{"id":24323,"date":"2021-03-30T13:48:50","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T17:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=24323"},"modified":"2021-03-30T13:48:52","modified_gmt":"2021-03-30T17:48:52","slug":"white-house-plea-for-border-help-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2021\/03\/30\/white-house-plea-for-border-help-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Crowdsourcing is No Answer to Chaos at the Border"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hours after President Biden claimed in his inaugural press conference<\/a> that there is a \u201csignificant increase\u201d in illegal immigration in the winter months \u201cevery year,\u201d the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent a memo<\/a> to all federal agencies seeking volunteers to assist with \u201curgent efforts\u201d to care and house unaccompanied minors at the Southwest border. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be clear, this kind of call to arms does not<\/em> happen every year. Further, to call it a \u201cvolunteer\u201d is a\nbit of a stretch since the memo notes it is \u201ca reimbursable detail\u201d with travel,\nlodging and per diem being provided by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The\ndeployment details would last up to 120 days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But OPM and Health and Human Services (HHS) is in need of \u201cexceptional\npublic servants to lend support to this humanitarian effort through this detail\nopportunity,\u201d according to acting OPM Director Kathleen McGettigan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Detailing federal staff from other agencies is not unprecedented in times of crisis. In 2009, President Obama dispatched<\/a> National Guard \u201cvolunteers\u201d to the southern border to engage in counter-narcotics operations. In 2018, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis authorized National Guard troops to be sent to the border as long as relevant governors provided approval. In addition, authorizing memos strictly laid out the roles for troops<\/a>, as well as the funding required. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is different because the Biden-Harris\nadministration is asking for assistance from across the entire government, including\nindividuals with seemingly no background in emergency response, and that the\nplan remains without a lick of clarity, direction and foresight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, when pressed during her appearance<\/a> before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, the nominee to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Deanne Criswell, admitted she had not been briefed about FEMA\u2019s role at the border, nor on specifics related to funding authorization. . <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Current ranking member on the\ncommittee, Ohio Republican Rob Portman, asked Criswell if it were her\nunderstanding that the Stafford Act required Biden to make a disaster\ndeclaration (as President Trump did in 2019) \u201cbefore public assistance can be\nused to care for migrants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have not been briefed on their specific activities that\nthey\u2019re performing. But through the Economy Act, federal agencies can provide\nsupport to one another as they execute their missions,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noting that he just returned from a trip to the border,\nPortman suggested that FEMA was in an advisory role and any use of public funds\nwould require President Biden issue an emergency declaration.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSenator, again, I\u2019m not familiar with the details of\nexactly what support FEMA is providing, but I do understand that they are\nproviding assistance with a small footprint to assist HHS and [Customs and\nBorder Protection] with their mission. In particular of trying to identify\nlocations to provide the sheltering for the migrants,\u201d Criswell said.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

White House Press Secretary is equally as clueless about the strategy to deal with what Biden-Harris administration officials predict<\/a> could be seven more months of unaccompanied minors surging to the border. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked for a \u201cfirm answer\u201d about whether officials were expecting a \u201csurge\u201d in unaccompanied minors as Axios reported, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters<\/a> that she doesn\u2019t \u201chave any predictions\u201d and tossed the onus to respond over to the Department of Homeland Security \u2013 as usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what truly represents the incompetence and ad hoc approach to the humanitarian crisis is that the OPM memo advises potential volunteers that background checks will be conducted for roles that apparently will involve limited interaction with migrants. However, according to Voice of America<\/a>, the Biden administration is waiving FBI background checks on staff working in the childcare facilities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only does this show an utter lack of awareness about\nthe trauma the children likely encountered on their journey to the U.S. border,\nbut it ignores past abuses in a system where background checks were conducted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Obama administration \u00a0lax vetting measures resulted in children being placed into the care of human traffickers<\/a>. During the Trump administration, government agencies also \u201clost track<\/a>\u201d of some 1,500 children because sponsors used fake documents or refused to check in with HHS as required. It\u2019s a disgrace and a crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hours after President Biden claimed in his inaugural press conference that there is a \u201csignificant increase\u201d in illegal immigration in the winter months \u201cevery year,\u201d the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent a memo to all federal agencies seeking volunteers to assist with \u201curgent efforts\u201d to care and house unaccompanied minors at the Southwest border.<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":24324,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[11117],"tags":[11112,1524,655,615],"yst_prominent_words":[2122,2860,5137,2924,5406,2043,1943,7056,2285,10957,11135,7921,11132,1942,10805,11136,2925,2715,10956,11134],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24325,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24323\/revisions\/24325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24323"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}