In a sketchy scheme, six non-governmental organizations have been assigned the task of sorting through the tens of thousands of asylum seekers that President Trump successfully kept in Mexico (so they wouldn’t bring the Chinese Virus into the US as they waited for their asylum claims to be processed) to determine which ones get to enter the US now.
But, critics, like a top ACLU attorney says:
“The government cannot farm out the asylum system.”
Biden administration taps humanitarian groups to pick asylum-seekers to allow into country
SAN DIEGO — The Biden administration has quietly tasked six humanitarian groups with recommending which migrants should be allowed to stay in the U.S. instead of being rapidly expelled from the country under federal pandemic-related powers that block people from seeking asylum.
The groups will determine who is most vulnerable in Mexico, and their criteria has not been made public. It comes as large numbers of people are crossing the southern border and as the government faces intensifying pressure to lift the public health powers instituted by former President Donald Trump and kept in place by President Joe Biden during the coronavirus pandemic.
Several members of the consortium spoke to The Associated Press about the criteria and provided details of the system that have not been previously reported. The government is aiming to admit to the country up to 250 asylum-seekers a day who are referred by the groups and is agreeing to that system only until July 31. By then, the consortium hopes the Biden administration will have lifted the public health rules, though the government has not committed to that.
So far, a total of nearly 800 asylum-seekers have been let in since May 3, and members of the consortium say there is already more demand than they can meet.
Think about this, three of the organizations are not even US-based organizations!
So we have foreign non-profit groups deciding who can enter the US?
The groups have not been publicly identified except for the International Rescue Committee, a global relief organization. The others are London-based Save the Children; two U.S.-based organizations, HIAS and Kids in Need of Defense; and two Mexico-based organizations, Asylum Access and the Institute for Women in Migration, according to two people with direct knowledge who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not intended for public release.
How did the Harris/Biden gang decide who would play God? It is a secret!
Critics of the new selection processes say too much power is vested in a small number of organizations and that the effort is shrouded in secrecy without a clear explanation of how the groups were chosen. Critics also say there are no assurances that the most vulnerable or deserving migrants will be chosen to seek asylum.
Some consortium members are concerned that going public may cause their offices in Mexico to be mobbed by asylum-seekers, overwhelming their tiny staffs and exposing them to potential threats and physical attacks from extortionists and other criminals.
[….]
Lee Gelernt
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said advocacy groups are in “a very difficult position because they need to essentially rank the desperation” of people, but he insisted it was temporary. The government, he said, “cannot farm out the asylum system.”
Migration experts not involved in the process have questioned how the groups determine who is eligible.
“It has been murky,” said Jessica Bolter, an analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute who believes the administration is trying to quietly be humane without encouraging more people to come, a balancing act she doubts will succeed.
Noyes, a career diplomat, seems a surprising pick.
I was fully expecting a hardened Leftwing ideologue like Obama’s former Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), Anne Richard, or possibly the insider Lawrence Bartlett, a bureaucrat, who wouldn’t have a long learning curve.
And, then another likely choice could have been Mark Hetfield of HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), but he would have to take a hefty pay cut if selected and confirmed.
I expected Anne Richard to be back joining the others of Obama’s orbit populating the O-man’s third term.
Indeed the lobbying arm of the refugee industry was pushing hard for someone with “robust experience” in the complex workings of the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) so they can immediately get to work to bring in as many refugees as possible before Trump, or someone with Trump’s concerns about mass immigration, returns to the White House.
Know that President Trump never filled this position and he likely would have not been able to get someone (who might do any good for us) confirmed.
Julieta Valls Noyes
Of course, it is possible that Ambassador Noyes is experienced with the USRAP, but I’ve never heard of her. And, maybe that is the point—Biden wants to get someone past the Senate confirmation that looks and sounds reasonable.
LOL! But that can’t make the refugee pushers happy unless they plan to manipulate her as they did George Bush’s recess appointment Ellen Sauerbrey who they came to love.
Here is Foreign Policy on Biden’s expected choice to head PRM:
Biden to Tap Career Diplomat as Top Official on Refugee Policy
U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to name three new nominees to senior diplomatic and foreign aid positions, including the top State Department official on refugee issues, a White House official told Foreign Policy.
Julieta Valls Noyes, a veteran career diplomat, is expected to be nominated as the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration—a senior post that could play a key role in the Biden administration’s efforts to reverse Trump-era sharp restrictions on the number of refugees entering the United States. Noyes, the acting director of the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute and former ambassador to Croatia, is a first-generation American whose parents entered the United States as refugees from Cuba.
[….]
If confirmed by the Senate, all three nominees would join agencies widely perceived as hollowed out and damaged by politicization and mismanagement under former President Donald Trump.
The State Department’s top post overseeing refugee issues was left unfilled during the Trump administration’s four years in power, though lower-level officials assumed the job in an acting capacity.
Several senior career diplomats in the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration who defended refugees were reassigned or temporarily sidelined during a shake-up in 2018 as the Trump administration worked to slash refugee admissions to record lows.
Refugee lobbyists at the Refugee Council USAwanted someone with “deep understanding” of “complex issues.” See their letter to Biden here.
Nothing less than “robust experience” is acceptable. (I want to barf every time they use the word “robust!”)
Refugee advocates had been urging Biden for several weeks to swiftly nominate someone to the population, refugees, and migration assistant secretary role. In April, John Slocum, interim executive director of Refugee Council USA, a nonprofit advocacy organization, sent Biden a letter obtained by Politico urging him to pick an assistant secretary “who has a deep understanding of the complex issues surrounding forced displacement, refugee resettlement, and other forms of humanitarian protection.”
She is the daughter of Cuban refugees and we know most Cubans sensibly loathe communism and loved Donald Trump in 2020.
She also has strong (we might say robust!) feelings about the Islamic State as well. Here in 2014:
“The financing of this barbaric organisation allows it to continue its operations. What we have to do is degrade its abilities and ultimately to destroy it.”[7]
Hmmmm! Sounds like something Donald Trump would say.
If confirmed, the biggest problem she could have is to avoid being rolled by the career bureaucrats and their contractor pals***.
As soon as the contractors begin to weigh-in, we will have a better idea of who this woman is and how she might run the program as Biden promises it will soon be on steroids to admit 125,000 refugees beginning on October first.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are also paid to find locations for the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
At this very moment they are all out scouting for new, fresh territory in which to place their refugee clients. See Winchester, VA.
As the Chinese menace recedes, the invasion of Europe picks up its pace.
My invasion of Europe archiveneeds some attention and over the weekend Jihad Watchhad an informative piece about my favorite country after America—Hungary. (Poland comes in a close third!)
Hungary says border fence worked, urges EU to refocus on migration as illegal Muslim migration attempts triple
Hungary has seen a sharp rise in illegal Muslim migrants trying to enter the country over the last year — triple the number than in the previous year. The government now wants to see a refocus on controlling illegal Muslim migration into the EU, since all attention has been focused on COVID.
The influx of illegals has not stopped, and is now escalating even more as COVID recedes. Areas of the EU, especially the UK, Italy, Spain and Greece, have been easy-access target countries. Zoltan Kovacs, the Orban government’s long-serving Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Relations, stated:
By erecting a border fence along our borders with Serbia and Croatia – again, that’s not only our frontier, it’s an external border of Europe’s Schengen Area – Hungary showed the world in 2015 that it is possible to stop the influx of illegals on land. A few years later, under the leadership of former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, Italy effectively put an end to migration at sea. Other member states, and most EU institutions, however, seem hell-bent on turning the other way and letting these immigrants in.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban once said:
We don’t see these people as Muslim refugees. We see them as Muslim invaders…For example, to arrive from Syria in Hungary, you have to cross four countries, all of which are not as rich as Germany, but stable. So they are not running for their lives there already.
The vast majority of Muslim migrants still entering the EU are economic migrants jumping the queue. Migrants have been steadily flowing into Italy, and 8,000 Moroccan migrants swarmed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in the space of three days (6,000 in one day alone).
Build more shelters! Sounds just like what Biden is doing.
Instead of supporting limits on mass migration, politicians from Angela Merkel’s party in Germany instead advised Spain and Italy to build more migrant centers.
Globalists continue to erode their countries’ democracies, neglect national security and demonstrate little regard for the rule of law as they continue to support open-door immigration.
It is no wonder that citizens throw their hands up in disgust with their so-called leaders in the GOP.
I can’t take the latest from the Tennessee Republicans seriously because for years they have been making the right noises about states rights when it comes to Washington dumping refugees and illegal aliens on the backs of their taxpayers, but somehow never make any headway. Why is that?
It is impossible for me to go back over the leadership Tennessee did display for a brief period when the legislature filed a Tenth Amendment case against the federal government, but then after backing away from it, watched their Republican Governor, Bill Lee, stick his finger in Trump’s eye when Trump attempted to give the states a modicum of say in the distribution of refugees.
For ambitious readers, see my ‘Tennessee’ archives.
Last week we reported on the news from Chattanooga:
Tennessee legislature forms GOP committee to take on unaccompanied minors, refugee resettlement
As recent news stories continue to highlight the arrival of unaccompanied migrant youth in Tennessee — a practice that has gone on since before President Joe Biden took office — top Republicans in the state are seizing on the issue to call for more transparency from the federal government.
On Friday, the Republican speakers of the state House and Senate announced they were forming a legislative study committee to determine how many migrant children are being permanently relocated to the state.
Apparently conflating the recent influx of migrants with refugees, a separate category of individuals Tennessee has for years received following a vetting process, the legislature has formed a “Joint Study Committee on Refugee Issues.” [The UACs are NOT refugees. They are illegal aliens!–ed]
McNally
[….]
“When the federal government abdicates its responsibility to control our borders, states must step in,” Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said in a statement.
“With this study committee, we affirm that there is a clear and compelling state interest in a sane immigration policy.”
[That is really some tough talk wouldn’t you say! Do you feel better now?—ed]
It’s unclear when the committee will begin meeting or whether legislators intend to take any binding action during a special session or during the next legislative session in January.
Gov. Bill Lee’s announcement in December 2019 that Tennessee would continue accepting refugees, despite former President Donald Trump saying states would not have to do so, created tension with some Republican members of the legislature.
[….]
WCRB-TV in Chattanooga reported earlier this month that a group of migrant youth flew into Wilson Air Center in the early hours of May 14 before boarding buses to various Southeastern cities.
After outrage from Republican leaders about the news, The Times Free Press reported this week that the Lee administration had approved a residential child care license in May 2020 for an organization contracting with the federal government to house unaccompanied minors in Chattanooga.
[….]
Mostly teenagers headed to buses in Chattanooga.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, 717 unaccompanied children were brought to Tennessee between Oct. 1 and March 21,a period that spans both Biden and Trump’s time in office. In Nashville, that number was 290.
The office did not provide to The Tennessean information on how many unaccompanied minors were brought to the state since March 21, nor did it answer questions about reports of unaccompanied minors flying into Chattanooga.
As for the transparency issue, I have been reporting for years about the UAC (Unaccompanied Alien Children, a term the Biden team has dropped) data housed at the Office of Refugee Resettlementfor all to see.
Demanding transparency (while fuming!) is a wonderful way for politicians to make their constituents think they are doing something without really doing anything!
The Tennesseanmight want to have another look today because the latest data has been posted. Tennessee is now up to 1,111 from 717.
Just a reminder to one and all, as much as it pains me to say it, Biden is no where near Trump’s levels of UACs sent out to states. See the data for yourself, here. Tennessee received over 2,000 in Trump’s worst year.
Top County data is here. Again, these are just sponsored UACs. The numbers do not reflect all of those still in custody.
And, if you are keeping track, here are the top ten states welcoming the Unaccompanied Alien Children, who will be ‘sponsored’ until they are 18 at which time they disappear into the woodwork of Anytown, USA, never to be heard from again unless and until they commit a crime.
Editor: I started this post yesterday, but couldn’t finish it as RRW went down for awhile making me very nervous. I don’t know what that was about, but it seems to be working fine today. Sure hope you didn’t experience any problems visiting.
I told you back in January that Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota had filed for bankruptcy after getting mired in some affordable housing scheme that is too complex to bother with here.
In the process they are losing their fancy and expensive building, a building I saw in my 2016 travels to the state.
So the assumption was that refugee flow into the state was going to be halted at least for awhile.
You might recall that North Dakota’s Republican governor did NOT support President Trump’s effort at reforming the Refugee Admissions Program by allowing local and state governments to have some say in the process of determining the target sites for resettlement.
That brings us to the latest breaking news as Fargo’s Valley News Live says that refugees are being placed in Fargo:
FARGO, N.D. (Valley News Live) – Fargo City Commissioner Dave Piepkorn said Tuesday that he sat in on a phone call in which Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services stated that they had resettled approximately 25 refugees in Fargo-Moorhead. Deputy Mayor Piepkorn shared concern that he had not been made aware of the resettlement and he questioned whether the City of Fargo was notified prior to rehoming the refugees.
Too funny! NOT! The woman who ran LSSND as it was financially crashing is now working for the governor!
Questions have been raised as to how the action was coordinated. Prior to filing bankruptcy, Lutheran Social Services (LSS) was tasked with refugee resettlement in the state.
Former LSS Director, Jessica Thomasson, now works as the Executive Policy Director at ND Department of Human Services.
The country of origin of the refugees was not made known. In a recent interview with Chris Berg, Gov. Burgum stated that he was open to resettling refugees in the state but he was unaware of any plan to resettle undocumented immigrants from the southern border.
Be sure to watch Chris Berg’s interview with Fargo City Commissioner Dave Piepkorn where Piepkorn says he doubts anyone was notified and mentioned specifically the school system.
In response to Deputy Mayor Piepkorn….
President Trump’s failed reform initiative sought to give local governments an opportunity to review plans for resettlement in their jurisdictions with a yes or no sign-off, governors would also have to approve or disapprove the plan.
Shockingly, most Republican governors, including North Dakota’s Doug Burgum, did not back the President’s efforts to shore-up their Tenth Amendment states’ rights.
Here is one of many, many posts on the feckless Republican governors:
At present local governments are supposed to be consulted, but I will bet that the resettlement agency only talked to friendly “stakeholders” in the process of preparing an “abstract” that must be submitted to the US State Department in advance of placements in a given location.
Any elected official should be able to request permission to attend a stakeholder meeting and be permitted to see a recent R & P Abstract prepared by a local resettlement contractor.
Of course, in the case of ND (with no agency operating at the moment), one would most likely go to the state’s Department of Human Services for the most recent Abstract and a schedule of stakeholder meetings.
LOL! that would be the agency now headed by former LSS CEO Thomasson.
One final note: For years we were able to see which refugees went to which towns and cities on an almost daily basis and all the way back to 2002. That database is no longer available. It was shuttered during Trump’s tenure. The feds claimed the website is being overhauled.
Except for the most recent arrivals in the present fiscal year, we are left completely in the dark about the numbers, nationalities and resettlement locations of thousands and thousands of refugee arrivals.
In a sketchy scheme, six non-governmental organizations have been assigned the task of sorting through the tens of thousands of asylum seekers that President Trump successfully kept in Mexico (so they wouldn’t bring the Chinese Virus into the US as they waited for their asylum claims to be processed) to determine which ones get to enter the US now.
One final note: For years we were able to see which refugees went to which towns and cities on an almost daily basis and all the way back to 2002. That database is no longer available. It was shuttered during Trump’s tenure. The feds claimed the website is being overhauled.