Do you remember the program the Obama State Department created out of whole cloth in 2014 when it took it upon itself to write refugee law without the Congress?
It was called CAM for short and was supposed to help the minors escaping poverty and gangs in Central America get into the US as refugees so they wouldn’t get hurt sneaking across the border as they had been doing by the tens of thousands.
Obama’s State Department created the program so that the invading “children” wouldn’t get hurt or exploited trying to get to America on the “Beast Train” or on foot.
The program had a couple of major flaws—first is that the kids were hard-pressed to show they were legitimate refugees fearing persecution and secondly, the parent filing the application in the US had to prove they were here legally (oopsy!).
The good news is that CAM has been canned at the Dept. of State as of last night!
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department will stop accepting new applications at midnight on Thursday for a program that allowed children fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to apply for refugee status in the United States before leaving home.
President Donald Trump’s administration told Congress in September it would phase out the Central American Minors (CAM) program during fiscal year 2018, which began on Oct. 1.
New applications will not be accepted after 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday (0459 GMT on Friday), the State Department said in a statement on Wednesday night.
The CAM program started at the end of 2014 under former President Barack Obama as a response to tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors and families from Central America who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum in the United States.
Continue here where Reuters says that 1,500 kids got in out of 13,000 applications (imagine what that must have cost taxpayers to process 13,000 applications!).
For more, search RRW for ‘Unaccompanied minors’ or ‘Unaccompanied alien children.’
It is over the issue of abortions for illegal alien teens in the care of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement that Lloyd oversees. Apparently Lloyd is not approving those abortions and the leftwingers want the young girls to have a Constitutional right to kill their babies here in America (they could go back to where they came from and kill their babies at home!).
Deer in the headlights! ORR Director Lloyd at the House hearing. He should have been ready for the harangue from three Democrat women.
I don’t know enough about Lloyd to get into this fight***, but I just want you to know what is going on.
Frankly, I don’t know how it came to be that the Office of Refugee Resettlement got so deeply involved with the care of tens of thousands of so-called ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ in the first place. They are NOT refugees! They are here illegally!
It might be because at least two ‘religious’ refugee contractors working for ORR get paid to take care of some of the ‘children’ —-US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Note the big jump in the latter’s federal funding—was it more contracts for the kids?
You can see what I said aboutLloyd trying to defend himself here at the House hearing that was supposed to be on the refugee program, but turned into an attack on Lloyd (then they didn’t have to talk about the malfunctioning US Refugee Program!).
You can read it yourself. Lloyd will have to be one tough hombre to take what the Left has aimed at him.
I’m guessing when it comes to anchor babies (as these teens’ children would be) versus abortion rights, the Left comes down on the side of the “right” to kill the babies (with your money!).
***As Director of ORR, Lloyd would normally have the refugee contractors backing him, including the Catholic ones, but on this I don’t see where even the Bishops are going to help him. I could be wrong, but they will be more worried about angering their groupies on the Left and possibly jeopardizing their federal payola. We will see.
And, if Trump wants to succeed, he needs to be putting some mean (and loyal to him) SOBs in these top jobs. Nice guys finish last as the saying goes….
I have too many things piled up to write anything extensive about this subject, but just wanted to be sure that you know that the Office of Refugee Resettlement in HHSis also busy placing tens of thousands of illegal alien youths with ‘families’ who got here illegally ahead of them.
Below is one such story. But, before you go there, here is an ORR fact sheet explaining their legal authority. And, read this, the ‘children’ are eating up ORR’s budget.
It had been more than 10 years since Gari, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who was living in Santa Fe, had seen his younger brother. So he was surprised earlier this year when he received a call from a federal government agency telling him his teen brother had emigrated alone from the Central American country to the Arizona-Mexico border.
The ‘children’ are mostly teens. LOL! and how many of those 17 year-olds are really adults! https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/about/ucs/facts-and-data
The boy was in the custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which asked Gari to take legal guardianship of his brother.
At first, Gari was apprehensive because it would require him to give his personal information to a federal agency — something that virtually all unauthorized immigrants try to avoid. But Health and Human Services officials assured him in January that it wouldn’t jeopardize his own safety. The boy just needed a legal guardian as he dealt with his own immigration case, they said.
Gari, 34, was arrested at his home Aug. 14 by federal immigration agents who had used his little brother as bait.
The ‘children’ are mostly boys.
[….]
The Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the Office of Refugee Resettlement, is tasked with reuniting unaccompanied children and youth with relatives in the U.S.
“Our programs encourage reunification of children with their parents or other appropriate adult relatives,” the office’s website says. It doesn’t distinguish between relatives who are U.S. citizens or legal residents and those who are living in the U.S. illegally.
Fascinating isn’t it! ORR is actually placing the mostly teenage boys coming across our borders with illegal alien families (who are in violation of our laws themselves) and you pay millions of tax dollars to help it happen!
If they can’t find a legal family, why aren’t the mostly teenage boys held in detention until they can be returned to their home countries?
To be granted asylum they must prove they will be PERSECUTED if returned home—for their race, religion, political views, etc.
Anyone simply trying to escape violence or looking for work is NOT a legitimate refugee. By administering the program through ORR it sends a message that they are refugees.
Barack Obama illegally expanded the US Refugee Admissions Program a few years ago with his Central American Minors Program (CAM) which allowed Central American parents (from 3 countries) already in the US to get their kids to America by claiming they are refugees. Obama said it would stem the illegal border invasion by ‘children.’ (Begging the question—so how could these parents simply leave their kids behind in the first place!)
Technically to be a refugee one must prove that one is persecuted for one of several reasons (religion, race, political persuasion, etc.) and that the person (the wannabe refugee) has left his country and would be harmed if returned. This is a very large hurdle for kids who are still in their country of origin and who are mostly economically challenged and not truly persecuted. So Obama bent the law further by allowing them to be paroled in to the US.
Trump has now dumped the parole option. If the kid can meet the refugee standards, presumably he/she can still get here.
I was looking for an illustration for this story, and although not what the story is about, I found this incredible graph showing the cost to taxpayers for the surge in so-called “unaccompanied children” arriving illegally. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS) is responsible for them. Funny, the number of children crossing has declined while the cost keeps going up!
The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday it plans to shut down a program that offered some children and young adults from three Central Amercian countries a chance to lawfully immigrate to the U.S. to join their parents.
The decision will close down a portion of the Central American Minors program, established in 2014 under President Obama as a way to slow the stream of minors from strife-torn Central American countries.
The program allows unmarried youths under 21 years old from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala who had one parent who had lawful status in the U.S. to apply for refugee status, from their home country.
If the refugee status was denied. they could still be allowed into the U.S. under humanitarian parole, a way to legally be in the country that is not permanent but must be renewed periodically.
In an announcement to be published in the Federal Register today DHS said that it was terminating the humanitarian parole part of the CAM program.
Children and young adults can still seek refugee status , but if that is denied the parole option will no longer be available.
Lisa Frydman, Kids in Need of Defense, is Angelina Jolies organization. https://supportkind.org/about/leadership/
No reason was given for the change to the program, though the administration of President Donald Trump has made both choking off the flow of youths and families from Central America and tightening the legal immigration avenues a priority as part of its overall crackdown on immigration.
[….]
The program began in 2014, and in late 2016 it was expanded to allow additional family members to apply. But that expansion came late in the Obama presidency and because of the length of time it takes to review, investigate and approve an application no one has been admitted under the expanded rules.
Earlier this year the State Department said 11,000 people had applied to the program and 2,400 had been admitted. Another 2,700 individuals had been granted conditional parole but had not yet traveled to the U.S., according to Lisa Frydman with the Kids In Need Of Defense, an advocacy group in San Francisco.
The announcement said that those conditional approvals are now rescinded.
What might you do today?Contact the White Houseand thank the president for doing this, and tell him to dump the whole program. It is Congress’s job to write laws about who is and who isn’t a refugee.
By the way, much of the cost of the UACs in that graph above is because some of our usual contractorsare being paid to care for the kids!
Thanks to Joanne for spotting the answer to our question from earlierthis morning. Montgomery County, MD, Superintendent of Public Schools, Jack R. Smith held a press conference yesterday about the “tragedy.” The tragedy is that the Obama Administration allowed creeps like these to enter the US and with the government’s help be spread out throughout America.
The Conservative Tree Housereported the following when describing the press conference yesterday about the alleged Rockville rapists from Central America:
Mr. Smith does acknowledge during the latter part of the presser that these predator suspects were indeed part of the Unaccompanied Alien Children relocation program.
Go to the Conservative Tree House and watch the video of the press conference led by MoCo Superintendent of Schools Jack R. Smith. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, go to 20:10 and see that in response to a question about screening, Smith says they don’t screen those who are part of the “unaccompanied minors” program where the federal government places the children with families. He implies that the feds screen them. To get to the bottom of whether they were part of the program housed in the Office of Refugee Resettlement, real investigative reporters should try and get information out of them.
Unfortunately, the place is still being run by Obama bureaucrats, so chances are slim anyone there will fess up to having processed the alleged rapists.
Central American Minors (CAM) program
God forbid that these perps came in through Obama’s illegal expansion of the US Refugee Admissions Program known as CAM where instead of the ‘child’ aliens coming across our southern border on their own steam trying to claim asylum, we go and get them!
I’ve been meaning to report that Wrapsnet has catalogued hundreds coming in from Central America as refugees already in this fiscal year, but will try to get to that later. THESE ARE NOT REFUGEES. People escaping poverty or violence do not fit the definition of a refugee who must prove he/she will be PERSECUTED for one of several reasons if returned home. Obama vastly expanded the refugee definition and Trump’s team needs to get to work immediately and rein-in the expansion!
