Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett calls for attorneys to step up for the ‘children.’
Unaccompanied minors in Montgomery County who left Central America urgently need pro bono lawyers to help them stay in the U.S., county officials and area organization leaders said.
Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett said Monday at a press conference that the county cannot turn the minors away and needs attorneys “to help us help them.”
“We need to act and we need to act in an urgent manner,” he said to a room that included about 20 lawyers interested in taking on the task.
The children and their guardians need lawyers to help them navigate legal processes that could lead to a green card or a status that will help children stay in the U.S. and away from hardships they fled.
There are nearly 1,200 unaccompanied minors in the county, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.
They say they are going for a determination in most cases that involve abuse the “children” got at home (Special Immigrant Juveniles Status) and not asylum. So I guess all the teenager has to say is that Mom or Dad beat him up (most are teenaged boys) and he gets to live in America!
Read on and know that Catholic Charities is funded through your tax dollars for their legal work! They got Obama Money!
See our extensive archive on ‘unaccompanied minors’ going back several years, here.
Editor: I mentioned yesterday that I want to try to say less in each post and do more posts each day, is that working out for you? Too many e-mails? BTW, I don’t send e-mails. If you subscribe, wordpress does it automatically. In a few days we will be having a hiatus in posting as I travel to St. Louis to speak on the refugee program and where it has gone wrong.
ORR Director Eskinder Negash has penned his last ‘Year in Review’ at the federal agency’s website.
Negash, a former refugee, came to the federal job from his previous employment as a federal ‘non-profit’ contractor. I’m guessing he will be replaced with yet another contractor moving from grant recipient to becoming the giver of federal grants and contracts. Photo: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/07/top-obama-official-defends-open-borders-tells-conference-jesus-was-a-refugee/
According to Ryan Lovelace writing at National Review Online, Negash resigned his job on the eve of a Congressional hearing on the placement of Unaccompanied Alien Children in the wake of the border surge this past summer.
Here is how Negash’s letter introducing the ‘Year in Review’ begins. [This will be the first of several posts on the review that I plan to write, starting with this one about the “children.”–ed]
Dear colleagues and friends,
In FY2014, the United States welcomed refugees from 67 countries across the globe, and for the second year in a row, the highest admissions were from refugees from Iraq and Burma, accounting for more than 56,000 (81%) of all arrivals. Iraqi refugees continued to suffer from secondary displacement—and in some cases, tertiary displacement—as the civil war in Syria rages on.
For the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), two thousand fourteen was a historic year, with a mass influx of unaccompanied children from Central America that totaled close to 58,000 children by year’s end—more than twice the number received in FY2013, and nearly the sum of the previous five years combined.
This influx of children expanded the overall population served by ORR and its partners to approximately 185,000 new arrivals in Fiscal Year 2014, comprised of refugees and asylees, Special Immigrant Visa holders, Cuban/Haitian Entrants and Parolees, victims of Human Trafficking, and Unaccompanied Children (UC). [See Negash’s previous ‘Year in Review’and note that we are up 40,000 or so “served” by ORR—ed]
From the more detailed report for 2014 (emphasis is mine):
Unaccompanied Children
In FY2014, the unanticipated rate and referral numbers of Unaccompanied Children (UC) surpassed program planning, physical capacity and staffing, and stretched funding authorization at an historic rate for the United States. In total, ORR placed 57,496 children in 124 facilities across 15 states. In May and June alone, ORR received 19,628 children for placement, representing 34% of the annual total for FY2014.
During the height of the summer influx, ORR coordinated with the Department of Defense (DoD) to utilize three DoD installations (Fort Sill in OK, Port Hueneme Naval Base in Ventura, CA, and Joint Base San Antonio (Lackland) in San Antonio, TX). ORR and its partners worked tirelessly throughout the summer influx, addressing emergent medical issues and implementing protocols to prevent backlogs in placements, to ensure that the children received appropriate medical screening and care. Faced with unprecedented numbers of children arriving at DHS border patrol stations faster than space could be found in the network to accommodate them, the team worked tirelessly and creatively around the clock to clear the backlogs at over-crowded border patrol stations, and move the children quickly and safely into appropriate shelter beds. ORR is grateful for the assistance of HHS, DHS, and the White House, and most importantly, to the Department of Defense which was instrumental in helping ORR attend to the critical protection needs of the children, by providing temporary shelter on the three bases.
In simple numbers,
~two-thirds of children referred to ORR in FY2014 were male
~21% were 12 years of age or younger [79% are teens—ed]
~96% of all referrals came from three countries: Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala
~Overall bed capacity increased by more than 70%
Looking ahead to FY2015, it is difficult to project how many children may arrive, but ORR staff and partners are working diligentlyto create surge capacity and medical plans; continue streamlining program policies and procedures; reform post-release and home study services; ensure adequate staffing and oversight, and remain flexible to accommodate seasonal patterns of referrals that are subject to change at any time.
Look for future posts on the ‘Review.’
Go here for all of our posts going back several years on ‘unaccompanied minors.’ By the way, first they were ‘unaccompanied minors,’ then ‘unaccompanied alien minors,’ then they became ‘unaccompanied alien children,’ and finally now ‘unaccompanied children’ as the political correctness police dropped the word “alien.” They are decidedly NOT refugees which is what Obama and the contractors are working really hard to make you believe.
The parasitic bird out-competes the host bird’s young. http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8645000/8645158.stm
Do you know about “brood parasites” in nature—you know, like the clever Cuckoo bird that lays its eggs in another bird’s nest, so that the unsuspecting host bird feeds and cares for the Cuckoo’s young often resulting in death to the host’s own offspring! That is what I think of every time I hear one more story about the “unaccompanied children” flocking to the US, or in this case to Sweden.
Aren’t we just like the animals after all? (I can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth among my Leftwing critics!)
I know we have posted a lot on Sweden in recent weeks and days (click here for our complete archive), but it’s important because we can use Sweden as our ‘canary in a coal mine’ (oh geez, an ornithological analogy again!). The country is small and the huge number of migrants they are permitting to live there will bring them to the brink sooner than larger western countries, so we can all watch and learn from what happens to Sweden.
It is not just the US that has ‘unaccompanied minors’ (the “children”) arriving en masse. Here is a report about one unhappy community—Östra Göinge—in southern Sweden.
We reported on this Swedish policy here in 2013, when one of the “kids” murdered another of the “children” at a residential facility, not in Östra Göinge, but in another town.
Around 7,000 unaccompanied refugee children arrived in Sweden in 2014, twice as many as the year before. And some parts of the country aren’t coping, according to reports.
A total of 81,300 people found refuge in Sweden in 2014, a jump of almost 50 percent from the 54,300 in 2013.
Among the refugees, 7,000 were children arriving without their families – almost double the figure from the previous year.
A law change that came into effect last January means that the unaccompanied minors can be sent to any municipality in the country, regardless of whether the municipalities want them or not.
Some consider the influx to be problematic, including Patric Åberg of the city council in southern Sweden’s Östra Göinge.
“We have taken in unaccompanied minors since 2011, but the problem is that the municipalities taking in many of them have to take in even more – and we think it’s devastating,” he told the TT news agency.
He says that his municipality simply doesn’t have the room to house so many children, and that other parts of Sweden should step up and take their share.
The municipality has requested an official court inquest into the matter.
“We think there is a gap here and that we can get around it. We want the system to be changed at a fundamental level,” he added.
There is a bit more about “flocking” at The Local.
See our complete archive on ‘unaccompanied minors’ here(mostly about the “children” arriving in the US, but they are seeing it in Italy too!).
…..over 100 a day says head nun at Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley.
Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, with former speaker Nancy Pelosi in Washingon this past summer. Photo: http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Norma+Pimentel/House+Democrats+Meet/6DK9VcEFCJi
McALLEN, Texas — The media tent that once stood in the parking lot of Sacred Heart Church is gone, as are the television crews and reporters who descended this summer when the flow of Central American immigrants illegally crossing the Texas border was major news.
But after a brief lull, the surge of undocumented families passing through a temporary shelter set up by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley seems to be rising again.The spotlight may have turned away, but if the sense of crisis is gone, the people have not stopped coming.
“The numbers increased a lot this past month, almost to 100 every day [last week],” said Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley. “We have seen some that have already been caught and tried again. They have hope that they have a chance at a better life here.”
After Christmas, she said, the charity will begin searching for a facility to turn what began as a temporary shelter into a permanent offering.
Pimentel oversees the volunteer effort providing short-term shelter to some of the thousands of women and children who have trekked to Texas from Central America. About 52,300 families surrendered to the U.S. Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley during the 2014 fiscal year, an increase of more than 500 percent over 2013. About 50,000 unaccompanied children were caught or surrendered to border agents in the Valley in fiscal year 2014.
It doesn’t look like it’s going to end any time soon,” Pimentel said. “[The Border Patrol] considered the fact that we’re here and we’re prepared to receive them.”
With so many arrivals, the Border Patrol releases most families to the church shelter with orders for them to appear before an immigration judge in whatever city they reach. Some stay in Texas. Others head for New York, Miami, Boston or Chicago, among other cities.
[….]
Through Oct. 17, local governments had spent about $560,000 to aid in the humanitarian effort.Governments including the cities of McAllen and Weslaco, and Hidalgo and Willacy counties, have asked the federal and state governments for reimbursement, but a McAllen city official said they haven’t heard back.
Now, if our side was as organized as the left, we would be out protesting at this Catholic Charities convention against the so-called “charity” feeding from the public trough and using our money for their political agenda.
The crisis has also put the area in the spotlight. Pimentel said the American and Latin American branches of Catholic Charities will hold their annual conference in McAllen next year.
Surely they are having the confab at the border to take full advantage of the media opportunity to push the Catholic open borders agenda.
For our complete archive on the “Unaccompanied minors” invasion, click here.
Two stories crossed my desk in the last 24 hours displaying the exemplary work being done by Judicial Watch to get the word out about the Obama Administration’s shameful activities involving immigration. I sure would like to get them to look into the Refugee Admissions Program of the US State Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (beyond this great find on the cost to US taxpayers of the unaccompanied minors).
Please see the two stories that got my attention today (sorry I don’t have time these days to post more).
The first is a press release from JW on the unaccompanied alien children.
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on September 9, 2014, it received documents from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealing that the Obama administration paid Baptist Children and Family Services (BCFS) $182,129,786 to provide “basic shelter care” to 2,400 “unaccompanied alien children” (UAC) for four months in 2014. The BCFS budget included charges for $104,215,608 for UACs at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and an additional $77,914,178 for UACs at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
The other news, thanks to Judicial Watch, is this story at World Net Daily. Where is the Obama Executive Order on granting amnesty?
NEW YORK – Did President Obama just set up Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to be a candidate for impeachment instead of himself if conservatives convince the Republican majorities in the House and the Senate that his “executive actions” on immigration are unconstitutional?
The inquiry begins with the question: Where are the executive orders Obama supposedly signed to permit up to 5 million parents of young illegal aliens to remain in the United States for three years?
The White House appears to have engaged in administrative sleight of hand, changing U.S. immigration law not by executive order but by a memorandum “exercising prosecutorial discretion” Johnson signed the day of Obama’s Nov. 20 nationwide address that so far has not been filed in the Federal Register.
Tom Fitton, president of Washington-based watchdog institution Judicial Watch, told WND in an interview the legal status of Johnson’s memo is a serious constitutional question that deserves to be adjudicated.
