Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is alarmed at the increasing trend of illegal aliens fraudulently claiming children as their own in order to enter the U.S. Unfortunately, the recent budget deal does nothing to stop or even to slow the problem.
“I’m sad to say that from October 2017 to this February, we have seen a staggering 315 percent increase in illegal aliens fraudulently using children to pose as family units to gain entry into this country,” Nielsen said.
In some instances, the same child was employed multiple times to cross the border. But that made no impression on The New York Times which pooh-poohed the secretary’s concern, noting that such cases represented “a tiny fraction of the total number of families apprehended at the southwestern border.”
While not disputing DHS’s numbers, the Times notes that context is important. So how many incidents of fraud and child endangerment would the paper find acceptable? How confident can Americans be that every offender is being caught? With more minors being caravaned to the border, these are not idle questions.
Carl McClafferty, associate chief for intelligence at the U.S. Border Patrol, tracked down one child recycling ring and found a woman who was being paid $1,500 per child to collect them from the U.S. and take them back to Guatemala to be used in future migration efforts.
“She claimed to do this 13 times,” McClafferty said. “We found out they were recycling these children.”
Since the start of the fiscal year, in the Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector alone, agents identified 260 false family units involving aliens who did not truthfully disclose their familial relationships, according to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
DHS has linked the increase in fraudulent families to the Flores v. Reno Settlement, which limits the time that minors can be detained. Children are often released with their “parents” pending an immigration court hearing. With their logjammed dockets, immigration courts have the highest failure-to-appear rates in the nation.
The new budget bill does not address any of this, and might even make matters worse. Critics point out that no funds may be used to detain or deport any “sponsor” or “potential sponsor” of an “unaccompanied alien child.” The measure states that any “member of a household” or “potential sponsor” is now immune from deportation.
DHS avers that terms like “potential sponsor” have precise meanings that strictly limit the number of people the budget bill keeps safe from deportation. We shall see.
Meantime, CIS’s Andrew Arthur offers a commonsense idea: Fingerprint and photograph all minors apprehended by the Border Patrol.
“The U.S. government would be able to quickly identify any child who had been ‘recycled,’ and would also be better able to track any child who was discovered to have been trafficked in the United States,” Arthur says.
Better yet, the fingerprint-photograph protocol wouldn’t require any action by Congress, which appears content to slumber as the border chaos continues.
9 Comments
Where is my comment?
This disgusting system must stop. Recycling children is child abuse and we must hold anyone accountable who allows this to happen. Come one all you very corrupt Democrats and RINOs stop this practice and stop illegals from entering our county now.
Dont photos of said kids show up on DHS files & then see who thier “parents” are??
Blame Congress for inactions here.
Thanks to the Dems & RINOs.
Photo every illegal one can seeking entry, beef upPhoto Dbase alone
We can thank BOTH political parties for this ! Both want illegal aliens here for various reasons, a few being an endless supply of slave labor, big campaign donations from the ag industry, meat packing plants, and as future voters. Either the illegal themselves or their anchors.
Our last 5 Presidents refused to enforce our immigration laws, Obama outdid them all with his Children’s Crusade importing then in the Mexico and Central America. Neither political party did anything of merit to stop the flood. Neither did American citizens, they got what they voted for ! We now have wave after wave of invaders coming in, again citizens sit on their apathetic rear ends and watch as their nation is being overrun not only illegal aliens from every 3rd world Hellhole on the planet but our very own treasonous, corrupt politicians.
Government is NOT going to save America on the immigration issue, it’s going to be up to citizens to do it themselves. If they do not do so they deserve whatever they get !
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This is extreme child abuse. Some of these children are no doubt dragged through the desert to get to the border. What is the incentive for these human smugglers to care anything about the children who are turned over to families that may not even be related to them? And now we have given an incentive to those families to lie because now their entire household is exempt from deportation? The children are human bargaining chips.
Why isn’t a bill being introduced in Congress today that makes a mandatory 10 year sentence for this? This is not kidnapping for gain? Human trafficking? It was at the insistence of Democrats that this exemption was put into the budget bill. But let’s attack the Border Patrol for supposedly mistreating children. For all their supposed devotion to “the children” Democrats are now supporting laws that allow abortion up to and even after birth for essentially any reason. It’s one thing to allow it up until 3 months but beyond that should be strictly limited.
Speaking of Recycling to Allow Immigration Environmentally
I read 1/2 of the recycled stuff we sort is burned in the landfills anyway….I’m sure kids bumped along by State nannies aren’t your successful folks [in general] either…
Foreigners using fraud to game the system? Shocker there, eh?