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Biden Administration Lost — Yes, Lost — Nearly 20,000 Migrant Children

bonnie1962

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in Politics (Mainly US) and other American interest items

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"Compassionate Liberals"

Biden Administration Lost — Yes, Lost — Nearly 20,000 Migrant Children

The alien minors released since the inauguration would be the 18th largest U.S. school district, costing local taxpayers more than $4.6 billion per year

 
By Andrew R. Arthur on March 2, 2022
 

 

In September, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) asked the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for information on unaccompanied alien children (UACs) — alien minors who entered illegally and who have been released to sponsors in this country. Biggs tweeted out the response this week. The big takeaways: The Biden administration has lost track of nearly 20,000 kids, and the more than 146,000 children in total it has released would be the 18th largest school district in the United States — at an added cost to local taxpayers of $4.6 billion annually.

HHS Role in the Placement of Unaccompanied Alien Children. By way of background, prior to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had jurisdiction over the detention and release of unaccompanied alien children.

Immigrants’ rights advocates long complained about INS’s detention of children, and so when DHS was created in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (HSA), that bill was amended by House Democrats to give the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within HHS jurisdiction over the unaccompanied children that DHS apprehended.

That role was expanded in the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA). As I have explained in the past, the TVPRA divided UACs based on nationality, with Mexican and Canadian children treated differently than all other alien children.

Under the TVPRA, DHS can quickly return Mexican and Canadian children if they have no fear of return and have not been trafficked.

All other children, however, are to be sent to HHS (within 72 hours, when possible) for placement in shelters HHS runs or contracts for. Those children, in almost all cases, are to be placed with sponsors in the United States and are put into removal proceedings (which can drag out for years).

The Washington Post editorial board argued in August 2014 that the TVPRA “has encouraged thousands of Central American children to try to reach the United States by granting them access to immigration courts that Mexican kids don’t enjoy”, and President Obama called, unsuccessfully, on Congress in June 2014 to plug this UAC loophole.

Congress has failed to act in the interim, and in April, congressional Republicans in Congress asked President Biden whether he agreed with Obama that this disparate and inequitable treatment of alien children was a problem, and whether he would work with Congress on a solution. It does not appear that the president ever responded.

Biden’s UAC Surge. In any event, the number of UACs apprehended at the Southwest border surged to record levels in FY 2021: Last fiscal year, CBP encountered nearly 147,000 unaccompanied children at the Southwest border, almost 99 percent of whom (almost 145,000) were apprehended by Border Patrol after they entered the United States illegally.

By way of comparison, that is nearly twice the prior record for UAC Border Patrol apprehensions, set during the “border emergency” in FY 2019 (76,020). Note that UAC apprehension numbers only go back to October 2009, because before the TVPRA was passed, illegal entry by unaccompanied children was not really an issue. Thanks to the loophole described above, it is.

The Biden administration has struggled to respond to that UAC surge. In February 2021, HHS had to reopen a “temporary” UAC shelter in Carrizo, Texas, that had been shuttered under the Trump administration. By March, the administration needed 20,000 beds to keep pace with the flow, housing older UACs in temporary HHS facilities while placing younger children in the state-licensed shelters.

All told, the Biden administration opened 15 temporary ORR facilities between February 22 and May 2, and as of the end of August, five remained in use.

State representatives and advocates raised concerns about conditions in those facilities. For example, in April, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) called for the federal government to close one facility in his state following what he called “credible” complaints about sexual assault, understaffing, and food and medical issues. He called in the Texas Rangers to figure out what was going on there.

In July, two whistleblowers at a separate Texas facility filed a complaint alleging that employees of the private contractor in charge had no child welfare experience or Spanish-language skills, and no relevant training.

Concerns were also raised that HHS was cutting corners in the vetting process to quickly move UACs from shelters to sponsors in the United States. While UACs had been spending 60 days in ORR care in FY 2018, and 102 days in FY 2020, during the first six months of FY 2021, that had been pared down to an average of 35 days.

The flood of UACs has continued into FY 2022. In the first four months of this fiscal year, CBP has encountered more than 47,000 UACs at the Southwest border, of whom nearly 98.6 percent were apprehended by Border Patrol agents. That puts CBP on track to apprehend upwards of 150,000 kids in FY 2022.

These and other issues prompted Biggs to write to HHS to determine how big the department’s problems had become.

 

 

 
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Biden administration has lost track of a third of released migrant kids: report

Data show that thousands of children are unaccounted for

Sen. Cruz: Biden trying to cover up overcrowding at Texas border facility

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, describes seeing children packed in cages at the Donna migrant facility during a press conference from the southern border.

 

 

The U.S. government has reportedly lost touch with thousands of illegal immigrant children whom they released from custody

According to data obtained by Axios via a Freedom of Information Act request, roughly on-in-three calls made to migrant children who had been released to their sponsors between January and May of this year went unanswered, suggesting the United States is not adequately protecting those children from harm.

SEN. CRUZ SAYS BIDEN IS TRYING TO COVER UP POOR TEXAS MIGRANT FACILITY CONDITIONS

"This is very dismaying," Mark Greenberg, a former Obama administration official told Axios about the data. "If large numbers of children and sponsors aren’t being reached, that’s a very big gap in efforts to help them."

Care providers made 14,600 calls to check in with minors released from Department of Health and Human Services shelters and taken in by relatives and vetted sponsors. Workers were unable to reach 4,890 of those migrants or their sponsors. The percentage of calls that went unanswered jumped from 26% in January to 37% in May.

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The data also show that the government is not making as many calls as it should. Thirty-two thousand children were released into the United States from HHS shelters, but the government placed fewer than 15,000 follow up calls. 

"While we make every effort to voluntarily check on children after we unite them with parents or sponsors and offer certain post-unification services, the oversight of the vast majority of kids is outside of our legal obligation," an HHS spokesperson told Fox News. "Many parents or sponsors do not return phone calls or do not want to be reached by federal authorities."

Former President Donald Trump was widely criticized in 2018 after it was discovered that his administration couldn’t provide the whereabouts of 1,500 migrant children released over a 3-month period.

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Since Biden took office in January, over a million illegal immigrants have been encountered at the southern border, sparking a humanitarian crisis that Republicans argue has put migrant children at risk. 

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"Unaccompanied children are passing through our border with the help of strangers and members of cartels, putting these children at an increased risk of sexual abuse and human trafficking," Sen. Thom Tillis said earlier this year after sponsoring the End Child Trafficking Now Act.  "This is completely unacceptable, and the Biden administration’s response has been severely lacking."

Reports of sexual abuse against migrants crossing the southern border have been rampant over the last few years, and a Fusion report in 2014 concluded that 80% of women and young girls are raped, often by guides and sponsors, crossing into the United States.

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Andrew Mark Miller is a writer at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.

 
 
 
 
 
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phkrause Grand Master

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TikTok video baselessly claims ‘thousands of migrant children’ in US were ‘taken’

CLAIM: Thousands of migrant children were “taken” after the Biden administration lost them. Biden also “got rid of Trump’s human trafficking task force that he had in place — one of the first things in fact he got rid of, with his little executive orders.”

https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-617491295996

phkrause

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan. Proverbs 29;2
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