A federal judge ordered the U.S. government to “expeditiously” house children who illegally enter the country, instead of allowing the children to remain in open-air locations along the border.
The order issued late Wednesday evening by California-based U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee was mostly in favor of the attorneys representing the minors in the class-action lawsuit.
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The Biden administration is planning to use a former North Carolina boarding school campus to house hundreds of migrant children, according to CBS News.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement will open the doors of what used to be the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, North Carolina, to house up to 800 migrant children between the ages of 13 and 17 who crossed the southern border illegally, according to CBS News, citing a U.S. official familiar with the plan. The facility is intended to serve as “influx care” to provide emergency housing, which HHS uses when it expects a surge in child migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Four years after Democrats made political hay out of migrant children being separated from their parents at the border, Republicans have turned the tables on the issue amid evidence the Biden administration has lost track of as many as 85,000 minors it allowed to enter the country unaccompanied by parents, leaving many prey to cartel extortion, forced labor, abuse and trafficking.
The extraordinary political boomerang will be on full display Tuesday when Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) Director Robin Dunn Marcos is grilled by a House Oversight subcommittee on the failure of the Department of Health and Human Services to vet, monitor and track unaccompanied migrant children, whose arrival at the border has grown more than 10-fold since Joe Biden took office.
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Nearly a month after news broke that the Biden administration is quietly resettling migrant children in Tennessee, more questions than answers remain.
“I’m pushing hard for transparency on this and the Biden administration is blocking us,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) said in an interview with Fox News. “You notice they move these planes in the dead of night. They’re coming in both by commercial airlines as well as private air, and the planes that we’ve found out about at least, are landing after midnight. They’re dispersing the people coming in. We’re hearing they’re unaccompanied minors. They could be adults.
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Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott will step down after more than 29 years with Customs and Border Protection, he announced Wednesday.
Scott will remain in his position for around 60 days as the agency transitions, he said in a private Facebook post. A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shared a screenshot of Scott’s Facebook message with the Daily Caller News Foundation and said the agency would make a formal announcement.
“I received my 3R letter today. For those not familiar, that is Federal government slang for the letter issued to (senior executive staff) level employees informing them of a directed reassignment,” Scott said in the post. “The recipient has 3 options – relocate, resign or retire. No rationale or reason is required, nor is it disciplinary.”
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Senator Bill Hagerty to the newsmakers line to answer questions about S1, new evidence of Georgia election irregularities, and the border crisis.
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Tennessee legislators will draft legislation to increase transparency and establish protective measures for the sponsorship of unaccompanied migrant children. The federal government says that sponsors are “almost always a parent or close relative” – but that’s not always the case. Lawmakers’ urgency to increase transparency and establish protective measures for sponsorship heightened after it was revealed that Governor Bill Lee’s administration has continued licensing for a Chattanooga shelter without apparent provisions in place to protect the housed migrant children from traffickers and cartels.
The Chattanooga shelter is run by the Baptiste Group, a Georgia-based national group that provides emergency shelter services for unaccompanied migrant children – usually for up to 30 days, excepting complications. Last May, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Children and Families contracted with the Baptiste Group for a conditional Residential Child Care Agency License in Chattanooga. The three-year contract, set to expire last August, anticipated nearly $7.5 million in costs to house up to 100 children.
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Since reports of migrant children landing in Chattanooga emerged over the week, Tennessee’s legislators are urging the Biden Administration to cease importing migrants. In a press release, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) announced that Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Representative Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN-03) joined her in a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary (USDHS) Alejandro Mayorkas.
It is apparent from the letter that Tennessee’s leaders at both the federal and state levels have been left in the dark on the Biden Administration’s orders concerning migrants. The legislators asked Becerra and Mayorkas to answer whether the federal government is using Tennessee as a central location for resettling unaccompanied alien children.
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Multiple airplanes carrying unaccompanied migrant children from the southern border landed late at night on multiple days at Chattanooga’s Wilson Air Center, according to a report from WRCB.
Upon arriving in Chattanooga, dozens of migrant children boarded multiple buses to be transported to various locations.
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The Biden administration redirected over $2 billion allocated for other health initiatives to care for unaccompanied migrant minors, Politico reported Saturday.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will receive $850 million meant for the federal emergency medical fund depleted by COVID-19 and another $850 million set aside for COVID-19 testing, according to three people familiar with the matter, Politico reported. HHS struggled to open and staff several emergency intake facilities to move over 20,000 migrant children out of border patrol facilities.
“They’ve been in a situation of needing to very rapidly expand capacity, and emergency capacity is much more expensive,” Mark Greenberg, Migration Policy Institute senior fellow and former leader of the Obama administration’s HHS administration for children and families, told Politico. “You can’t just say there’s going to be a waiting list or we’re going to shut off intake. There’s literally not a choice.”
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Biden administration officials are investigating reports of unaccompanied migrant minors spending nights on buses outside a federal holding facility in Dallas, Texas, NBC News reported Thursday.
Migrant children are sleeping, eating and using the restroom on buses outside the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, sometimes for days, according to NBC News.
“This is completely unacceptable,” Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra said, NBC News reported. “We’re quickly investigating this to get to the bottom of what happened, and we’ll work to make sure this never happens again. The safety and well-being of the children is our priority.”
A 15-year-old migrant, Joel, made the journey from Honduras to reunite with his mother and was left on a bus from Saturday until the bus departed on its way to Seattle, Washington, on Wednesday, NBC News reported. His mother, Doris, said an HHS employee told them Joel would arrive Monday despite the bus remaining in Dallas.
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Customs and Border Protection has held at least 800 unaccompanied migrant minors in custody for over 10 days, Axios reported
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can legally hold unaccompanied minors for 72 hours, though over 3,300 were in custody over the limit as of Saturday, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by Axios. Over 2,200 unaccompanied minors were held for more than five days and around 820 were in custody for over 10 days.
The number of unaccompanied minors in CBP custody for over 10 days has quadrupled in the last week, Axios reported. Only around 180 unaccompanied minors were in CBP custody for over 10 days as of last Monday.
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Members of the media will not be able to visit migrant detention centers holding minors near the southern border due to COVID-19, a spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Reporters will not be allowed inside the Carrizo Springs facility for unaccompanied minors that was recently opened under the Biden administration in Texas, a Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families (ACF) spokesperson told the DCNF.
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A new facility to hold unaccompanied migrant children was opened in Texas this week because the Biden administration is encouraging illegal immigration, a former border official said Wednesday.
The Carrizo Springs facility was not opened to comply with COVID-19 regulations as the Biden administration has said, according to former Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Mark Morgan in an interview with Fox Business.
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The Biden administration aims to avoid a humanitarian crisis at the southern border as the number of migrant children seeking asylum increases.
Over 5,700 unaccompanied minors reached the border in January and government shelters are quickly reaching capacity, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shelters for migrant children are operating at 60% capacity to maintain COVID-19 guidelines and were 93% full as of Friday.
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A federal judge on Friday ordered the release of children held with their parents in U.S. immigration jails and denounced the Trump administration’s prolonged detention of families during the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee – who was appointed by President Obama in 2009 – penned the order that applies to children held for more than 20 days at three family detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some have been detained since last year.
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Wayfair employees and their supporters gathered to protest outside the company’s Boston headquarters Wednesday after learning the online retailer sold bedroom furniture to detention centers housing migrant children. According to NBC News, people protesting shouted “this is what democracy looks like” and “Hey-Hey, Ho-Ho, ICE contracts have got to go.” It was awesome to see the turnout today. Thank you to everyone who showed up to the #WayfairWalkout pic.twitter.com/x4oUttSv9i — wayfairwalkout (@wayfairwalkout) June 26, 2019 pic.twitter.com/ojaRQmDtPC — wayfairwalkout (@wayfairwalkout) June 26, 2019 The protests started after employees found out that Wayfair had fulfilled a $200,000 order to BCFS, a non-profit government contractor that manages the camps’ migrants are currently staying in. The facility receiving the order currently houses 3,000 migrant children, according to a letter sent last Friday to the company’s leadership team and signed by more than 500 workers. Receipts (for those who asked): Follow @wayfairwalkout Support #Lights4Liberty Donate to #RAICESTEXAS#CloseTheCamps pic.twitter.com/hKBKHIaRck — Asian Raisin 🍇 (@guiltyx) June 25, 2019 “We believe that by selling these (or any) products to BCFS or similar contractors we are enabling this violation and are complicit in furthering the inhumane actions of our government,” the letter states. The Wayfair leadership team responded…
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U.S. border authorities say they’ve started to increase the biometric data they take from children 13 years old and younger, including fingerprints, despite privacy concerns and government policy intended to restrict what can be collected from migrant youths. A Border Patrol official said this week that the agency had begun a pilot program to collect the biometrics of children with the permission of the adults accompanying them, though he did not specify where along the border it has been implemented. The Border Patrol also has a “rapid DNA pilot program” in the works, said Anthony Porvaznik, the chief patrol agent in Yuma, Arizona, in a video interview published by the Epoch Times newspaper. Spokesmen for the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security did not return several messages from The Associated Press seeking comment on both programs. ‘Kids that are being rented’ The Border Patrol says that in the last year, it’s stopped roughly 3,100 adults and children fraudulently posing as families so they can be released into the U.S. quickly rather than face detention or rapid deportation. The Department of Homeland Security has also warned of “child recycling,” cases where they say children allowed into the U.S.…
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Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has approved a request to identify places to potentially house up to 5,000 unaccompanied migrant children, the Pentagon said Wednesday. In March, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requested Pentagon support to identify locations to house unaccompanied migrant children through Sept. 30. Migrant arrivals on the U.S. border with Mexico have been building steadily for months, driven by growing numbers of children and families, especially from Central America. Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Davis told Reuters that Shanahan approved that request Tuesday. Davis said HHS had made no request to actually house the children. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he was not reviving a policy of separating children from parents who had illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, one day after media reports that his administration was considering putting it back in place. In February, Trump declared a national emergency to help build a border wall, which would allow him to spend money on it that Congress had appropriated for other purposes. Congress declined to fulfill his request for $5.7 billion to help build the wall this year. The Republican president’s latest pronouncements, including a threat to impose auto tariffs on Mexico,…
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by Jason Hopkins Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is requesting Congress pass a legislative measure that gives her department greater authority to address the growing migrant crisis at the U.S. southern border. Nielsen asked lawmakers to make it easier for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to deport unaccompanied alien children (UAC), to allow migrants to file asylum requests within their home countries, and for the authority to keep families requesting asylum in detention facilities until their cases are complete, according to a letter first obtained by NBC News. The measures would help alleviate what Nielsen describes as an “emergency situation” at the U.S.-Mexico border. “We are grappling with a humanitarian and security catastrophe that is worsening by the day, and the Department has run out of capacity, despite extraordinary intra-Departmental and interagency efforts,” Nielsen’s letter to Congress read. “Accordingly, DHS requests immediate Congressional assistance to stabilize the situation.” The requests come as the country’s southern border is witnessing record levels of illegal border crossings. The DHS apprehended 50,000 to 60,000 illegal migrants a month in late 2018. More than 75,000 apprehensions and encounters were made in February — the highest volume in over 10 years. DHS forecasts March…
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