Sessions: Parents 'recklessly' send unaccompanied migrant kids to U.S.
https://static.politico.com/dims4/de...essions-ap.jpg
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said "predictably" the number of people with children illegally entering the country surged from 14,000 in 2013 to 75,000 in 2017. | Alex Brandon/AP
Sessions: Parents 'recklessly' send unaccompanied migrant kids to U.S.
By KIMBERLY HEFLING
06/25/2018 02:28 PM EDT
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday that the Trump administration is doing everything in its power to avoid separating families at the border, but took a jab at parents who "recklessly" send children to the United States on their own.
Sessions defended the administration's immigration policies in a speech in Reno, Nev., before the National Association of School Resource Officers school safety conference. He said the unaccompanied minors in the U.S. cost $1 billion annually, and that word "got out that this country was not prosecuting adults who illegally came to this country so long as they brought a child with them."
Sessions said "predictably" the number of people illegally entering with children surged from 14,000 in 2013 to 75,000 in 2017.
"If we refused to prosecute these adults for illegal entry — as many of our critics want us to do — that would be a disservice to the people of this country. It would also be an insult to those who come here legally, waiting their turn lawfully," Sessions said.
Still, Sessions said while President Donald Trump has made it clear that adults who enter illegally will be prosecuted, "we are going to do everything in our power to avoid separating families. All federal agencies are working hard to accomplish that goal, especially to care for children."
Last week, the Justice Department asked a federal judge to alter a decades-old settlement in order to allow the Trump administration to implement a new policy for detaining families taken into immigration custody after crossing the border with Mexico. The emergency motion seeks to change provisions in the so-called Flores agreement that typically bar detention of minors for more than 20 days, as well as a requirement that children be held in facilities licensed as state-approved day care centers.
Noting the need for the court filing, Sessions called on Congress to act to "fix this" to help keep families together.
Sessions told the school resource officers, who are sworn officers who work in schools, that the children they serve are affected by immigration because they are watching as their friends and family members get involved in drugs and addiction, "fed by drug cartels taking advantage of our porous southern border."
Also, the MS-13 gang is recruiting children sent to the United States as unaccompanied minors, he said.
"Some are brought to help replenish the gang and they are terrorizing immigrant schools and communities from Los Angeles to Louisville to Long Island to Boston," Sessions said.
More than 80 percent of children crossing the border come by themselves "without any parents or guardian sent with a paid smuggler," Sessions said.
"You may not know, our government spends enormous sums of money every year to protect and care for unaccompanied alien children who were recklessly sent to the United States by their family members," Sessions said. "A billion dollars a year."
"Children have indeed borne much of the burden from our broken immigration system," Sessions added.
Sessions is a member of a federal school safety commission announced by the White House following the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 dead.
During the speech, he announced $25 million in grants for better training and technology. That's on top of $50 million under a new law to better train teachers and students and to develop a threat reporting system.
Outside the resort where Sessions spoke, protesters angered by the Trump administration’s immigration policies rallied. They carried signs with messages such as “Separating families is immoral and unAmerican” and “Lock Sessions and Trump up."
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...nd-kids-648092
