Back in June we attended a refugee pow-wow in Lancaster, PA where an official representing the Office of Refugee Resettlement predicted the number of “unaccompanied minors” would reach 20,000 this year.  Sure looks like he had a crystal ball, or knew this latest world-wide trick of separating children/teens from parents and sending them across borders to seek asylum was being pushed hard by open borders activists.

Here is Fox News on how Obama’s policies toward “Dreamers” is acting like a magnet for the children.

Mentioned here is the fact that many of the asylum-seeking kids (abused by Mom and Dad?) are given over to the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.  Not mentioned is that ORR in  turn pays the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services to care for them until they are 18 and released into America.

The number of children caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has surged over the last two years, raising questions about whether the Obama administration’s changing immigration policies are creating a magnet.

Statistics released late last week show 24,668 “unaccompanied alien children” were placed last year in the care of the federal agency that, by law, is responsible for them. That’s nearly double the number from 2012, and nearly quadruple the number in years past.

As is often the case with immigration statistics, it’s unclear what is driving the increase. The surge could be driven in part by better enforcement, and immigration officers doing a better job catching border crossers.

But critics point to other factors. A federal judge in Texas claimed earlier this month that the Department of Homeland Security has been delivering children smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border to their illegal immigrant parents. In June 2012, the administration decided to give a reprieve to young illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.

Though the latter would not apply to people who just arrived, critics say these policies send a clear message south of the border: The rewards of trying to cross into the U.S. outweigh the risks.

[….]

According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, most of the minors come from Central America — largely Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

The stats show a big spike over the past two years. The office recorded an “unprecedented increase” in 2012, with the number jumping from an average of 6,775 to 13,625.

You are paying for their housing through grants to the Lutherans and Catholics:

Most of the children are housed through a network of federally funded care centers. But as the traffic increases, those are becoming over-burdened.

Now, can you imagine what a racket it will become if every kid in the world who is “abused” by his or her parents is eligible for asylum or legal status in some other country!

Some of the children who cross illegally into the U.S. can petition for legal status. According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, those seeking asylum or who can demonstrate they were abused or abandoned by their parents in their native country can be eligible.

The truth is that very few (none most likely!) are returned to their home country.  At 18 (or sooner to “relatives”) they are simply released into America and make up the “Dreamer” population where some legal clinic takes up their case (so you can pay for their college educations too!).

There is more in the Fox News story, it is worth reading the whole thing.

By typing ‘unaccompanied minors’ into our search function, you will find all of our previous coverage of the subject.

The graph is from The Migrationist website.  It is not clear to me exactly where are all the thousands of kids who are “apprehended” but not in the care of ORR go—are they all just released to relatives?