling attorneys during a status conference not to publicize the hearing because the case has prompted death threats and protests and he believed ‘ less advertisement of this hearing is better.’ Kacsmaryk said he would rule ‘as soon as possible.’

A former federal prosecutor and lawyer for the conservative First Liberty Institute, the judge has ruled against the Biden administration on other issues, including immigration. He was among more than 230 judges installed to the federal bench under Trump as part of a movement by the Republican president and Senate conservatives to shift the American judiciary to the right.

Interest groups have long attempted to file lawsuits before judges they see as friendly to their points of view. But the number of conservative lawsuits filed in Kacsmaryk’s Amarillo courthouse — where he is assigned all new cases as the sole district court judge — has spawned accusations that right-wing plaintiffs are seeking him out because they know he’s likely to side with them.

‘Why are all these cases being brought in Amarillo if the litigants who are bringing them are so confident in the strength of their claims? It’s not because Amarillo is convenient to get to,’ said University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck. ‘I think it ought to alarm the judges themselves, that litigants are so transparently and shamelessly funneling cases to their courtroom.’

If Kacsmaryk rules against the drug, the Food and Drug Administration — which has approved using mifepristone — is expected to quickly appeal the ruling. Clinics have said they could carry on with using one other drug alone to terminate pregnancies if necessary but that approach is slightly less effective.

During his confirmation hearings, Kacsmaryk told lawmakers it would be ‘inappropriate’ for a judge to allow their religious beliefs to impact a matter of law. He pledged to ‘faithfully apply all Supreme Court precedent.’

‘As a judicial nominee, I don’t serve as a legislator. I don’t serve as an advocate for counsel. I follow the law as it is written, not as I would have written it,’ Kacsmaryk said at the time.

Before the abortion pill case, Kacsmaryk was at the center of a legal fight over Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, which required tens of thousands of migrants seeking asylum to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court.

In 2021, he ordered that the policy be reinstated in response to a lawsuit filed by the states of Texas and Missouri. The U.S. Supreme Court overruled him and said that the Biden administration could end the policy, which it did last August. But in December Kacsmaryk ruled that the administration failed to follow federal rulemaking guidelines when terminating the practice, an issue that the Supreme Court didn’t address.

He has also ruled that allowing minors to obtain free birth control without parental consent at federally funded clinics violated parental rights and Texas law.

In other cases, he has ruled that the Biden administration wrongly interpreted part of the Affordable Care Act as prohibiting health care providers from discriminating against people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. And he sided with Texas in ruling against Biden administration guidance that said employers can’t block workers from using a bathroom consistent with their gender identity.

In another case — brought by states challenging a Department of Labor rule — the Justice Department wrote in a recent court filing that ‘there is no apparent reason—other than judge shopping’ that explains why the lawsuit was filed in Amarillo.

Kacsmaryk’s decisions have been ‘consistent with what a lot of conservatives were hoping for, and a lot of progressives were fearful of,’ said Daniel Bennett, an associate professor at John Brown University in Arkansas, who wrote a book on the conservative Christian legal movement. ‘This is not a judge who’s necessarily going to be riding the fence.’

Kacsmaryk’s detractors said his past writings and legal work revealed extremist views and animus toward gay and transgender people. In articles before being nominated, he wrote critically of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that established a nationwide right to an abortion and the Obergefell decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationally.

In 2015, he slammed an effort to pass federal gender identity and sexual orientation protections, writing that doing so would ‘give no quarter to Americans who continue to believe and seek to exercise their millennia-old religious belief that marriage and sexual relations are reserved to the union of one man and one woman.’

A year later, he signed a letter that quoted another article as describing the ‘belief that one is trapped in the body of the wrong sex’ as a ‘fixed, irrational belief’ that is ‘appropriately described as a delusion.’

Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was among those who opposed Kacsmaryk’s nomination, citing what she described as an ‘alarming bias against the rights of LGBTQ Americans and disregard for Supreme Court precedents.’

Kacsmaryk’s defenders say he has been unfairly maligned.

Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, a conservative judicial advocacy group, said Kacsmaryk has shown no evidence of bias on the bench. He noted that Kacsmaryk was deemed ‘qualified,’ by the American Bar Association, which means he satisfied what the group describes as ‘very high standards with respect to integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament.’

‘These allegations that he’s biased are completely unfounded and they unfairly conflate his legal advocacy with bigotry,’ Davis said. ‘These Democrat politicians are sending a message to Christians and other people of faith that they are not allowed in the public square.’

Before joining the bench, Kacsmaryk worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Texas and was involved in such cases as the prosecution of Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, the former Texas Tech University student from Saudi Arabia convicted in a failed bomb plot.

In 2014, Kacsmaryk joined the First Liberty Institute, which calls itself the ‘largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.’ Kacsmaryk noted during his confirmation process that the group has represented all faiths.

Among the litigants he defended as the institute’s deputy general counsel was an Oregon bakery that refused to provide a cake for a same sex-couple’s wedding.

‘Obviously, his decisions have been really disappointing to progressives and left-leaning folks and been very pleasing to those on the right,’ Bennett said. ‘But that’s kind of the nature of our judicial branch right now, especially with these hot-button issues.’