Texas leaders OK millions for new border surge

[Bob Of Burleson]

By David Saleh Rauf
MySanAntonio.com

AUSTIN — Texas’ top three lawmakers agreed Wednesday to spend tens of millions dollars to fund a surge operation along the border to deal with the influx of Central American children pouring into Texas.

Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov David Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Straus authorized a deal for emergency funding of $1.3 million per week for DPS surge operations that will run through at the least the end of the year.

Some 60,000 unaccompanied children and teens are expected to cross into the Texas border this year — up from about 6,560 in 2011. The stream of unaccompanied children has already caused a crisis, overwhelming Border Patrol facilities and sparking debate in Washington over what’s causing the calamity and how to handle it.

“Texas can’t afford to wait for Washington to act on this crisis and we will not sit idly by while the safety and security of our citizens are threatened,” Perry said in a statement. “Until the federal government recognizes the danger it’s putting our citizens in by its inaction to secure the border, Texas law enforcement must do everything they can to keep our citizens and communities safe.”

SOURCE

[planosteve]

What do they mean by a "surge". Are they going to bring in machine guns and kill them all?

[Bob Of Burleson]

Short on specificity, aren't they?

[Bob Of Burleson]

Border Centers Struggle
to Handle Onslaught
of Young Migrants

By FERNANDA SANTOS
The New York Times

NOGALES, Ariz. — In a 120,000-square-foot warehouse on the edge of this desert city, Border Patrol agents line up hundreds of children who may have never seen a doctor for basic vaccinations and other medical care, hand out snacks or join them for a game of basketball under a circuslike tent that doubles as a recreation room.

In a makeshift processing center, the children — all minors caught crossing the border in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas without parents — are housed for as many as three days or more in nine holding pens. Boys are separated from girls and older children from younger ones; teenage mothers and their babies stay in a cell of their own.

There is barely room to walk; mattresses line the concrete floor, which also has long bleachers bolted to it. The children are being transferred here from Texas because a similar site there cannot take any more.

Customs and Border Protection officials said Wednesday that 900 children from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras were being held here — the newest arrivals still in the clothes they wore on their trek to the United States, the others clad in white T-shirts and blue shorts, as in a reformatory. On one mattress, a girl barely in her teens wept, her face buried in a soiled stuffed lamb. Nearby, a toddler smiled as she held the hand of a Border Patrol agent taking her for a walk.

As detainees, none of the children are allowed to go outside except to exercise for 45 minutes to an hour a day.

Chief Manuel Padilla Jr., the agent in charge of the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol, said that the agency’s goal was to keep the children safe, healthy, nourished and clean, and that a lot had been done “to achieve these priorities,” sometimes in small ways.

When agents noticed that the children were refusing their breakfast burritos, which were made with flour tortillas, the kitchen switched to corn tortillas, like the ones used in Central America.

On Wednesday, the Border Patrol gave reporters a first glimpse of this processing center as well as a similar one in Brownsville, Tex., both focal points in the national debate over the sudden stream of unaccompanied minors crossing illegally into the United States. From here, the children will be sent to juvenile detention facilities around the country, where efforts will be made to release them to relatives in the United States on the condition that they cooperate with deportation proceedings.

MORE

[Kiamichi]

The only assistance the state could give would be to provide food and lodging. No amount of "deterrence" would make any difference, it would just make it easier for illegal entrants to find someone to surrender to.

[LibraryLady]

What do they mean by a "surge". Are they going to bring in machine guns and kill them all?

I think they plan to have DPS officers standing elbow to elbow along the river in the valley.

[planosteve]

Showing the conditions on TV in the detention facilities down there. It's horrible. They are jammed in, sleeping on concrete floors shoulder to shoulder. It is unbelievable. These are mostly little kids, some in dipers. There are 50,000 of them there and they are being treated worse than animals in a pound!

[scarlett~nc]

Showing the conditions on TV in the detention facilities down there. It's horrible. They are jammed in, sleeping on concrete floors shoulder to shoulder. It is unbelievable. These are mostly little kids, some in dipers. There are 50,000 of them there and they are being treated worse than animals in a pound!

invite 10 or 15 to come stay with you ...get your family members and friends to do the same

[LibraryLady]

I agree it is awful but I am not sure what government can do when so many are coming daily.

[GFB]

What do they mean by a "surge". Are they going to bring in machine guns and kill them all?

..do you get to vote on that?

[Bob Of Burleson]

U.S. Plan To House
Immigrant Kids In Tiny Va.
Town Rattles Residents

by Jennifer Ludden
NPR.org

The influx of tens of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children to the U.S. has sparked a controversy in an unlikely place far from the U.S.-Mexico border: a tiny town in southern Virginia.

The federal government had struck a deal to house some of the migrants in an empty college in Lawrenceville, in the heart of Virginia's tobacco belt. The first busload was expected as early as Thursday, but a local backlash has put the plan on hold.

Word spread this week that the detention center was a done deal, and it didn't go over well that most in this town of 1,400 had heard nothing of plans for the shelter.

"I was just shocked," says Brunswick County Sheriff Brian Roberts. "The way this process has been handled puts more fear in our eyes, because it's been shoved down our throat," he says.

Roberts' main worry is public safety. "That's my job," he says, "and so 500 kids unaccounted for — illegal alien children in my little sleepy town — I just don't think it's the right fit for this community."

Tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors have crossed the southern U.S. border in recent months. Federal officials have been putting them up on military bases until they can be reunited with family members in the U.S. or deported.

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[BillB]

There's enough room in the White House to house many of them.
I think that is a great idea.

[LibraryLady]

Evening news shows groups as large as 17 just walking across the border. In the news clip, all were kids but 1 adult, some kids looked about age 3.
The people are supposed to be escaping violence in Central America.

I have not read of any war going on down there. Looked for State Dept warnings:
http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/alertswarnings/el-salvador-travel-warning.html

No warnings for Guatemala or Costa Rica.....so, how/why are those folks trying to claim refugee from violence?

[Red Oak]

They are pawns being used by the Amnesty Crowd and especially by the Criminals in the Executive Branch. There are credible reports of Jarret meeting with illegal alien groups that are behind this.

[Kiamichi]

Refugee and asylum status has been an immigration racket since forever. Unless things have changed in the last few years you can see a steady stream of California-plated pickups hauling loads of second-hand goods (always covered by blue tarps) and pulling second vehicles going east through Marfa and Alpine on their way to the Lower Valley to cross into Mexico on their way to Central America. These are people who were granted political refugee status, sponsored by various church groups, based on the claim that their lives were at risk if they had to return to their home countries. Before the ink was dry on the paperwork they had begun traveling back and forth to those countries from the U. S. and engaging in the import-export trade. There were even cases of applicants who returned to their Central American countries before their refugee status was approved and appealed successfully to be let back into the U. S. as refugees when stopped at the border. The American public seems to have a limitless capacity for being played for a fool when it comes to immigration.

[GRANDPA]

IF we had a leader with balls, he'd call in the ambassadors from Mexico & Central America, have them taken to these shelters so they can see with their own eyes & tell them these are YOUR people, YOUR governments are responsible for this & here are your bills for the expenses for us to take care of them, payment in full is due in 7 days, & you'll get another bill every week. Their home countries & especially Mexico should bear responsibility for this. But then, our Dear Leader doesn t have any balls to do anything.