Thread: Bishop to lead border inquiry

http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stor ... c0793.html

Bishop to lead border inquiry

FACT-FINDING: A group headed by Gerald Barnes, of San Bernardino, will seek data on child immigrants.

10:00 PM PDT on Saturday, October 21, 2006

By MICHAEL FISHER
The Press-Enterprise

Bishop Gerald Barnes, leader of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino, is heading up a fact-finding delegation of bishops to Arizona and Texas this week to study the plight of undocumented children who cross the U.S.-Mexico border without their families.

The bishops will meet with federal officials and community groups on both sides of the border to learn about the risks posed by smugglers who lure children and teens across the border only to force them into prostitution, pornography or other exploitive jobs. The bishops will also examine the conditions the minors encounter when apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol, Barnes said.

"We are very interested in what is happening to these children and are there programs where these kids are receiving basic services and not just being held in jail facilities until they can be sent home to their families," said Barnes, who is spearheading efforts by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to get federal immigration policies changed.

Barnes said a growing number of minors are coming across the border.

"Some are being brought to join their families who are already here, because of the backlog in family reunification visas," Barnes said. "Some are just coming on their own; some are coming for jobs to support their families."

The bishops will tour one of three group homes for migrant juveniles run by the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston in Texas. An estimated 300 undocumented children will live in the facilities this year, receiving food, shelter, medical, educational and legal services, said Deacon Joe Rubio of Catholic Charities.

"We're seeing a sad procession of children all the way from Central America through Mexico, crossing the border unaccompanied," Rubio said. "It's a reflection of the larger picture of immigration chaos that we have right now."

Rubio said the risks to youths crossing the border alone are considerable. Some are raped and robbed by bandits.

The bishops will also tour Border Patrol facilities in Arizona where agents say they encounter undocumented kids as young as 14 years old traveling alone.

"Every single day, every station within the Tucson sector encounters unaccompanied juveniles," said Gustavo Soto, spokesman for the Tucson sector Border Patrol. "We arrest several every day."

Unaccompanied minors arrested by agents are eventually turned over to the Mexican Consulate for transportation back home, Soto said.

So far this year, agents in the Tucson-sector office have arrested more than 37,000 undocumented juveniles, Soto said. He did not have statistics on how many of those minors were not accompanied by a relative.

Between October 2005 and Sept 15, the Border Patrol arrested more than 101,000 juveniles along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, said Todd Fraser, a spokesman at the agency's Washington D.C. headquarters. Fraser did not have statistics available as to how many of those youths were unaccompanied.

"It's a very, very small population in terms of the roughly 1.2 million apprehensions we make every year," he said.

This is just wonderful. I think the Catholics should take care of all those children and set up a program to return them to their parents. The Catholics need to quit housing them and return them.

Dixie

You're right, Dixie, the church COULD have a different goal..to reunite the children with their parents INSTEAD OF trying to justify anything that would bring them into the US. Besides, the IRS should be telling them to butt out or pay taxes.

I am concerned about the catholic church , I hope they can spare the manpower because hopefully they are working to solve the rampant child molestation and pedophilia problem that abounds within their ranks .

ALL CHURCHES THAT WANT TO PLAY POLITICS...CIRCUMVENT LAWS,AID AND ABET ....NEED TO LOOSE THEIR TAX EMEMPT STATUS AND THEN GET INTO POLITICS....THEY DON'T WANT GOVERNMENT IN RELIGION and I don't want them not playing taxes and using their status to get into government...all they are concerned with is filling those empty phews.....and baskets....They should be using their billions on the homeless and unfortunate...instead of telling us how to use taxpayers money...Maybe they will adopt 100 and take them home....

Oh boy. Catholic priests being drawn to children with no one watching over them. Not surprising.