This is yet another reason that Congress should review the entire US Refugee Program with an eye to trashing it or at least reforming it.
How is it that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement is in the business of housing illegal alien minors (so-called unaccompanied children) in the first place, let alone be in the position of facilitating abortions when the kids get pregnant?
They are not refugees!
Here is the story at Politico which I haven’t the time or energy to extensively analyze and comment on.
The gist of it is that the present ORR Director is saying the feds are not going to facilitate abortions for ‘minors’ in their care while the previous Obama Director (Bob Carey) did.
Of course all those interviewed for the story are lined up against Trump’s appointee.
AUSTIN, Texas — The Trump administration is preventing an undocumented, pregnant teenager detained in a Brownsville refugee shelter from getting an abortion in a policy shift with big implications for hundreds of other pregnant, unaccompanied minors held in such shelters.
She is not the first to be stopped, according to advocates who work with undocumented teenagers.
For the last seven months, the Health and Human Services Department has intervened to prevent abortions sought by girls at federally funded shelters, even in cases of rape and incest and when the teen had a way to pay for the procedure. The agency has instead forced minors to visit crisis pregnancy centers, religiously affiliated groups that counsel women against having abortions, according to documents obtained by POLITICO, interviews with sources involved in the Brownsville case and those familiar with the agency’s policy.
In some cases, a senior HHS official has personally visited or called pregnant teens to try to talk them out of ending their pregnancies.
“There is a pattern of unconstitutional overreach of power in a minor’s abortion decision,” said the teen’s lawyer, Brigitte Amiri of the ACLU.
The ACLU brought suit on Friday on behalf of the 17-year-old in the Brownsville shelter….
[….]
“What’s especially disturbing for us about this case, is that the child is in the custody of ORR [the Office of Refugee Resettlement], so she has no other choice, and she is stuck in a form of custody or detention,” said Michelle Brane of the Women’s Refugee Commission.
The “child” in question arrived illegally across our border, we expect her (all of them!) to be held in custody! But, that custody needs to be under a different federal agency—not one whose mission is supposed to be to care for refugees, not to care for illegal aliens!
By the way, you need to know that at least two federal contractors—the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service—receive money from you to take care of some of the ‘children.’ The UACs cost the US taxpayer at least $1 billion a year.