Reader Bruce sent us this great timeline prepared by the blog—The Last Refuge. Someone did a lot of work!
I would just like to add a 2004 “backgrounder” by Don Barnett published by the Center for Immigration Studies. We posted on Barnett’s report last month, here. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in Health and Human Services and their contractors knew for some time that the rush on the border was coming.
In fact, in June of last year we attended a Pennsylvania meeting of the ORR and its contractors and they were predicting large numbers of ‘unaccompanied alien children’ in future years. I wondered what they knew that we didn’t know.
The contractors are paid to either care for the children in contractor-run facilities or find them foster care (here is just one such attempt to find foster care).
Addendum: Just so I don’t lose this link, here are some more stats on the cost and other stats from ORR via News5.