While Australia and New Zealand increase the number of detainees—migrants who have arrived illegally on their shores and asked for asylum, in the US the Open Borders lobbyists, including federal refugee contractors at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, if it were up to them, want no one detained.
Is there (more) money in it for the contractors? That is what I want to know!
Keegan Hamilton (a freelance reporter from NYC who writes for the Village Voice) has picked the wrong poster boy for his detention sob story published at the Houston Press!
Hussein Mohamed, the Somali star of the story, had a legal pathway to America (see yesterday’s post, 3,708 Somalis came to the US legally in the first six months of this fiscal year). He was living safely in Kenya (not Somalia) when he launched his trek to America. And, it strains credulity that he had a life savings large enough to pay traffickers the cash needed for his half way around the world travels to the Mexican border.
From the Houston Press ‘For Many Refugees, the Journey to America Ends in a Cold Jail Cell’ (wahhhhhh!):
Hussein Mohamed took a hard road to America. Born into a minority clan in a nation rife with ethnic conflict, the boyish 24-year-old with gangly limbs and intense brown eyes describes fleeing his village in Somalia in 2012 after gunmen threatened to kill him. Mohamed says he was forced to quit his jobs as an English teacher and taxi driver and escape to neighboring Kenya. After making his way to South Africa, he forked over his life savings to human smugglers, who shipped him across the Atlantic to Brazil and guided him north through the jungles of South and Central America into Mexico. [I bet if you gave this one paragraph to the average American and asked if he should be detained while his asylum claim is adjudicated, 90% of those asked would say ‘incarcerate him.’—ed]
When he finally arrived at a border crossing in Brownsville, Texas, this past summer, Mohamed thought he’d safely reached the end of a harrowing ten-month journey. He had no inkling of the ordeal awaiting him on the other side of the Rio Grande.
Mohamed approached a U.S. Border Patrol agent and recounted his story. He explained that he wanted to seek asylum, a classification of refugee status granted to people who arrive in the United States having fled persecution in their homeland. He was immediately handcuffed and placed in immigration detention: a cold, cramped cell in a privately owned and operated prison facility. Soon after, along with hundreds of other detainees, he was herded onto a cargo plane and transferred without explanation to a jail in Newark, New Jersey. [Newark—eeek!—ed]
Then we are told about his dreams of a job and a family in California—blah! blah! blah!
Instead, he will likely be deported, shipped back to the war-torn country on the Horn of Africa he worked so hard to escape. Mohamed’s request for asylum was denied because he lacks a passport or other documents to confirm his identity. [He could be al-Shabaab—ed] He has filed an appeal, and his detention ticks on indefinitely. [He is safe and is fed, right!—ed]
There are no statutory limits to the amount of time a non-citizen like Mohamed may be held in immigration detention. When the process goes smoothly, asylum seekers tend to be released in a matter of weeks. Many end up imprisoned for much longer. [Obviously for a reason!—ed]
So how many ‘poor souls’ like Mohamed are in detention? A measly 6,000 (in the last three years) out of the tens of thousands who arrive each year asking for asylum.
Approximately 6,000 survivors of torture — exiles from Iran, Myanmar, Syria and other nations with brutal regimes — were detained in immigration jails while seeking asylum over the past three years, according to a 2013 report by the Center for Victims of Torture.
Now, are you ready for it! Below is the most revealing paragraph in this whole pathetic propaganda story! The Lutherans have a contract to get asylum seekers out of detention and house them in your neighborhoods.
The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIARS oops! LIRS) is a federal refugee contractor (96% of their income comes from you!) and they seem now to have parlayed that role into one where they are the guardians of people like Hussein Mohamed in several US cities. Recently they lobbied the administration for a relaxation of detention for illegal aliens, are they looking for future ‘clients’ for their ‘services’?
Thirty two detainees have been released into the care of LIRS (and signed up for welfare) in the last 20 days in the trial project! They say they aren’t being paid yet for this effort (although remember 96% of their funds already comes from taxpayers, did Keegan know that? Did he ask how they would pay for this pilot project?), they want to convince Congress that this is what should be done—halfway houses you might call them—for thousands eventually. LOL! Like any good business they are expanding their client base!
Though the political climate looks bleak for advocates of asylum reform, an ongoing pilot project offers a glimmer of hope. The project allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at facilities in New York City, Newark, San Antonio, Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul to release select detainees seeking asylum into a program coordinated by the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. As of March 31, the program has helped secure temporary housing and social services for 32 people, including survivors of torture, victims of domestic abuse and LGBT individuals, all of whom would otherwise have remained jailed indefinitely.
Read it all, Keegan does eventually discuss the frauds in the asylum racket, but having chosen Hussein Mohamed (if that is his name because he came with no papers), he obviously thinks Mohamed (with the gangly limbs and intense brown eyes) can’t possibly be a fraud.