DHS budget predicts surge of illegal immigrant children will last through 2017
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Tuesday, February 9, 2016
President Obama’s new budget predicts some 75,000 unaccompanied illegal immigrant children will sneak into the U.S. and have to be captured and cared for next year, suggesting the surge that began in 2014 will outlast this administration.
Mr. Obama included $319 million in his 2017 blueprint to handle the children, and warns that Homeland Security may request additional money if the surge is even higher than predicted.
At 75,000, the total for 2017 would be a record, eclipsing the nearly 69,000 that came in fiscal 2014 and the nearly 40,000 that came in 2015. This fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, is already off to a record pace.
The children are chiefly coming from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
When interviewed by Border Patrol agents, they say they are coming because of lax enforcement policies in the U.S., believing they can disappear into the shadows with other illegal immigrants. But humanitarian groups say when they interview the children, they also describe horrific violence or neglect at home that pushed their parents to send them north, often in the hands of smugglers who abuse or rape them.
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