{"id":12223,"date":"2016-03-07T10:16:19","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T15:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/?p=12223"},"modified":"2018-12-28T13:38:36","modified_gmt":"2018-12-28T18:38:36","slug":"new-bill-from-senators-sessions-and-johnson-shows-who-truly-has-the-moral-authority-over-immigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2016\/03\/07\/new-bill-from-senators-sessions-and-johnson-shows-who-truly-has-the-moral-authority-over-immigration\/","title":{"rendered":"New Bill From Senators Sessions And Johnson Shows Who Truly Has The Moral Authority Over Immigration"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"irli\"<\/a>Last week\u2019s Senate Homeland Security hearing on the continuing unaccompanied minors surge coincided with the introduction of Chairman Ron Johnson and Senator Sessions\u2019 Protection of Children Act (S. 2561), a bill that, among other things, promises to require the government to collect \u201ccertain basic information about individuals to whose custody unaccompanied alien children are released.\u201d That provision is no doubt in response to reports from the\u00a0Associated Press<\/a>\u00a0and elsewhere that \u201coverwhelmed U.S. officials\u201d at Health and Human Services, the agency tasked with placing Unaccompanied Alien Minors (UAMs) with sponsors, had been ignoring vetting standards such as fingerprinting, proper identification and criminal background-checks resulting in thousands of the minors being placed in homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved, or forced to work for no pay. Missing from Tuesday\u2019s hearing, however, was any mention of who\u2019s really responsible for the gruesome findings: open-borders activists themselves.<\/p>\n

For years, immigration authorities maintained a child-protective policy of placing UAMs with parents only. That all changed when two open-borders attorneys filed a class action suit on behalf of four Salvadorian illegal immigrants in 1985. The resulting outcome, which let minors skip detention and stay with mere \u201csponsors,\u201d has been hailed ever since as one of the first major legal \u201cwins\u201d by the anti-sovereignty movement. Until now, perhaps.<\/p>\n

Veteran open-borders attorneys, Carlos Holguin of the National Immigrants\u2019 Rights Council (or NIRC, later renamed the National Immigration Law Center) and Peter Schey (the first Executive Director of NIRC) at the time argued that the government\u2019s then-parents-only release policy was simply a\u00a0ruse<\/a>\u00a0to \u201cinterrogate\u201d the parents in the hopes of deporting them back to \u201ccivil war.\u201d Holguin and Schey\u2019s strategy was clear: allow UAMs to also be transferred to mere \u201csponsors\u201d and more could avoid detention and get a better chance at winning asylum (with the unsuccessful simply being able to skip their removal hearings).<\/p>\n

The strategy was gradual. Schey and Holguin initially broke the government\u2019s release policy by convincing a judge to allow for court-appointed guardians. Then they began attacking the \u201cpoor conditions\u201d at detention facilities to justify their claims. As Holguin\u2019s\u00a0said\u00a0in interviews since, \u201cthe real fight was about detaining the minors in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The case,\u00a0Flores v. Meese<\/i>, was closed after a decade of litigation in 1997 resulting in the now well-known \u201cFlores<\/i>\u00a0settlement\u201d which mandated that UAMs be released promptly or be provided \u201csafe and appropriate\u201d placement during custody. For these Schey and Holguin, the breakdown in vetting from overwhelmed officials is a cruel bit of irony for those kids now being subjected to sexual abuse.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Flores<\/i>\u00a0settlement has since been expanded and has become a major weapon in the war against our borders. The latest expansion, ordered by California federal judge Dolly Gee, created heightened detention standards for illegal alien-minors who were\u00a0accompanied<\/i>\u00a0by their parents at the border. With that win (also engineered by Schey and Holguin), coupled with the post-DACA surge of UAMs, now every open-borders attorney is piling on. Already, numerous class actions have been filed against our immigration authorities complaining of such \u201cinhumane\u201d treatment as being served \u201ccold burritos<\/a>\u201d for lunch and being searched on poorly swept floors.<\/p>\n

The problem with\u00a0Flores<\/i>, besides allowing children to be picked up by strangers, is that it sets up an impossible and inevitably-challenged standard. Someone can\u00a0always\u00a0<\/i>find a problem with a detention facility. Once attorneys are granted discovery, they can flood into a facility and nit-pick it for poor lighting, too much lighting, \u201cbad food\u201d, etc. This is especially true for facilities ill-equipped to handle surge-numbers or new facilities built on a rush-basis.<\/p>\n

This is likely the intention. As the government itself has stated in its argument against expanding\u00a0Flores<\/i>, less UAM-detainment only leads to greater UAM-surges \u2014 Judge Gee called this \u201cspeculative\u201d and \u201cfear-mongering.\u201d And greater surges leave the government even less prepared to build new detention centers or maintain the adequacy of current ones. Meanwhile, there\u2019s the constant drumbeat for amnesty and the halting of deportations from groups like the Soros-funded NILC and\u00a0others<\/a>. In effect, these groups lobby for conditions that make adequate detainment impossible then sue when those conditions become \u201csubstandard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Activists\u2019 endless allusion to \u201cchildren\u201d and \u201cfamilies\u201d meanwhile is likely more about politics than anything else. Before\u00a0Flores<\/i>, Schey and Holguin led the 1980s \u201csanctuary movement\u201d which sought to make legal services available to far-left activists fleeing El Salvador and other war-torn Central American nations which US foreign policy was faulted for. Speaking about Congressional Democrats in 1980, Linda Wong of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) connected far-left politics with the open-borders movement when she stated, \u201cWhile they have not hesitated to speak out against Reagan for his continued support of dictatorships, they also have not been quick to condemn Simpson-Mazzoli (an employer-sanctions bill).\u201d \u201cIt is this gap\u201d, she continued, \u201cwhich must be closed in the next phase.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further proof that open-borders groups\u2019 veneration of children is simply cynical theatre is that some children are apparently more worthy than others. Operation Babylift was President Ford\u2019s attempt after the fall of Saigon to move thousands of South Vietnamese orphans to welcoming families in the U.S. The National Immigration Project, an appendage of NLG and precursor to NILC, filed a class action lawsuit\u00a0blocking<\/i>\u00a0the move because, according to NLG\u2019s newsletter at the time, \u201cThe new government of South Vietnam, via telegram, indicated its desire for the return of the children and its commitment to assist them in rejoining their families.\u201d Ironically, NLG\u2019s sister organization, the Center for Constitutional Rights, called Ford\u2019s effort a \u201ccynical\u201d use of children and demanded that the children be first interviewed and traced back to Vietnam, which critics countered by claiming this would lead to retaliation against relatives from the newly installed Communist government.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for immigration control-activists to assert their moral authority over the immigration issue. After all, it is they who want to help the poor of the world build up and improve their own nations; not lure their children across our border and ignore the results when tragedy strikes.