It’s no secret that the administration of President Barack Obama has encouraged cities and states not to pick up illegal aliens. They even took the state of Arizona to court to prevent them from doing what the federal government refuses to do.
If it’s no secret to us, it’s entirely reasonable to assume it’s no secret to the millions in Mexico and Central America who would like nothing better than to come north and illegally cross the border in order to pay a visit to the folks — also illegal.
As I write this, there is a humanitarian crisis on our border that is making us look like a banana republic. Tens of thousands of children — a literal Children’s Crusade — have flooded across our borders in the last few months. The government expects 60,000 illegal kids this year and double that next year. We are told most are between the ages of 15 and 17 with teenage girls bringing their illegitimate kids with them.
The government can’t take care of them all. There literally is no place to put them, so they are shipping hundreds of them by the day to Arizona and dumping them in warehouses and, in some cases, on the street.
Since Memorial Day, federal immigration officials have flown hundreds of women and children to Tucson, where they were given medical and other tests. They were then sent by bus to Phoenix and left at the Greyhound station to find their relatives around the nation. They were told to report to an immigration center within 15 days of reaching their destination, officials said.
Immigration advocates have criticized the federal government for stranding the women and children in extreme heat with no money or food. Volunteers have stepped in to help them reach their families.
Those they don’t drop off at the bus station and wave goodbye to, they are taking to a warehouse in Nogales where there is little food, not enough mattresses, no medicine, and not much hope:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security started flying immigrants in the country illegally to Arizona from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas last month after the number of immigrants — including more than 48,000 children traveling on their own — overwhelmed the Border Patrol there.
Immigrant families were flown from Texas, released in Arizona, and told to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office near where they were traveling within 15 days. ICE has said the immigrants were mostly families from Central America fleeing extreme poverty and violence.
The Homeland Security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no authorization to discuss the matter publicly, said the holding center opened for unaccompanied migrant children because the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had nowhere to turn.
At the holding center, vendors are being contracted to provide nutritional meals, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, meanwhile, will provide counseling services and recreational activities.
The Homeland Security official said the number of children at the warehouse was expected to double to around 1,400. The warehouse has a capacity of about 1,500.
The Arizona Daily Star reported Saturday (http://bit.ly/UlC3VD ) that Jimena Díaz, consul general of Guatemala in Phoenix, visited the center Friday and said there were about 250 children from Guatemala, with the rest coming from El Salvador and Honduras.
Diaz told the newspaper that the children are being kept in separate groups, divided by age and gender. Most of them are between 15 and 17, Diaz said, with a few much younger than that. Teenage mothers with their children are also being detained separately, he said.
So why do they come?
Complicating matters further, many of the migrants coming to Texas are comparatively hard to deport. They are from Central America and are coming as families. Various studies conclude that crime, gangs, and poverty are driving people from countries south of the border. Those who make it to US soil agree, and add another reason: back home they’ve heard the United States may be lenient with illegal border-crossers who travel with children.
Add to that, I’m sure a lot of these people are excited about the new immigration law that will be passed later this summer. Getting legal status for being in America a few months — as long as your parents have been here a while — is another one of those “unanticipated consequences” of immigration reform.
Does this sound like a national emergency to you?
On Monday, Mr. Obama described the influx as an “urgent humanitarian situation” that called for a swift response. Federal agencies are moving to provide temporary housing and other services.
These factors create problems for ICE, says spokeswoman Lori Haley.
“These families have minor children with them, and ICE has only one family detention center in Pennsylvania but otherwise we don’t have detention facilities that can accommodate children,” she adds.
Texas, caught unprepared by the shift, has not been able to cope.
“Because of the recent surge of Central Americans, unaccompanied juveniles, and family groups in south Texas, the border patrol is running out of processing space,” says Mr. Adame.
That’s where Arizona comes in. As the focal point for illegal immigration during recent years “the government expended a lot of resources to this area to include detention facilities or processing facilities,” adds Adame.
After creating biographical files on the migrants and setting them up for deportation hearings, the border patrol in Tucson turns people over to ICE, which drops them off at the bus stations
I hate to be a scold, but this is crazy. We are being overrun and Obama is doing nothing. It’s an intolerable situation, dangerous to human life, contemptuous of the law, and ultimately a farce. Please raise your hand if you think more than a baker’s dozen of these illegals told to report to an ICE facility in 15 days is going to be there? Uh-huh.
An extreme crisis calls for extreme measures. Do we just stand by as 120,00 children cross our border illegally in the next year — in addition to the hundreds of thousands of others? Or do we call out the military to protect the border and thus, the sovereignty of the United States?
I have as much compassion for my fellow human being as the next person, but I’m not crazy. This is a crisis created by an administration that has let it be known far and wide that they will not enforce the law of the land. It’s a field they have sown for 5 years and they’re now reaping the bitter harvest.
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