- Obama declares 'urgent humanitarian situation' after TWELVE TIMES the number of illegal immigrant children pour over border since his policy changed
- A San Antonio Air Force base, a California Navy base, and a makeshift detention center in Nogales, Arizona have become temporary shelters for children and youths caught crossing the border without their parents
- Republicans blame the Obama administration for the problem, citing a 2012 policy that relaxed deportations
- It's 'an administration-made disaster,' says the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee
- President Obama now concedes that it's an 'urgent humanitarian situation' and is setting aside $2 million to pay lawyers for the children
- The US government expects as many as 80,000 child immigrants to illegally enter the US this year, a twelve-fold jump in just three years
- More than 33,000 have been picked up in Texas since October; the Arizona facility has ordered 2,000 mattresses to handle its overload
- 'Instead of having an application of the immigration law, we are taking mothers and children and dumping them,' another claimed
Republicans are slamming President Barack Obama for instituting an immigration policy that they say enticed tens of thousands of Central American children to cross America's southern border illegally without any parents to guide them.
Obama rolled out a controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012, allowing many illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors to escape deportation for two years. The White House gave them another two-year window last week.
As a result, say some GOP leaders, America's system for handling illegal immigration has been strained to the breaking point and is attracting hundreds of new illegal-immigrant children every day..
Republicans on Capitol Hill are beyond angry.
Overflowing: Immigration authorities have opened a shelter at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas to house a rising number of unaccompanied minors who have been crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally
Hundreds of immigrants believed to be in the country illegally from Central America and Mexico being held in crowded concrete rooms similar to a jail cell
Many of the children appear to be teenagers but some clearly are younger
Lackland has become a temporary shelter for youths caught crossing the border illegally and alone
Leaked photos from the base, which were obtained by the Breitbart.com news blog, show hundreds of children holed up in crowded concrete rooms, many of them sleeping on the bare floor without blankets or pillows.
"The recent surge of children and teenagers from Central America showing up at our southern border is an administration-made disaster,' Virginia GOP Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News last week.
'Word has gotten out around the world about President Obama's lax immigration enforcement policies and it has encouraged more individuals to come to the United States illegally,' Goodlatte said in a statement.
'Enforcement at the border and in the interior of the U.S.,' not 'another bureaucratic task force' is needed, he claimed.
Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, who sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Friday that 'instead of having an application of the immigration law, we are taking mothers and children and dumping them ... and violating the rule[s] over and over.'
The Obama administration expects as many as 80,000 of these 'unaccompanied minors' to cross the border in 2014, according to theChristian Science Monitor.
That number is twelve times what it was in 2011, the year before Obama announced his deferred-action plan.
A half-century-old section of a U.S. Air Force base in Texas is now a holding and processing center for thousands of children who managed to enter the U.S. alone. The same is true of a Navy base in California.
And a makeshift detention center in Arizona holding 700 illegal immigrant children has ordered 2,000 mattresses to keep up with an expected influx in the coming months.
At the base, children are provided with three hot meals and two snacks a day. They can call home twice a week. They have access to mental health clinicians and on-site medical care
The minors flooding over the border are often teenagers leaving behind poverty or violence in Mexico and other parts of Central America such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala
The administration now estimates the holding facilities where the youngsters are being held cost taxpayers $252 per child per day, far more than the cost of a hotel and more than the children could expect to earn in two weeks of hard work picking crops, work that many were slated to do.
Facing the question of whether to deport the minors or play a game of catch-and-release, the administration has set aside $2 million to pay for their lawyers.
'We're taking a historic step to strengthen our justice system and protect the rights of the most vulnerable members of society,' Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday in a statement.
'How we treat those in need, particularly young people who must appear in immigration proceedings – many of whom are fleeing violence, persecution, abuse or trafficking – goes to the core of who we are as a nation.'
Obama's 'deferred action' program for minors, which he announced in a fanfare-laden June 15, 2012 Rose Garden press conference, applies only to children who came to America before mid-2007.
'It makes no sense to expel talented young people, who, for all intents and purposes, are Americans,' the president said then.
Photos leaked to U.S. and Mexican media outlets on Thursday show unaccompanied children crammed into Border Patrol holding cells elsewhere, sleeping on concrete floors
About 850 that were being housed at the facility have been released to a vetted family member or a sponsor
Republicans blame President Obama for the situation, pointing to his 2012 policy that sent a message of hope to kids yearning to stay in the U.S.
Photos leaked Thursday from a U.S. Border Patrol facility in the Rio Grande Valley show overflowing holding facilities of immigrants, many of whom are children
Children between the ages of 12 and 17 are handed several sheets and towels when they arrive and checked for lice and scabies
With the president traveling in Europe last week, there have been no press briefings at the White House where questions might be put to outgoing press secretary Jay Carney.
But Obama met privately Monday morning with a group of nurses from across the country 'to discuss the importance of passing commonsense immigration reform,' according to the White House.
But Capitol Hill is rife with fears that the message was garbled by the time it reach Guatemala, Honduras and other countries where poverty runs rampant. Many children traveling north on their own hope the policy will include them.
That's what 'coyotes,' the smugglers who bring them in, are telling them to expect, according to Tania Chavez, a representative with La Union del Pueblo Entero, told KRGV-TV. in southern Texas.
The minors flooding over the border are often teenagers leaving behind poverty or violence in Mexico and other parts of Central America such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
The Associated Press reported Monday that in a May 30 memo to the National Security Council's transborder security directorate, Border Patrol Deputy Chief Ronald Vitiello warned that the influx of unexpected illegals has stretched the border patrol beyond reason.
But releasing them or reuniting them with family members in the United States would serve as 'incentives to additional individuals to follow the same path.'
President Barack Obama said the sharp influx of unaccompanied children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala was an 'urgent humanitarian situation'
More than 33,000 minors were apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas since October last year, it has been reported.
Oldies
Harrolds.Blogspot.com
Posts
Legislation Pending in Congress
