Governors Kim Reynolds of Iowa and Bill Lee of Tennessee want the Senate to hold hearings on what they see as an outrageous affront to states’ rights as the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement is flying Unaccompanied Alien Children (refugee wannabes) in and out of their states with no communication with the governor or state officials.
We all know that a Senate hearing is nothing but a useless piece of political theater that won’t accomplish smack, but these grandstanding Republican governors obviously think they can trick you into believing they are doing something!
Is it any wonder we have such disdain for Republican governors like Reynolds.
And, what makes me steam over this little temper tantrum by Reynolds and Lee is that they had a chance to take a stand for states’ rights on the issue of the federal government dumping refugees on states and communities back when Trump was attempting to give them more rights (actually give them the rights they are due under our US Constitution) and they snubbed their noses at him.
Trump was trying to give them a chance to say they needed a break from refugees being placed in their states by the feds and unelected non-profit group actors, and they turned him down.
19 migrant children had a layover in an Iowa airport. Gov. Kim Reynolds wants Congress to get answers
With no notice to the state, at least 19 unaccompanied children were transported in an overnight flight through Des Moines from California in April, Gov. Kim Reynolds confirmed Thursday, saying she wants to know more details.
After deplaning, the children were taken on two buses to be transported to various locations for unification, according to a Thursday news release from Reynolds’ office.
“We weren’t able to get any answers about why there were chartered planes coming in the middle of night — chartered buses — and unaccompanied minors removed from the plane and then transported outside of the state,” Reynolds told reporters Thursday.
[….]
In April, a total of 163 unaccompanied migrant children were released to sponsors in Iowa, according to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement statistics.
[….]
Good ol’ country boy, Lee with his pick ’em up truck.
Reynolds and Lee — who says unaccompanied minor children were brought to his state in May without any notification — wrote the joint letter to Grassley in support of the senator’s demands for a Senate Judiciary Hearing into the situation on the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
Gov. Bill Lee is asking the U.S. Senate to investigate the arrival of unaccompanied migrant children in Tennessee, a request that comes as the Republican governor continues to slam the Biden administration over a lack of transparency on the issue.
Lee and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a fellow Republican, sent the letter on Thursday to U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Grassley in April requested that Senate Democrats hold hearings to discuss the influx of migrants at the southern border since President Joe Biden took office.
Their demand for a hearing is easy.
Their demand for “transparency” is their way of making you, voting citizens of Iowa and Tennessee, think that they are doing something, but when given a chance to really take a stand for a state’s right to know who is being placed in their states by the feds, and have an opportunity to say no, they just didn’t have the guts.
Albeit it was a different type of ‘refugee’…they are all refugees now, right! This letter below is what Reynolds sent to Trump’s Secretary of State.
Notice no interest even in finding out who is coming and how many.
So why would the present administration think they had to confer with these heretofore ‘welcoming’ Republican governors?
Texas Governor Abbot wrote a detailed letter that ended with him not giving consent to refugees being placed by the feds in Texas for FY2020.
Both Kemp of Georgia and DeSantis of Florida remained silent.
Word is that the Trump people were very shocked and disappointed that most Republican governors turned down the President’s attempt to give them more say, to give them some modicum of states’ rights, in advance of a refugee drop.
If you are wondering whatever happened to that reform effort via a Trump executive order, the refugee resettlement contractors (below) sued and stopped the initiative dead in its tracks.
This is our problem—Republicans soft on not just legal immigration, but on illegal immigration too!
Lately I have been seeing news that as conservatives are escaping ‘woke’ states and looking for a safe state in which to make their home, Tennessee is mentioned as an option.
Well, not so fast! Don’t assume that just because Tennessee is the home of country music that it leaders are somehow conservative America Firsters!
It seems to me that they have a basket full of RINO Republicans that you wouldn’t know about unless you read Tennessee’s Dailyrollcall.com.
And, that reminds me, where is your state blog or website that is willing to go after state and local Republicans who have joined the Democrats’ death wish for America by opening our borders to all comers?
This is an update of my recent posts about how the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) are being secretively placed in Tennessee.
Bill Lee and Todd Gardenhire – The Foxes Guarding Our Immigration Hen House
Republican Governor Bill Lee thumbed his nose at Trump’s efforts to give states more say when refugees are placed by the feds in a state.
It’s bad enough that Bill Lee wants more legal immigration to Tennessee in the form of refugee resettlement. Never mind that it forces state taxpayers to pay both the state and federal cost of the voluntary federal program. Never mind that it violates the Tenth Amendment. And, never mind that it illegally usurps the exclusive power of the state legislature to appropriate state funds, and these aren’t even the worst aspects of Bill Lee’s avid support for the federal program.
Gardenhire has tried four times to magnetize the state by rewarding illegal alien students with taxpayer subsidized in-state college tuition. When he couldn’t get his first bill passed, he tried rewarding the recipients of Obama’s unconstitutional DACA program with in-state college tuition. And when that failed, he tried broadening the scope of his next bill to cover UACs – Unaccompanied Alien Children who generate huge profits for the cartels and other human smugglers.
The UACs enter the country illegally and Gardenhire believes they are the model students Tennessee taxpayers should support.
Gardenhire gets thoroughly worked over! Continue reading here.
And, I will ask again: Where is your state website or blog willing to do what the Dailyrollcallis doing in Tennessee?
For more than a dozen years (that is the time I’ve been following the US Refugee Admissions Program), I’ve watched the Open Borders propagandists and their media lackeys sell the idea that those mostly teenaged illegal alien border crossers that began flooding our southern border in massive waves during the Obama administration are legitimate refugees.
Legal (whether they are legitimate is another question) refugees are selected abroad (supposedly able to prove they are being persecuted) in a process that begins with the United Nations, the US State Department admits them with screening in advance by the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services provides funds for many of their initial needs.
Those nine federal contractors*** I’m always talking about are contracted and funded by the US State Department to settle them in your towns and cities and those nine receive additional grants and contracts from ORR to supposedly care for them for an initial three month period.
The ‘children’ we see being flown around the US, the ones who caused that recent uproar in Tennessee,here, came to our border, crossed it illegally and were then turned over to ORR and therein I believe is where the confusion began.
I believe, with no hard proof, that the Open Borders lobby wanted the ‘care’ of the children placed in the Office of Refugee Resettlement to further advance the idea to the media and to you, that the ‘children’ are legitimate refugees who would ultimately be entitled to all of the benefits legal refugees receive and thus ultimately acquire citizenship.
Coming back to bite them….
For all of these more than a dozen years I’ve watched this, the big nine, because they clearly want to see the most third worlders admitted to the US as possible, have supported the influx of UACs.
In my early years this was a surprise to me as I assumed the contractors would put the legal refugees they were committed (and contracted!) to care for ahead of any concerns for illegal aliens, but they don’t.
This year their lack of discernment has come back to bite them as Biden himself recognized (briefly) that funds for legal refugees were being consumed by the expensive care being provided to the illegal alien kids.
Here at the Detroit News, in an article about the “decimated refugee infrastructure” we learned that indeed money for legal refugees was being shifted to the illegal ‘children’:
When Biden initially announced he would keep the Trump-era refugee admissions cap of 15,000 — before backtracking amid widespread outcry — he hinted that resources needed at the border were being drawn from the refugee resettlement program.
“The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people,” he said in April. “We couldn’t do two things at once.”
Funding for the Unaccompanied Children Program, which manages custody of child migrants at the border, and the HHS portion of the refugee admissions program, which reimburses states for refugee-related expenses, are indeed part of a single appropriation within HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement and can be internally redirected.
Of course, this money shortage won’t last long as the Biden team will simply allocate billions more (and probably already has) to accelerate the process of changing America by changing the people.
Unforeseen consequences of years of conflation….
But, perhaps an unforeseen result of years of selling the media and the public on the false notion that the UACs (Biden says we aren’t supposed to call them Unaccompanied Alien Children) are legal refugees is that furious tax paying Americans are going to (already are!) lump the illegal alien teens in with legal refugees making it much harder for the contractors to sell communities with the idea of welcoming more legal refugees.
In other words, most Americans think too many are coming no matter what category they fall within.
For those of you who have gotten this far in this morning’s post and are thinking that you don’t give a damn about the bureaucratic details and are saying to yourselves—we are admitting too many migrants of all stripes while paying for them out of our wallets—stop reading now.
Otherwise, know this, and keep reading.
Even our so-called political leaders don’t know what they are talking about and are adding to the confusion, or dodging and weaving.
In my post on Fridayabout the Tennessee uproar, the conflation issue raised its ugly head as politicians scurried to look like they were doing something to push back against the Biden migrant dump.
Good for two writers to begin to unravel the mess.
Green apparently fell for the “conflation.” Editor: I sure would like to see a little better preparation by a Tea Party endorsed candidate. Some of the best experts in the country on refugee resettlement are right there in his own back yard. Here is an idea! Call them before looking foolish.
A lack of legal understanding by a lawmaker is of concern.
Jumping on the bandwagon is US Rep. Mark Green who apparently thinks he is doing something with a bill that will go nowhere in Nancy Pelosi’s House.
For politicians, it is the outrage that matters!
Pat Hamsa writing at Tennessee’s Daily Roll Call calls out Green for adding to the confusion by referring to the UACs as refugees!
Is Mark Green Conflating Illegal Aliens With Refugees?
It’s anybody’s best guess why Green’s explanation of his bill, H.R.3500, doesn’t match what he’s telling folks it’s supposed to do.
Green’s press release about his new bill, “Leads Fight to Block Refugee Resettlement Without State Consent”states in part:
“Last week, in the dead of night, unaccompanied migrant children were flown into Tennessee without our approval or consent. I am alarmed that the Biden Administration would use taxpayer resources to transport refugees into Tennessee without transparency or coordination with state authorities. This overreach and secrecy has to stop.”
In a recent interview with WRCBtv Chattanooga, Green said that he drafted the bill in response to what happened in Chattanooga and that “this bill would mandate permission of the state before they move illegal migrants to Tennessee.”
Then why does he call them refugees in the headline to his press release?
I am amazed at the amount of real research a writer at a local Tennessee paper put into this story attempting to unravel the conflation confusion. It is so rare to see links to solid information to back the reporting.
From Wyatt Massey at the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Massey points out that Governor Lee is on record supporting more legal refugees to Tennessee while acting outraged by the arrival of the ‘children,’ even as during his tenure, the Chattanooga facility for the ‘children’ was licensed.
Refugee, migrant shelters for children referenced in Tennessee debate are separate under federal rules
Controversy in the past week about the movement of migrant children through Tennessee and into a Chattanooga shelter licensed by the state in May 2020 has led to confusion about the immigration status of the children housed in Southeast Tennessee and those video recorded exiting a plane in Chattanooga.
Gov. Bill Lee opposed Trump’s efforts to give states a greater say when the feds placed refugees in a state. He wants more legal refugees, but is distancing himself from the very unpopular drop-off of UACs, so it is to his advantage to make a distinction between the two programs.
Gov. Bill Lee has previously been criticized for his strong words against President Joe Biden administration policies related to the unaccompanied minors after announcing in 2019 the state would continue resettling refugees.
[….]
The governor faced criticism from some conservatives at the time for continuing to accept refugees.Lee cited his Christian faith, calling it a “moral obligation” and a “biblical mandate” for the state to remain in the program.
This is a separate program from federal efforts to care for unaccompanied children who, after they cross the border, are initially in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. ICE and CBP have three days to move the children away from a temporary border shelter to a shelter run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Children stay in ORR shelters, like the one in Chattanooga, for about a month while caseworkers locate and vet a sponsor, usually a relative, to take custody of the child until immigration proceedings can begin.
[….]
On May 19, WRCB aired video of children getting off a plane at the Wilson Air Center to be transported to shelters or placed with sponsors throughout the region. The video sparked outrage from members of Tennessee’s congressional delegation and Lee, who said he had declined a Biden administration request to house unaccompanied minors in the state.
However, documents from the state show Lee’s own Department of Children’s Services licensed the shelter near downtown Chattanooga to house “unaccompanied minors” in May 2020.
On Monday, the Times Free Press asked Lee why his administration approved the license for the facility, conducted monthly inspections and issued monthly reports if the governor was then raising concerns about a lack of transparency over migrant children and saying he declined a federal request to house unaccompanied children.
Although the Times Free Press asked specifically about the migrant children, the governor said the Times Free Press was conflating unaccompanied minors with refugees.
Keep reading. Massey even digs into the finances of the contractor, the Baptiste Group from Georgia, that is housing the UACs in Tennessee. Good work!
Now, after all that, if you made it this far, I suspect you are saying:
Conflation or not there is just too darn much poverty, cultural conflict and potential crime and terrorism being brought into the country and I don’t want to pay for it!
***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 alsopaid to find locationsfor 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.
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.
Biden Wants to Prepare for Future Surges of Unaccompanied Minors
Okay, that news is bad enough, but it gave me a chuckle to see how they are spinning the present surge of illegal alien kids with the arrival of Biden in the Oval Office—just happens from time to time, move along, nothing to see!
It is just a normal cycle and we must be better prepared by spending more of your tax dollars for housing for the mostly teenaged boys. That apparently is the talking point coming from this White House.
If you missed my post the other day about planes landing in the night in Tennessee, check it out here:
One good thing about the Tennessee expose’ is that the secrecy angle has brought the Administration’s movement of the ‘children’ to the media’s attention, but it has been going on for years.
We see that WRCB-TV in Chattanooga has an update. I’m happy that they are trying to get more accurate information on the Tennessee situation by using data at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, but I have a bone to pick with them about their headline. Here is my complaint:
The Unaccompanied Alien Children are illegal aliens NOT REFUGEES.
They aren’t even legitimate asylum seekers unless, and until, they file an asylum claim.
WRBC-TV:
What happens next in the refugee resettlement process of migrant children?
It’s been more than a week since four planes carrying migrant children landed in Chattanooga.
Similar operations are happening across the country. Some of those children are being cared for in a group home, but hundreds of others left the airport on a bus.
Channel 3 learned what happens next in the refugee resettlement process, and the number of children relying on sponsors in Tennessee.
From October to March, 66 unaccompanied children were released to a sponsor in Hamilton County.
While the federal government looks for a sponsor, children are taken to one of about 200 facilities across twenty-two states. A child therapist says this process can take a toll on the children involved.
There are about 200 facilities across the country where unaccompanied children are being housed.
One of them is in Chattanooga, which can house between 30 and 50 minors.
As of May 13, there are around 20,000 kids in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, nationwide.Their average stay is 31 days.
More on that shortly…
But, back to the Pew articleI mentioned above. Get ready for another federal agency for the ‘children.’
The Biden administration wants to create a permanent federal workforce to provide housing for unaccompanied migrant children during surges like the one that began in January and continues to overwhelm authorities.
Mayorkas is not wrong. Surges have occurred periodically, but Trump did get a handle on the problem toward the end of his presidency.
“We all know that surges arise periodically,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during a congressional hearing earlier this month. “They arose in 2019. They arose in 2016, in 2014 and well before that. Migration is a very dynamic and fluid challenge that we have faced for many, many years.”
Mayorkas said during the hearing that DHS is exploring options, but the agency did not respond to a Stateline request for more detail.
Currently, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, houses the children by relying on state-licensed contractors. But Republican governors in Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming recently blocked contractors in their states from taking in the children, claiming that the unaccompanied kids would displace those already in state foster care or limit states’ ability to make new placements.
However, there currently are no federally funded long-term foster care providers for unaccompanied minors in any of those five states.
The Pew article goes on to say that Senator Rob Portman said the previous administration had no surges, but I am sad to say he is wrong. They might not have had a surge at the end of Trump’s time in office, but they sure did have a surge earlier as you will see below.
I know it isn’t what we want to see, but Donald Trump presided over the largest surge year so far.
For perspective, in 2003, when ORR became the agency in charge of UACs, there were 8,000 arriving illegally that year.
And, so here is my big question:
Since over 70% of the ‘childrenare ages 15-17, what happens to them when they age-out as they turn 18? Tens of thousands of Trump’s UACs likely already aged out. Where are they? Why does no one ask? Are they simply loose in your towns and counties? I think so!
And, see that the Left-leaning Migration Policy Institute is critical of the Biden team’s handling of the mess. Are they helping set the narrative that an entire new bureaucratic structure is the only answer to the border crisis?
