GRAPHIC IMAGES!
SHATTERED
BORDERS
JOE
BIDEN’S OPEN BORDERS FOR MORE ‘CHEAP’ DEM VOTING WORKERS
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/joe-bidens-open-borders-and-mexican.html
JOE BIDEN’S GLOBALIST AGENDA FOR MORE DEM VOTING ‘CHEAP’ LABOR ILLEGALS
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/joe-bidens-open-borders-and-dhs-nominee.html
Under Obama, Alejandro Mayorkas ran the
citizenship agency and was promoted to the deputy DHS job as officials
gradually dismantled border protections and triggered a wage-cutting mass
migration from Central American. NEIL MUNRO
SAME OL’, SAME OL’ JOE BIDEN
BUILDING
THE GLOBALIST PARTY’S SWAMP OF CORRUPTION
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/joe-biden-builds-his-swamp-signed.html
In the end of November, Biden tapped Obama-era officials for top
national security and economic roles -- the same people who were one of the
main reasons why it was Trump and not Hillary winning over the White House.
Joe Biden's pick to run the DHS immigration agency – Alejandro Mayorkas – is a political gift for the GOP, says Jessica Vaughan at CIS: "Cronyism, corruption, swampiness, and the immigration
Thousands of unaccompanied
minors arrive at US-Mexico border as Border Patrol grapples with COVID-19
deaths
Rick Jervis, USA TODAY
The number of unaccompanied
migrant children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border has nearly
doubled in recent weeks, and smugglers are using riskier tactics to get them
across, a top U.S. Border Patrol official says.
Agents are apprehending an average of 153 young migrants a
day at the border since October, up from about 80 a day earlier this year,
Deputy Chief Raul Ortiz, Border Patrol's second in command, said in an
interview with USA TODAY.
In all, Border Patrol agents apprehended 4,764 unaccompanied
minors in October, up from 741 in April – a more than 540% jump, according to court filings by
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol. In a
six-day span in November, border agents apprehended 997 unaccompanied minors –
more than in the entire month of April.
Most worrying are the large numbers of those considered "tender
age" – 12 and younger and sometimes as little as 7 months old, he said. In
October, agents rescued two Honduran siblings – a 13-year-old boy and a
9-year-old girl – from an island in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas. On
Monday, 10 migrants under 14 were stopped by border agents in South Texas,
Ortiz said.
"By itself, those numbers are a little alarming," he
said. "What is concerning is this tender-age population."
Unlike similar surges in young migrants last year and in 2014,
when the minors largely turned themselves in to border agents after crossing
into the U.S., smugglers this year are trying to sneak the minors furtherinto
the U.S. through remote areas of South Texas, floating them across the Rio
Grande in rickety rafts and hiding them in stash houses, he said.
In recent months, agents have uncovered dozens of immigrants
crammed into horse trailers or buried in hidden floors of trailer trucks.
Often, children are squeezed in among them, Ortiz said. Last month, four
unaccompanied juveniles were among the 38 immigrants found in a Rio Grande
City, Texas, stash house. Border intel agents say more are on the way, he said.
"I really am worried that something terrible may happen to
one of these groups," Ortiz said.
Influxes of unaccompanied minors have often presented challenges
to federal authorities who, under U.S. law, need to house and process them
separately from adults. But with the specter of the coronavirus pandemic
hanging over the U.S.-Mexico border, capacity for these children is dwindling,
just as their numbers are rising.
Though the agency usually has 13,764 beds for minors, only 7,971
are available because of COVID-19 restrictions, according to the U.S. Office of
Refugee Resettlement, the agency charged with caring for them. Under a 2008
anti-trafficking law, border agents are supposed to turn minors over to the
resettlement agency within 72 hours, where they're held temporarily and
released to relatives or guardians in the U.S.
Up until last month, federal agents were quickly expelling the
young people under the Trump administration’s controversial
Title 42 policy, which allowed agents to return the minors to their
countries of origin over concerns of spreading the coronavirus to border agents
or other detainees.
A
federal judge in November ordered the government to cease the
quick expulsions, siding with legal advocates who said the children were being
stripped of their legal protection under U.S. law. Federal lawyers have
appealed the ruling. The government has expelled more than 200,000 migrants
under the policy since March, including 8,800 unaccompanied minors, according
to The Associated Press.
“It’s shocking and egregious that the government would continue
to use this thinly veiled pretext of public safety to violate children’s human
rights,” said Neha Desai, an attorney with Oakland-based National Center for
Youth Law who represents migrant children.
Ortiz said the policy has helped shield agents from the virus.
Three Border Patrol agents and one contractor have died from COVID-19 since the
start of the pandemic, he said. Customs and Border Protection has lost about 18
staffers, he said.
"It's been devastating to us and our workforce," Ortiz
said.
Border agents began noticing an increase in crossings of minors
in late summer, even as many of the children were quickly sent back across the
border. Unlike the Trump administration's “Remain in Mexico” policy, where
migrants are processed and given a court date before being delivered to Mexico
to await their hearing, those expelled under Title 42 were driven to Mexico or
flown back to Central America without a return path to asylum in the U.S.
Jennifer Podkul, vice president of policy and advocacy at Kids
in Need of Defense, a Washington-based advocacy group, said legal advocates at
the border have often lost touch with expelled children.
The U.S. government "used to say they were concerned about
the safety of children, worried about their human rights,” Podkul said. “All
those arguments seemed to have disappeared so they could implement Title 42 and
push people back over the border.”
Government facilities housing the minors have also been
off-limits to visitors amid COVID-19 concerns, limiting how much interaction
legal advocates have with the children, she said.
"We have grave concerns about the safety of these kids,”
Podkul said.
The number of unaccompanied minors is still well below last year’s steep
influx, when agents apprehended 11,475 minors in just one month.
But back-to-back hurricanes in Central America, which displaced
thousands of people, and economic and public health turmoil wrought by the
coronavirus could lead to more migrants arriving at the U.S. border, advocates
said.
Linda Bradmiller, a San Antonio-based immigration attorney who
represents mostly juveniles, said the most alarming part of the past few months
has been how quiet her office has been.
Bradmiller is usually busy fielding phone calls from relatives
of unaccompanied minors to represent them in immigration court or meeting with
new clients. Since March, the phone calls have all but stopped and the number
of new cases has plummeted, she said. Bradmiller said she worried many of the
minors were returning to dangerous situations in their home countries, without
a legal path back to the U.S.
“They’re in a black hole,” she said.
Follow Jervis on Twitter: @MrRJervis.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US
border sees surge of migrant children amid COVID pandemic
No comments:
Post a Comment