Update May 9th: More on unaccompanied illegal kids here at the Houston Chronicle.
Before you read this post, please go back to this post I wrote in March which gives one horror story of an unaccompanied minor in Galveston, TX who had originally been ‘under the care’ of Catholic Charities (which receives payment from the feds for his and thousands of other illegal alien kids care) and has become an alleged “unaccompanied” adult sexual predator.
Here is Texas Governor Perry (via Fox News) on how this program is encouraging a boom in kids crossing the border without parents. He also charges that Obama is actually pushing this. Although I gotta say Perry himself allowed for another magnet for illegal kids—subsidized college education for illegal alien kids (but that is another story for another time).
Texas Gov. Rick Perry is accusing the Obama administration of “perpetuating” a recent “surge” in illegal immigrant children who are crossing into the U.S. from Mexico and Central America without their parents and often falling straight into government care.
In a letter obtained by Fox News, Perry wrote to President Obama on Friday citing stats that show more than 5,200 “unaccompanied minors” were taken into U.S. custody in the first six months of the fiscal year — a more than 90 percent increase compared with the same period a year ago.
Perry, a former Republican presidential candidate, claimed that a failure to immediately send them back is “perpetuating the problem” by encouraging other children and teenagers to make the trek. He said the journey is dangerous for the children, and their flow into the United States is a burden on his state and others. The governor urged the administration to eliminate the “temptation” to make “this tragic and illegal migration.”
The Refugee program looking for expansion into new and lucrative territory?
A recent Associated Press article on the surge reported that 1,390 unaccompanied children crossed over the border and into U.S. custody in March alone. Some have even been housed at Lackland Air Force Base on a temporary basis while they are being processed.
The children, after being initially detained by the Department of Homeland Security, are typically handed over to the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement — a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. [where a couple of the federal “church” contractors get paid to take care of them until they “emancipate” them into the US population at age 18—ed]
I noticed the other day as I read through the testimony from the Refugee meeting in Arlington, VA last week, here, that there were many mentions of the “need” to boost this program. Another chicken-or-egg question? Are the kids coming anyway or are they being enticed into coming by this federal program (and the hope of amnesty through the Dream Act someday)?