Thread: ILLEGAL ALIEN CHILDREN TO BE BROUGHT TO SAN DIEGO

ADDITIONAL BORDER CROSSERS TO BE BROUGHT TO SAN DIEGO

By Associated press 5:05 A.M.JUNE 22, 2014

SAN DIEGO — A Border Patrol official says the agency will fly nearly 300 Central American immigrants from South Texas to California on Monday for processing, as the government moves to ease the workload on agents at the nation’s busiest corridor for illegal crossings.

San Diego sector chief Paul Beeson said Saturday that there will be two flights with 140 passengers each — one bound for San Diego and one for El Centro.

Beeson said the flights beginning Monday are expected to continue every three days. They will be mostly for families with children but also carry adults. There will be no unaccompanied children.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement will decide whether they will remain in custody while in deportation proceedings. The move comes as officials try to cope with the influx of unauthorized immigrants — many of them unaccompanied minors — crossing the border in Texas.

In New Mexico, Congressman Steve Pearce said Friday that a new detention facility planned there would also only be for immigrant families, not unaccompanied minors.

The Republican told the Roswell Daily Record that an area of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia could house families. But the facility was not equipped to handle unaccompanied minors.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said that the 700-bed family detention facility would likely be the first of several new facilities that will be open to house immigrants caught crossing the border illegally.

As the Obama administration scrambles to respond to an influx of unaccompanied minors crossing the Mexican border into Texas, the union that represents 16,500 border patrol officers has made its frustration clear.

“New annual job rating areas: Babysitting, Diaper Changing, Burrito Wrapping, Cleaning cells. Law Enforcement? What’s that? #lowmorale” the group wrote on its Twitter feed last weekend.

The message, posted to the National Border Patrol Council’s Twitter account, was deleted after it was decried by immigrant advocates as racist. But the tweet reflected mounting concern among rank-and-file agents who have been yanked from patrol duty in high-risk border areas to process and care for tens of thousands of children, union officials said.

“Nothing in there was racist,” union President Brandon Judd said in an interview, referring to the tweet. “All he was trying to emphasize is that we can’t do our jobs. Forty percent of our agents have been pulled from the field to baby-sit, clean cells, change diapers. We’re actually making burritos. That’s not our job. Our job is to protect the border.”

The union’s growing criticism of the administration’s border policies has added another sharp voice to the immigration debate.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/...be-brought-to/

Feds shelve plan to fly migrants to Calif.

USA TODAY

- ‎1 hour ago‎

Federal authorities announced they had canceled their plan to fly nearly 300 Central American immigrants to Southern California from Texas, but left the door the open to the possibility that the plan could be reinstated...