When a child who is not accompanied by a parent or legal guardian is apprehended by immigration authorities, the child is transferred to the care and custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Federal law requires that ORR feed, shelter, and provide medical care for unaccompanied children until it is able to release them to safe settings with sponsors (usually family members), while they await immigration proceedings. These sponsors live in many states.
Sponsors are adults who are suitable to provide for the child’s physical and mental well-being and have not engaged in any activity that would indicate a potential risk to the child. All sponsors must pass a background check. The sponsor must agree to ensure the child’s presence at all future immigration proceedings. They also must agree to ensure the minor reports to ICE for removal from the United States if an immigration judge issues a removal order or voluntary departure order.
They say they have placed 37,477 from January 1-July 31, 2014. Any counties that received more than 50 “children” is listed (click hereto see if your county will face school system overload). It is too bad they didn’t list all counties because yours might have received 48 or 49, a number which could still cause a significant impact on a county school budget.
No word about how many children were placed in group-home settings run by resettlement contractors. But, as we learned just a few days ago, it sure looks like the numbers of children in need may have been fabricated.
The top ten states (with illegal alien children numbering over 1,000). Interesting because it seems to mirror what we already know about immigrant-overloaded states. The only big surprise for me was Louisiana. Click herefor all of the states.
Texas 5,280
New York 4,244
California 3,909
Florida 3,809
Virginia 2,856
Maryland 2,804
New Jersey 1,877
North Carolina 1,429
Georgia 1,412
Louisiana 1,275
You gotta laugh! Vermont, which was begging for some of the Central American teens, got a whole three (3) of them!
All of our posts on ‘unaccompanied minors’ are here.
Although his focus seems to be directed at the moment on the ‘Halliburtons’ of federal migrant resettlement contractors, Baptist Child and Family Services and Southwest Key Programs, he must be sure that the Department of Health and Human Services (Office of Refugee Resettlement) gives him information on ALL of the contractors*** receiving grants and contracts for ‘unaccompanied alien children’ (some of those “children” now appear to be fictitious!).
If Senator Grassley gets any answers out of the Obama Administration I will be blown away!
Investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson (there are a few real investigative reporters left!) reports on Senator Charles Grassley’s quest, here. Hat tip: Joanne.
The federal government continues to maintain a great deal of secrecy around the influx of what it calls “unaccompanied alien children” or UAC. At the same time, U.S. taxpayers are being asked to fund programs to process and care for them.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) recently wrote a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell stating,
“If Congress is going to appropriate funding for the department to provide care and custody for this vulnerable population, it deserves to know how taxpayer dollars are going to be spent.”
Grassley also raised questions about a charity called Southwest Key Programs that “received $368 million in federal government grants over the past six years and more than $122 million alone from the Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement in 2014. According to the non-profit’s 2012 Form 990, it receives 98.76 percent of its support from taxpayer dollars.”
To date, Grassley says his questions to HHS have gone unanswered. Among other queries, he asked for information about who the unaccompanied minors are being released to, the health issues facing the unaccompanied minors, and the decision to move millions of dollars away from service for legal refugees. [Reports are coming out now that the funding to contractors for legal refugees has not been cut, despite the national scare-tactic campaign ginned-up by the contractors*** which we have been reporting on.—ed]
Attkisson then gives us the questions Senator Grassley wants answered by September 5th. I think the good Senator is going to find out just how steeped in secrecy our entire refugee program is!
1. The names of the (HHS) contractors and all identifying information about them, including –their location.
2. What kinds of checks are done on relatives, parents and other guardians? Specifically, what databases are checked and what other agencies help HHS with the checks?
3. What statute, regulation or court order mentions that HHS must release minors into the custody of other non-relative guardians?
4. Why doesn’t HHS report to (Department of Homeland Security) DHS about whom and where the UAMs [UACs—ed] are released to?
5. Are there any examples of sponsor shopping and what you do with that information? My staff followed up on this matter, asking about a recent report about a woman who has taken more than 800 kids into custody for people here illegally.
6. Do you have a summary of the health issues facing the UAM population?
a. Are kids with contagious diseases treated by HHS?
b. Are they released even when contagious?
c. What types of diseases are you seeing?
d. Is the Office of Refugee Resettlement coordinating with the Centers for Disease Control?
7. A copy of the reprogramming request made to appropriators about moving $94 million from legal refugee services to the UAMs.
8. Explain in more detail why HHS is paying up to $1,000 per day for housing unaccompanied minors and families who have entered illegally.
9. How many contracts has BCFS been awarded from 2010 to the present? What is the total cost of these contracts?
10. How many grants has BCFS been awarded from 2010 to the present? What is the total cost of these grants?
11. Please provide all communications and contract documents related to BCFS’ proposed contract and the Palm Aire Hotel and Suites facility, even if the contract is no longer under consideration.
12. Please provide all audits [see my comment below—ed] of grantees receiving HHS funds from the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
13. For fiscal year 2014, what percentage of the funds obligated to grantees by the Office of Refugee Resettlement have been used for administrative expenses? Please provide a detailed breakdown of these expenses.
14. Please provide all OMB A-133 forms for grantees receiving funds from HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.
15. Please provide documentation that grantees are complying with OMB A-122 standards.
16. Please provide all grantee reports to HHS on their progress towards meeting stated program goals.
17. Please provide all communications between HHS and Southwest Key related to UAMs in 2014.
18. Please provide all grant and contract documents between HHS and Southwest Key Programs.
Good questions!
*** The Senator must be sure to ask about the other major federal migrant resettlement contractors. (All of the original nine lobbied for the Gang of Eight amnesty bill that passed in the Senate (did they use taxpayer dollars for their lobbying campaigns???)).
We know that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service(both receiving over 90% of their funds from the US Treasury) have been contracted for years to care for the UACs. Some of the others listed here are just now getting into the act with hands in the federal cookie jar specifically for the UACs.
By the way, when I first began writing this blog seven years ago I asked if there was financial auditing done on these contractors and was told there are no audits done of where the money goes. I was told only “program audits” were done which were described to be audits of what they accomplished, like how many refugees they “serviced” found employment and so forth. Those original nine contractors, which have an inside track to federal money, have 300 plus subcontractors which makes following the money trail exceedingly difficult.
Our complete archive on ‘unaccompanied minors’goes back several years,click here for all of those posts.
Evolution of terms! When we first began reporting on these “children” they were referred to as ‘unaccompanied minors’and that is why we use the term here (so you can find posts from years gone by). Next, the ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement) called them ‘Unaccompanied alien minors.’ And then as the PR strategy continued to evolve they became ‘unaccompanied alien children.’ Recently I saw another transformation of the the term—‘unaccompanied immigrant children.’ You see how it works! Next we expect to see ‘unaccompanied refugee children’as the Open Borders Left/Religious Left continues their public relations drive to change the definition of ‘refugee.’
Take action! Send a note and thank Senator Grassley for wading into this dung pile!
….turns out tens of thousands of the kids never existed!
Biden, Johnson, Obama (looks like they are on to us!)
That’s what blogger ‘sundance’ at The Conservative Tree House alleges and seems to have the numbers to prove it. There are still a lot of unaccompanied minors (mostly teenagers), but the number is about half of what the Obama Administration has been claiming.
In reality, says ‘sundance,’ the numbers of children with parents (mostly with Mom) is where the larger numbers are to be found. And, of course those migrants are just run-of-the-mill illegal aliens, not UACs who are given special treatment.
Why would they do this?
Maybe to push Congress to pass ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ pronto?
Three weeks ago we shared the fact that well over 40,000 reported UAC’s were missing from this years record keeping. The facts catching up with the ruse.
Well, the truth was/is they’re not technically missing because they never existed in the first place. DHS, which compiles the reports coming from the Border Patrol, and then gives the statistical summaries of the reports, had artifically inflated the apprehension numbers to support the White House narrative.
However, DHS, or more accurately Jeh Johnson, could not divert the end user of the apprehension reports, The Executive Office of Immigration Reform, the entity who controls the court dockets, from recording the missing reports.
Comparative FOIA’s into the recording agency, The Border Patrol, and the end user, The EOIR, showed the statistical ruse.
The reports were missing because they were never written; they were never written because the UAC’s were not actually real.
Read it all! See their excellent work! There is a lot of documentation to prove that one more time we can’t trust this White House. And, you know it would explain why we kept hearing of possible housing sites that would a couple of days later turn out not to be needed.
And, it would explain why, after one crisis story after another about the UAC’s gobbling up all the funding for the normal refugee flow, the money started reappearing in the refugee contractors’ budgets. Remember when that ‘carrot-tasting class’ money was so quickly restored.
If you want to know where the ‘unaccompanied alien children’ have gone, check with two local agencies—the local department of education and the health department.
There is nothing especially new or surprising in this report from the Gazetteunless you live in long-time ‘welcoming’ Montgomery County, Maryland (I once did), but it does say one new and interesting thing to me—the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement sent over 100 of the ‘children’ (really teenagers!) there in the previousschool year. I wonder how many taxpaying residents knew that?
School begins in Montgomery County on Monday.
Montgomery County executive Isiah Leggett (right) making guacamole with one of the most dangerous men in America, Obama Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. Leggett says it’s our moral duty to care for the alien children (and expand the voter base for my friend Tom!) http://www.gazette.net/article/20140730/NEWS/140739818/0/leggett-x2018-we-need-to-do-what-is-right-x2019&template=gazette
Nearly 50 unaccompanied minors from Central America have been sent to Montgomery County Public Schools since July to attend classes this school year, Superintendent Joshua P. Starr said Thursday.
The 47 children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were directed to the county school system through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, Starr said at the county school board’s Thursday meeting.
“We don’t know if the number’s going to go up,” he said.
Last school year, the refugee resettlement office sent 107 unaccompanied children to the school system. Most of the minors were high school students, Starr said.
Starr said system officials are aware that minors from Central America are also entering county schools through avenues other than the refugee resettlement office, such as through their families. He said school officials discussed the issue during the summer.
The issue goes beyond the school system for the county. Montgomery County Council members met with representatives from public agencies and nonprofits in late July to learn about the situation in Montgomery regarding the immigrant children in its communities.
Assessing their emotional needs!
The system is determining the students’ educational and social-emotional needs and working to address the situation with others, such as the county and nonprofits, he said.
All citizens of Montgomery County are not as eager as Leggett and Starr to welcome the mostly Central American teens:
School board Vice President Patricia O’Neill said at the meeting that, in her experiences talking with county residents, “a lot of people have been very concerned” about the unaccompanied children in county schools.
All of our coverage of the ‘unaccompanied minors’ surging across our southern border is here.
Update! Just so you know! Reader Julia sent us several links about TB in Montgomery Co. Maryland schools, the highest in the state due to the large immigrant population, here.
About the photo: Blogging partner Judy has recently written two posts at Potomac Tea Party Reporton Thomas Perez. In my view he is next in line behind the man himself (Obama), and then Attorney General Eric Holder as one of the three most dangerous race-baiters in America.
See ‘Perez stirring up racial strife‘ here and the follow-up post here from earlier this past week.
PTPR has an extensive archive on Perez, check it out by clicking here.
Last I heard Perez still lives in Montgomery County in that far-left mecca of Takoma Park. Watch for it! When the Obama Administration ends, Perez will be back and be a major political force in Maryland (if not nationally). Is making guacamole with Leggett earlier this month a first step in his return?
….invite in more “children” because more migrants means more money for government contractors! (she doesn’t say that! I do!)
Lavinia Limon is the CEO of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, known in the refugee industry as USCRI. Below, published at the Budapest Business Journal (of all places) is her six-point prescription for what the Obama Administration should do to save the ‘unaccompanied alien children’ (child “refugees” she calls them) because how we respond will “define us as a Nation,” she says.
Revolving door! Doing well by doing good!
Limon in 1996 as head of Bill Clinton’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/person/42360
It’s mentioned in her bio at the end of this opinion piece, but keep in mind she is one of several refugee contractors who have moved in and out of the revolving door from ‘non-profit’ contractor to government giver-of-grants and then back out again.
She was Bill Clinton’s head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (in HHS)after first working in a ‘non-profit’ resettlement agency, and now she heads up the ‘non-profit’ group USCRI where she seeks grants from her former USCRI VP (Eskinder Negash) who now heads Obama’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. Did you get that?
And, be sure to have a look at this post we wrote in 2008 when we nicknamed her “whoop-de-do” when one of her resettlement subcontractors was caught dumping (and not caring for) refugees in Waterbury, CT. It had been revealed to the public that the contractor keeps a cut of what the refugees each are allotted by the feds and she told the reporter that the feds weren’t keeping up with the economic times and she mentioned everyone would squawk if their salaries weren’t growing. She said:
“Whoop-de-do” ….“God help us if our salaries had not kept pace with inflation like that.“
So, let’s see how the inflationary times are treating USCRI and her salary! (I’m going to get to her prescription for handling the southern border invasion, but this is too good!).
In 2008, we reported Ms. Limon’s 2006 salary (while USCRI was taking in $18 million):
In 2006 her salary and other compensation was $195,478. That is up about $20,000 from the previous couple of years.
Are you ready for this!
First, you need to know that in its 2013 Form 990, USCRI took in $35,676,146 and $35,429,570 came from government grants (page 9)—that is, 99% of their funds are from you—the US taxpayer! (much worse than any contractor*** we have reviewed so far). They apparently make virtually no effort to raise private funds in what was supposed to be a public-private partnership when the Refugee Act of 1980 was signed into law by Jimmy Carter.
So what is Ms. Limon’s salary today? Drum roll please!
Now working as a government contractor, you can hire Ms. Limon to speak. http://speakerpedia.com/speakers/lavinia-limon
On page 7 of that Form 990 we learn that Lavinia Limon is making more than the Vice President of the United States whom she ever-so-gently disparages in her op-ed at the Budapest Journal.
Her salary from USCRI and other sources related to her work there is $289,192. It went up 32% since 2006! Has your salary increased that much over so short a time? If she were in the legitimate private sector, then what they pay is none of our business, but she is essentially a government employee, so we have every right to blow our stacks!
Family business? One Peter Limon is listed in that Form 990 as well pulling down a salary of $115,878 and $23,991 from related income.
Consider all of that information when you read this opinion-piece (that you paid for!).
…..we’ve proposed six actions that the United States should take to resolve this issue. We’ve personally handed our proposal to every member of Congress, and we’ve spoken about it with every reporter who’s called. We’re getting some traction on these simple, yet tested ideas:
1. Respect families by allowing parents from El Salvador and Honduras who reside legally in the United States under Temporary Protected Status to apply for their minor children to reunite. The children’s status would then be linked to their parents. This would immediately reduce immigration court backlogs, and would apply to an estimated 30–40 percent of the children surrendering at the border.
2. Keep kids out of the courtrooms by instituting a Children’s Corps based on the Asylum Officer Corps model. Officers will have training in child-sensitive interview techniques and Best Interest Determination standards, and will determine whether a child is eligible for legal relief. This will move the adjudication process from an adversarial judicial process to an administrative process for most children. Reports indicate that 40–60 percent of these children may be eligible for legal protection.
3. Help children avoid the dangerous journey by allowing them to apply for refugee status from their home country. We’ve previously used this process so that Soviet Jews, Vietnamese, and Cubans could avoid life-threatening escapes. Additionally, other North and South American countries may be willing to accept the children for resettlement.
4. Engage the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to determine international protection needs using its well-established procedures.The UNHCR could then refer cases to the U.S. Department of State for further interviewing and approval before resettlement in the United States, and possibly other countries.
5. Forgive the children by granting Children’s Protected Status (CPS) to all unaccompanied children who have already been brought into custody.We used this approach with Cubans and Haitians who arrived illegally in 1980. The government could announce a cut-off date after which new arrivals would be subject to expedited removal. Granting CPS will relieve the government of the burden and cost of adjudicating the cases of the thousands of unaccompanied minors who are at the border, and will increase the Department of Homeland Security’s capacity to handle other immigration cases.
6. Introduce hope by creating a Regulated Entry Procedure for 10,000 unaccompanied immigrant children per year per country from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. As precedent, a lottery system has allowed 20,000 Cubans to enter the United States annually for the past 34 years. The children would enter the United States legally through a process managed and regulated by the U.S. government.
I love the United States, and I have high expectations for its international behavior and reputation. We can do better, and I commit to being part of the solution.
