But, the radicals in the White House, including Susan Rice, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken wanted the refugee ceiling bumped up to 62,500 for the remainder of the year.
Years ago, care for the Unaccompanied Alien Children was shifted to the Office of Refugee Resettlement which is in the Department of Health and Human Services and is thus the root of today’s problem—an agency in crisis as it attempts to deal with thousands of children who are not refugees illegally arriving at our borders at the express invitation of the Biden administration when its original mission was to manage refugees selected for admission to the US.
Here is Politicoon the internal scuffle using just the nicest tones they can muster so as not to make it sounds like the Biden ship is foundering.
I am laughing to myself because this sort of internal squabbling during the Trump years would have been blown sky high by corporate media with the help of deep state leakers in a way to make Trump look foolish.
Somebody, other than Saint Joe, has to be the fall-guy in the dream administration’s first major public relations fiasco and it looks like the long knives in the White House have found their man.
For a little chuckle, watch Biden announcing his pick for HHS Secretary butcher the name of the Department of Health and Human Service before butchering Becerra’s name in the first minute of this youtube video.
Becerra’s cautious border play rankles White House
Xavier Becerra spent decades urging congressional leaders to support liberalized legal immigration. But he’s sounding a different note as Health secretary, responsible for caring for upwards of 21,000 migrant children.
Biden’s kids in cages!
Becerra has argued for maintaining the historically low Trump-era cap on refugee admissions to the U.S., according to two people with knowledge of the matter, for fear of stretching the already-thin resources of his department’s refugee office.
His insistence on a more cautious approach to immigration policy has, moreover, contributed to his shaky standing with some quarters of a fast-paced White House where senior aides have spent weeks pressing the Health department to speed its intake of thousands of children at the southern border, and bristled at what friends and skeptics alike described as Becerra’s at times deliberate manner.
“He cares about raising the caps — but let’s take one challenge at a time,” one person close to Becerra said of his mindset. “Emotionally, he’s there. But he’s always a pragmatist.”
Becerra apparently had some common sense!
President Joe Biden in April initially agreed to keep the refugee limit in place, siding with Becerra and overruling top officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken. But the blowback from immigration advocates and Democrats on Capitol Hill was immediate and intense, and Biden has since reversed course.
Becerra in the meantime has been privately frustrated by the White House’s rush to ease a series of immigration guardrails well before he was confirmed to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, allies said, including a key decision to allow unaccompanied immigrant children to remain in the country.
[….]
That responsibility for caring for unaccompanied children has landed chiefly on HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which also handles foreigners seeking refugee status, though the two operations are not intertwined.
[….]
For Becerra, a relative latecomer as one of Biden’s last Cabinet officials to be confirmed, it represents an early and steep management test.
And it comes after years in Congress and state government as a vocal immigrant-rights advocate who pressed both Democratic and Republican administrations to take more aggressive efforts to overhaul the immigration system and “open the doors of opportunity” for those coming to the U.S. Becerra frequently invokes the experiences of his immigrant Mexican parents and once chided fellow Latinos for “running from their heritage” in advocating for tough immigration restrictions.
Although we have no idea where large numbers of the ‘children’ will be placed in facilities around the US (unless information leaks out like in this North Carolina case), you can see where some of the mostly teenagers have been placed with sponsors through the end of March.
State and county data is available. Don’t miss the fact that tens of thousands were placed during Trump’s tenure.
Where have the refugees, placed via the US Refugee Admissions Program, gone so far this fiscal year?
Call your local elected representatives at the city or county level and ask if your community is being selected to ‘welcome’ either the illegal aliens invading our southern border now, or are being asked to become a refugee resettlement site as I reported recently about Winchester, Virginia.
If the answer is yes, you must get to work to create controversy where you live.
That is, if he and Kamala make it to the White House.
They campaigned on reversing all of what they claim were draconian policies by the Trump White House to slow the flow across our southern border and to halt the influx of impoverished, possibly sick, low skilled workers, eg. refugees to America.
Will Biden be called a racist if he leaves many of Trump’s immigration policies in place? Not a chance!
Since the Chinese virus reared its ugly head in the spring, much of the Trump team’s actions were to slow the arrival of the COVID-19 virus potentially arriving with the migrants.
As a result Trump was called a racist and a white nationalist by the Biden-supporting media.
Now I am seeing one story after another about how the Harris/Biden administration might have to go very slowly to unravel Trump’s efforts to keep America safe and Americans working.
LOL! I will be looking for the Leftist media to label Biden an evil racist when he will almost certainly not be able to fling open America’s gates for months or even years!
It wasn’t long after Election Steal Day in the weeks following November 3rd, that the stories began popping up about a new surge on the border.
U.S. agents apprehend 1,000 migrant children in 6 days as crossings along Mexican border rise
By the way, unaccompanied alien children are the responsibility of the US Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Many paragraphs into the story we learn that oopsy(!), maybe Joe and Kamala cannot immediately reverse Trump’s immigration control strategies, especially as Americans will be furious if it is done while the virus rages on.
Mr. Biden’s team has also pledged to review the expulsions policy to ensure border-crossers “have the ability to submit their asylum claims.”
Andrew Selee, president of the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute, said ending the “Remain in Mexico” program and the expulsions too quickly could lead to a surge in border crossings.
He suggested the incoming Biden administration could end Remain-in-Mexico but temporarily retain the expulsion policy, a scenario that could be complicated by legal challenges and reporting that shows public health officials were pressured by the White House to authorize the expulsions.
Selee said an influx in border arrests could hurt chances of a divided Congress passing immigration legislation, including one that provides a pathway to U.S. citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) beneficiaries. Republicans lawmakers blamed the DACA program for a surge in border apprehensions of Central American children in 2014, even though the policy, established in 2012, did not benefit new arrivals.
Before completely ending Mr. Trump’s policies, Selee said the incoming Biden administration should deploy more asylum officers, surge resources to the border and expand case management programs that allow migrants to complete their U.S. immigration proceedings outside of detention centers. Otherwise, he added, a sharp increase in unauthorized migration could leave the U.S. government unprepared, worsen conditions in temporary migrant holding facilities and lead to more draconian enforcement policies.
“You’re stuck between a rock and a hard place: Either you start releasing people in the general population or you hold them in the middle of a pandemic,” Selee said.
“If you try to be the anti-Trump on day one, you will end up acting like Trump in the end,” he added. “If you try and throw out everything Trump has done on day one, without having an alternative in place, you’ll end up doing the same things Trump did.”
And, here (read it yourself) is a more recent warning about the ‘kids’ rushing the border. From USA Today:
Thousands of unaccompanied minors arrive at US-Mexico border as Border Patrol grapples with COVID-19 deaths
Lowering expectations?
And, a little nugget in this news from the Pittsburgh Post Gazetteindicates that the Refugee Resettlement Industry has begun to tamp down expectations for a huge jump in new refugees being flown into your towns and cities anytime soon.
Biden campaigned on restoring the flow of refugees into the country from Trump’s less than 20,000 annual refugee admissions to a whopping 125,000 in year one he said!
Pittsburgh 2017 anti-Trump rally. Will they protest if Biden doesn’t move fast enough to reverse Trump’s policies? Not a chance.
Pittsburgh-area agencies await word on Biden’s refugee plan
Deep into this story we have this news that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Societyis telling its satellite offices that the flood isn’t coming right away.
While the Biden team hasn’t detailed its plans, Ms. Aizenman has heard speculation from her agency’s national affiliate that there might be some increases later in 2021, with a higher ceiling in 2022.
But wait! That is not what we heard BEFORE November 3rd.
(Ms. Aizenman is the director of refugee and immigrant services at Jewish Family and Community Services which is a subcontractor of HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)).
We had a hint that increases in refugee numbers might not be cominghere the other day.
If Biden and Harris (or Harris and someone else!) are installed in the White House, we will be watching! I know it is serious, but I anticipate being amused as they squirm to get out from between a rock and a hard place.
Clever America Firsters will have to figure out how to keep up the pressure on that rock.
That is the type of headline I’ve seen often in recent days as the Trump Administration works to protect Americans from further spread of the Chinese virus by blocking and immediately returning illegal border crossers.
Editor: By the way, don’t miss my post on Friday at ‘Frauds and Crooks’ about former refugee Rep. Ilhan Omar’s fraudulent marriage and the decision by the feds not to pursue a case against her.
What these stories, about so-called “unaccompanied children,” won’t tell you is that the vast majority—72% (FY19 numbers)—are “children” ages 15-17 years old. 66% of the those little darlings are teenage males, according to data at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.
In FY19 (there isn’t any FY20 data available) we admitted 69,488 “children.”
Therefore over 50,000 were over the age of 15! At age 18 they are free to go!
So don’t get ideas that little frightened five-year-olds are held alone in hotel rooms waiting for big bad Don to send them packing as the legacy media wants you to believe.
Migrant kids to be expelled under virus order not entitled to attorneys and other safeguards, DOJ lawyers say
The Trump administration is arguing that migrant children set to be expelled from the country under an emergency coronavirus order are not entitled to legal safeguards guaranteed to all minors in U.S. immigration custody.
In a court filing on Tuesday, Justice Department lawyers argued that migrant minors processed under a public health order meant to curb the coronavirus’ spread are not in the “legal custody” of the U.S. immigration officials who physically detain them. Instead, the government lawyers said, the children are in the “legal custody” of public health officials they never interact with while on U.S. soil.
Citing that distinction, the Trump administration says these children are not covered under the landmark Flores Settlement Agreement, which guarantees minors access to lawyers, safe and sanitary housing facilities and prompt release from U.S. government detention.
During the pandemic, Department of Homeland Security officials have been relying on a directive issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to bounce most border-crossers off U.S. soil. More than 109,000 of these expulsions were carried out in July, June, May, April and the last 11 days of March.
Like adults, most migrant children who arrive at the border unaccompanied or with their families have been processed and expelled under the CDC order. Despite a federal law generally requiring their transfer to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, only 162 migrant children were transferred to the agency’s state-licensed shelters in April, May and June — a time period in which more than 3,300 apprehensions of unaccompanied minors were made by officials at the southern border.
The exact number of children who have been expelled under the CDC order is unknown, as the Trump administration has declined to disclose figures. There are fewer than 800 unaccompanied minors in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which has the capacity to care for more than 13,000 children at a time.
There is more here. And, another story at ABC blasting the Trump administration too.
I was most interested in the fact that so few were placed with contractors. We know that Catholic Charities and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) have lucrative contracts to not only resettle refugees, but also to ‘care’ for the kids.
So, of course, I figured those contractors were hurting for payola as the numbers of refugees and unaccompanied alien children were both way down.
Lutherans rolling in bucks!
I checked USA Spending to see how LIRS is doing under the Trump Administration because four years ago contractors like LIRS were crying the blues about how their mostly federal funding would dry up.
Well, it hasn’t! LIRS was granted by you, the taxpayer, $71 million in the last twelve months to take care of the children. 72% of that money went to take care of the mostly teenage boys, and for several months there were very few of those allowed to even stay in the country.
They are getting as much or more in funding from the Trump Administration as they got under Obama! They will be able to get right back to full steam ahead if Biden wins in November!
Note these bars represent fiscal years that run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30th.
They call those being taken care of by the Office of Refugee Resettlementand its contractors “children,” but when you see the dataonly 15% in a recent year were under twelve and 71% of all those apprehended were boys. So, therefore, I refer to those being housed as teens.
3 migrant children in U.S. custody test positive for coronavirus
Three unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. government custody have tested positive for the coronavirus, federal officials said Thursday, highlighting concerns among advocates about the vulnerability of detained immigrants during the global pandemic.
The three minors, who are housed in a shelter in New York, are the first confirmed coronavirus cases among the 3,600 unaccompanied children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR. In response to the outbreak, the refugee agency has stopped releasing migrant children in New York facilities to sponsors, who are typically family members living in the U.S.
Officials also revealed on Thursday that the number of positive coronavirus cases among staff members and contractors at facilities for unaccompanied migrant children has grown to seven.
[….]
Coronavirus is particularly dangerous for older people and those with underlying medical issues, but children and young people can carry and transmit the virus, even if the risk of serious illness is relatively low.Migrant minors in ORR custody crossed the southern border without parents or guardians, or in certain circumstances, were separated from them.
[….]
The announcement on Thursday is likely to fuel even more calls for the Trump administration to quickly release some of the tens of thousands of immigrants it is currently detaining, especially as the public health crisis to contain the coronavirus intensifies. On Wednesday, lawyers asked a federal court in California to require officials to release unaccompanied migrant children who have been in government custody for more than a month or transfer them to facilities where social distancing can be reasonably practiced.
If they want to keep the teens and the community safe they are better off keeping them in custody and not allowing them to mingle throughout city neighborhoods (interacting with the elderly!) that might not be taking the precautions that facilities supervised by the federal Dept. of Health and Human Services surely do about cleanliness.
Open Borders advocates never rest as they are, as usual, not letting a good crisis go to waste!
So far, President Trump has no plans to close the border.
As regular readers here know, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement is responsible for thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children(mostly teenagers, btw) who cross our borders illegally and without parents.
The shelters in which they are housed are usually operated by contractors including some of the nine refugee contractors mentioned often here at RRW.
I guess you have all been seeing reports that Covid-19 mostly takes its toll on seniors, but that children can be infected and show only mild symptoms and could thus be missed as carriers.
Shelters told to report any coronavirus cases among migrant children
The federal agency tasked with caring for unaccompanied migrant children told staff at shelters Monday that children who may have been exposed to or at risk from coronavirus must be flagged to the health division within four hours, according to an email obtained by CNN.
Children found to be exposed to coronavirus and with symptoms of respiratory disease should also be isolated, the agency told shelters.
Care providers are generally expected to have “an identified space within the shelter facility that may be used for quarantine or isolation” in that a child needs to be separated for a medical reason, according to the agency’s website.
The guidance sent out by the US Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Refugee Resettlement is indicative of the increased vigilance across the government amid concerns over coronavirus. The dispatch lists symptoms of coronavirus, the agency’s response, and specific guidance to ORR care providers.
[….]
The Office of Refugee Resettlement told CNN in a statement last week that as of February 27, there have not been any suspected or confirmed COVID-19 (the novel coronavirus) disease cases among unaccompanied children in ORR care. There are around 3,600 children in care.
An email went out to staff at those shelters Monday. “This guidance is based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations and is adapted for the [unaccompanied children] Program,” the email says. “This is a rapidly evolving situation, and updated guidance may be released in the future, as necessary.”
[….]
An attached document says ORR’s Division of Health for Unaccompanied Children is working with the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection, among others, to monitor when an unaccompanied child “from a high-risk location as designated by CDC … is initially referred to ORR care.”
Shelter administrators have four hours to notify ORR if they have any suspicious illness, or any ‘child’ who might have been exposed to the virus.
The document also provides a breakdown of identification of risk and response, adding that “any child found to be at possible risk for COVID-19 based on travel history or contact with a known case must be flagged to [Division of Health for Unaccompanied Children] via email within 4 hours.”
By the way, I have 320 previous posts in my health issues category.
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Where have the refugees, placed via the US Refugee Admissions Program, gone so far this fiscal year?
Note to PayPal donors! I want to thank all of you who send me donations for my work via PayPal. I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, PayPal is making changes to their terms of service and I’ve decided to opt-out beginning on March 10, 2020.