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  1. #1
    Senior Member dragonfire's Avatar
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    Surge in child immigrants crossing Texas border stresses support network

    McALLEN, Texas (AP) — An unprecedented surge of children caught trudging through South Texas scrublands or crossing at border ports of entry without their families has sent government and nonprofit agencies scrambling to expand their shelter, legal representation and reunification services. On any given day this year, the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement has been caring for more than 2,100 unaccompanied child immigrants.

    The influx came to light last week when 100 kids were taken to Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio for temporary housing. It was the first time the government has turned to the Defense Department — now, 200 boys and girls younger than 18 stay in a base dormitory.

    While the issue of unaccompanied minors arriving in the U.S. isn't new, the scale of the recent increase is. From October 2011 through March, 5,252 kids landed in U.S. custody without a parent or guardian — a 93 percent increase from the same period the previous year, according to data released by the Department of Health and Human Services. In March alone, 1,390 kids arrived.

    "The whole community right now is in triage mode," said Wendy Young, executive director of Kids in Need of Defense, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that matches pro bono attorneys with unaccompanied minors navigating the immigration system. "It's important that the resources and the capacity meet the need, and we're not quite there yet."

    The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities in 10 states range from shelters to foster homes and have about 2,500 beds. Government-contracted shelters were maxing out their emergency bed space, setting up cots in gymnasiums and other extra spaces.

    "It's a much more limited set of services," said Lauren Fisher of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, which helps children and their families navigate the system. "It felt something like a Red Cross shelter, a hurricane shelter."

    Unaccompanied children are first processed by the Department of Homeland Security, and then turned over to the ORR while the deportation process begins. Once in a shelter, the search begins for their relatives or an acceptable custodian, while nonprofit organizations try to match the children with pro bono attorneys. When a custodian is found, the child can leave the shelter and await immigration proceedings.

    Eighty percent of the children referred to the ORR end up in a shelter, according to a report released last month by the Vera Institute of Justice — a nonprofit that developed a program to better provide access to legal services for children. The average shelter stay is 61 days, and the report found that at least 65 percent of the kids end up with a sponsor in the U.S.

    The cause of the surge remains a mystery to child migrant advocates and government officials. The kids are coming from the same places as usual —Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico — and they offer the same range of explanations: they made the trek to look for parents already in the U.S.; they're seeking economic opportunity to send money home; they want to escape violence or abuse.

    "We're talking to the children, but we don't have one solid answer," Fisher said. "There seem to be the same reasons that we've seen before."

    Some have suggested that human smugglers are more aggressively marketing their services. Others wonder if the Border Patrol, whose presence has doubled in recent years, is simply catching more of them. But Border Patrol apprehensions of children and adults were cut in half from 2008 to 2011, and only 5 percent of those caught are unaccompanied children. Younger children commonly cross with adult smugglers at the ports of entry, while older kids join groups that follow guides through the brush.

    A South Texas woman told border authorities this month that the 5-year-old girl accompanying her at the international bridge connecting Hidalgo, Texas, and Reynosa, Mexico, was her sister, according to court records. She even presented a Texas birth certificate. But the girl couldn't answer basic questions, so the woman told customs officers that she wasn't related to the girl at all. She said that a man whom she worked with in Mexico offered her $2,000 to "cross" the girl — who was actually from Guatemala — and accompany her to Houston. The woman was charged with transporting an illegal immigrant.

    This week, the first ladies of Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala spoke at a three-day conference on unaccompanied minors in Washington, D.C. Mexico's first lady, Margarita Zavala, and Honduran counterpart Rosa Elena Bonilla de Lobo noted that tougher U.S. border security made it more difficult for parents working in the U.S. to return for their children, a suggestion as to why parents increasingly would put their children in a smuggler's care.

    "The statistics are worrisome," said Rosa Maria Leal de Perez, Guatemala's first lady. "We've had 6,000 unaccompanied children repatriated in the last year."

    The Department of Health and Human Services limited its public statements on the unaccompanied migrant children program, but it allowed a few reporters to take a short tour this week of the housing at Lackland Air Force base. They were not allowed to speak with children.

    The beige, nondescript four-story dormitory is located deep on the base. When children arrive, they are issued black duffel bags filled with clothing and are allowed two phone calls a week. Three-quarters of the children are boys, most between 14 and 17 years old.

    Green cots were spaced two feet apart along the stark-white walls. A media room held a large flat-screen television and a video game console; there were also board games and an outside area with a basketball hoop and two soccer goals. The kids play outside for an hour each day.

    "We are looking to add some educational features that are appropriate for a 30-day temporary program," HHS spokesman Jesse Garcia said, though the goal is to move kids to more established accommodations within 15 days.

    As of late Friday, 83 kids had already been transferred out of Lackland, most to permanent facilities. Nineteen had been reunited with family.

    Surge in child immigrants crossing Texas border stresses support network » Naples Daily News

  2. #2
    Senior Member oldguy's Avatar
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    quote(The cause of the surge remains a mystery to child migrant advocates and government officials.)quote


    No mystery here, send kids first hope for "Dream act" kids can bring in parents down th road. Groups around the world work on the destruction of America each day.
    I'm old with many opinions few solutions.

  3. #3
    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    Didn't the socialist, pro-amnesty mainstream media just this week bombard us with headline after headline of illegal aliens returning back to Mexico in droves?
    Join our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & to secure US borders by joining our E-mail Alerts at http://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  4. #4
    Senior Member oldguy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by HAPPY2BME View Post
    Didn't the socialist, pro-amnesty mainstream media just this week bombard us with headline after headline of illegal aliens returning back to Mexico in droves?
    Yes and they ran out numbers that more are leaving then coming, stupid election propaganda, sadly there are people who believe it.
    I'm old with many opinions few solutions.

  5. #5
    Administrator Jean's Avatar
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    More unaccompanied children crossing US-Mexico border illegally

    Updated: Tuesday, 08 May 2012, 8:07 PM EDT
    Published : Tuesday, 08 May 2012, 11:40 AM EDT

    By The Wall Street Journal

    SAN ANTONIO - South Texas is seeing a rise in children from Central America who have slipped across the border unaccompanied into the US from Mexico after that country began deporting fewer kids who arrived without visas, some experts say.

    The influx across the US border is causing a political outcry in the state, where the federal government has set up five temporary shelters to deal with the growing numbers of young immigrants.

    From October to the end of April, the US government has detained more than 6,500 unaccompanied minors who had crossed the border, nearly double the number detained in the comparable period the previous year, according to US officials.

    Most of them come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, countries that are close to Mexico's southern border, and generally range in age from 14 to 17, though some are younger.

    The jump comes as illegal immigration is down sharply overall, thanks to declining immigration from Mexico paired with a rising number of people returning south from the US.

    While young immigrants have been picked up in increased numbers all along the southern border, the situation has become particularly acute in Texas. In one shelter at an Air Force base in San Antonio, about 200 children live in a squat, brown military barrack, sleeping on cots.

    Texas Gov. Rick Perry criticized the situation in a letter to President Obama on Friday, calling the immigration surge a humanitarian crisis that the federal government wasn't doing enough to alleviate. He noted that dozens of young immigrants to the US recently had to be quarantined due to a measles scare and an outbreak of chicken pox.

    "By failing to take immediate action to return these minors to their country of origin and prevent others from coming, the federal government is perpetuating the problem," the governor wrote.

    The White House referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security. A spokesman for the department declined to comment on the Mexican law or to discuss the reasons behind the increase in border crossings by Central American children.

    Immigration experts say a Mexican law enacted last May, which lets some kids who enter that country remain there without visas for humanitarian reasons, allows more children safe passage to the US border. The children are often transported by smugglers hired by family members, experts say.

    More unaccompanied children crossing US-Mexico border illegally
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  6. #6
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Immigrant-kids shelter at Lackland closed down

    By Jason Buch
    Wednesday, June 13, 2012


    The Department of Health and Human Services has closed its emergency shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland.

    The last four children were moved to permanent shelters Wednesday, said Kenneth Wolfe, deputy director in the department's office of public affairs.
    At its height, the barracks on Lackland held 300 children, part of an influx that forced the agency to open five emergency shelters in Texas. All were closed in recent weeks, Wolfe said.


    Since October, the agency has seen 8,541 unaccompanied children, exceeding the total number in fiscal 2011.The department has opened new permanent, state-certified shelters and expanded existing facilities, Wolfe said.
    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts at https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

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