Can you imagine what would happen if one thousand children ranging in age from toddlers in diapers to young teenagers were dumped out on the corner of Commercial and Jefferson some night and abandoned with no adult supervision?
This has become a real life situation for many American cities on the southern border of the country over the past several weeks. Almost 50,000 unaccompanied children of all ages have been picked up in Texas alone since October, some as young as 3 years of age.
This “humanitarian crisis” as the White House refers to it, has come about as a result of a program put into effect by President Obama in June 2012 called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) which allowed minors coming into the U.S. to escape deportation for 2 years, and another two year window was opened up last week.
So from all over Central America, especially Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, children are coming through Mexico and into the U.S. Parents are paying thousands of dollars to smugglers to help their children make the trip.
Of course this was not supposed to happen this way, the White House tells us. This program was supposed to apply only to children who had entered the country before the summer of 2007, but you all know how the “law of unintended consequences” works. Or, knowing this administration, it probably is an intended consequence anyway.
The courts are bracing for a flood of immigration cases and the Administration has set aside $2 million in taxpayer funds to pay the lawyers to represent the illegal immigrants. “We are taking an historic step to strengthen our justice system and protect the rights of the most vulnerable members of our society.” Attorney General Eric Holder said last week.
Administration officials have opened a shelter at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. There is another facility in California and a makeshift detention center in Arizona is currently housing 700 children. The children coming in had not bathed in days and were taking turns using the 4 showers.
Children are sleeping on bare concrete floors or plastic boards without blankets or pillows. Officials there have ordered 2000 mattresses to prepare for the coming months. And of course U.S. taxpayers are coming to their aid, providing 3 meals and 2 snacks a day, plus footing the bill for the children to call home twice a week. We are also paying for on-site medical care including mental health clinicians. The holding facilities where the children are being housed cost taxpayers $252 per child per day.
Like most of you, I have a soft spot in my heart for children in need, but this is beyond comprehension and our capability to meet these needs.. I would love to feed and clothe all of the needy children in Lebanon. As former pastors and now youth worker in our church, Milan and I often see kids who are hungry, and we personally provide meals for some of them every week, but there is a limit as to what any of us can do. And U.S. taxpayers also have limits as to what we can do corporately.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Sunday that the influx of children and youth had reached a Level 4 situation in the Rio Grande Valley. A level 4 alert is the highest for children crossing the border illegally and was an official recognition that the Border Patrol, immigration enforcement and child welfare agencies were overwhelmed and beyond their capacity to handle them.
The government has been putting them on buses and dumping them on street corners in Phoenix and other cities. If you or I were dumping children out and abandoning them on the streets, we would be arrested for child abuse.
By law, children from Central America caught trying to cross the border must be turned over to a refugee center run by the Health Department within 72 hours, and then health officials must try to find family or other sponsors. They cannot be sent home, as is the case with Mexican child immigrants.
As with all news stories nowadays, this too has become a political issue. Judge Andrew Napolitano said this week on The Kelly File that the President “personally and directly caused this with a telephone and a pen” when he announced 13 months ago that he would not enforce immigration laws.
Documentary filmmaker and conservative commentator Dennis Michael Lynch on the same program called it “the tip of the iceberg”, warning that entire villages are emptying out and coming from Central America through Mexico to the U.S.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer who has been battling with the Obama Administration since its beginning about securing our borders called the crisis an intentional creation of the federal government, and alleged that the situation will become more deplorable as the administration lets this operation continue “full steam ahead”.
By the end of 2015 the number of child immigrants to the U.S. is expected to reach more than 120,000 at a taxpayer cost of $2.28 billion for shelters and re-settlement.
In addition to the legal costs and the expenses of feeding, clothing, sheltering and providing medical care, these shelters are breeding grounds for the worst type of sexual abuse, and will expose these children to that most hideous crime of human trafficking for the purposes of sexual abuse and slave labor. We already know that 2.4 million people across the globe are victims of human trafficking at any one time, and 80% of them are being exploited as sexual slaves.
The problem is real. The solution seems insurmountable. But the children are innocent. And many of them are at great risk. What do we do?
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