Photo Credit: AP / Emily VariscoSchools scramble to help teens who crossed border

By Kimberly Hefling.

American schools are scrambling to provide services to the large number of children and teenagers who crossed the border alone in recent months.

Unaccompanied minors who made up the summer spike at the border have moved to communities of all sizes, in nearly every state, Federal data indicates, to live with a relative and await immigration decisions. The Supreme Court has ruled that schools have an obligation to educate all students regardless of their immigration status, so schools have become a safe haven for many of the tens of thousands of these young people mostly from central America living in limbo.

Delaware’s rural Sussex County has long attracted immigrants, partly because of work in chicken factories, and soybean and corn fields. The district’s population is more than one-quarter Hispanic, and for years has offered an early learning program for non-English speakers.

Still, officials were caught off guard by about 70 new students mostly from Guatemala – part of the wave crossing the border – enrolling last year, mostly at Sussex Central High School. The Indian River School District over the summer break quickly put together special classes for those needing extra English help.

On a recent school day, a group of these mostly Spanish-speaking teenage boys with styled spiky hair and high-top sneakers enthusiastically pecked away on hand-held tablets at the G.W. Carver Education Center, pausing to alert the teacher when stumped.

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsMexican Consulate brings ID services to Wisconsin

By The Associated Press.

Wisconsin officials are working to better serve the rapidly growing Hispanic community in the state, with a little help from the Mexican Consulate in Chicago.

A mobile version of the Chicago-based office issued passports and consular identification cards to hundreds of Mexican nationals at an Appleton church last week, Post-Crescent Media reported. About 800 people took advantage of the services at First English Lutheran Church from last Wednesday to Saturday, according to Alfredo Gomez Sepulveda, a coordinator of the consulate’s mobile program.

About once a month, the mobile office visits a Wisconsin city to renew Mexican passports and consular identification cards, saving thousands of people from having to take a trip to Chicago. The consulate has served more than 9,900 Mexican nationals so far in 2014 by offering services in Appleton, Beloit, Green Bay, Kenosha, Milwaukee, Racine and Waukesha, according to Sepulveda.

“It’s more than a three-hour trip to Chicago and the passport is the primary form of ID. So it’s a service that the Chicago consulate provides … to attend to Mexican nationals over here,” Sepulveda said.

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Obama will ‘make good’ on immigration reform promise, aide says

By Justin Sink.

President Obama will “make good” on his promise to implement executive actions on immigration by the end of the year, press secretary Josh Earnest said Sunday.

The president had initially pledged to take unilateral action on immigration by the end of the summer, but the White House announced earlier this month that he would hold off until after the midterm elections.

White House officials have said Obama was concerned that moving before the midterm elections would make reform a partisan issue and polarize support against it, although the move was widely seen as a concession to Senate Democrats who were locked in tough reelection battles and begged Obama to hold off.

The delay has bred new concerns among immigration activists that the president will not ever take the executive action, but Earnest insisted that was not the case.

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