Message to the Feds: We Will Not Host Illegal Children in Our States
Photo Credit: Steve Pope / GettyIowa Governor: I Do Not Want To House Immigrant Children In My State
By CBSDC/AP.
Gov. Terry Branstad said Monday that he does not want Iowa to host any of the thousands of children from Central America who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border alone.
During a news conference, Branstad said he was not aware of any of the children currently living in Iowa and that state has not been contacted by the federal government about housing any immigrant children. He said the government’s focus should be on securing the borders.
“The first thing we need to do is secure the border. I do have empathy for these kids,” Branstad said. “But I also don’t want to send the signal that (you) send your kids to America illegally. That’s not the right message.”
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Nebraska gov, Illinois senator say White House sending illegal immigrant children to their states without notice
By Fox News.
Elected officials in two states far from the U.S.-Mexico border have claimed that the Obama administration has resettled hundreds of unaccompanied illegal immigrant children without adequate notice and has refused to detail the exact locations where the children are being kept.
Fox News has learned that 748 unaccompanied minors have been transferred from areas near the border to the Chicago area. Of the original group of 748 kids, 319 have been placed with family members or sponsors while they await an immigration hearing. The other 429 have been placed in facilities run by the Heartland Alliance, a nonprofit organization that receives grants from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., told Fox News Friday that he did not know the exact locations of the facilities where the children were being kept, and stated his belief that the White House did not want the children’s living conditions to be made public.
“My worry is the administration doesn’t want people to know what the condition of these place are or how these kids are being treated in detention,” Kirk said. “Kids can sometimes to be pretty cruel to each other, they don’t want those stories to get out and they don’t want us to know what is going on in these detention facilities. These detention facilities should be completely open to the press and to the American people so that we know how what conditions are, we should be able to talk to the kids who are there.
“I can’t explain the incompetence of the Obama administration,” Kirk said later. “This is a tremendous self-inflicted political wound … This narrative, [that] this is Obama’s Katrina, [is] sticking really hard.”
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Photo Credit: Fox News Endless wave of illegal immigrants floods Rio Grande valley
By Jana Winter.
Life jackets of all sizes and the occasional punctured raft are strewn along the banks of the Rio Grande, just south of Mission, Texas, where a relentless onslaught of illegal immigrants eagerly surrender to beleaguered Border Patrol agents around the clock.
It’s a cycle for which there is no end in sight.
“You’re going to be out here a long time,” Fernando, an El Salvadoran child, told FoxNews.com shortly after surrendering to Border Patrol authorities after midnight Saturday. “There are thousands of us.”
With most of the men and women charged with securing the Mexican border busy processing some of the 60,000 illegal immigrants who have made the harrowing – and sometimes deadly -journey to the American border in the past nine months, only a handful of Border Patrol agents drive the riverside loop in a small town called Granjeno just south of Mission, in the Rincon peninsula.
Illegal immigrants of all ages, including many unaccompanied children, run to them to surrender. They are piled into the back of Border Patrol vehicles and taken to a makeshift staging area in Rincon Village, where a large Border Patrol bus waits to transport them to McAllen’s Border Patrol facility.
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