Kids in Cages (Fundamentally Transforming America)

The Obama administration was unprepared for the thousands of juveniles illegally flooding across the US border with Mexico. Obama and the incompetents running his shop not only failed to foresee the influx, they are “solving” the problem of overwhelmed Texas facilities by dumping the illegal juveniles in other states, 100-plus-degree Arizona among them. Arizona’s governor was not notified about the coming deluge of hungry, thirsty children, most, according to press reports, unaccompanied by an adult. Initially, they were simply released at Phoenix and Tucson bus depots with no money and no place to stay and advised to locate relatives and report to an ICE officer within 15 days in whatever city they landed.

At least the great humanitarian in the White House doesn’t claim, as he has so often, that he only learned of the problem when he read about it in the newspaper. He blames the influx on Central American unrest (90% of the unaccompanied minors come from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador). However, while Central American violence explains the desire to leave those countries, the reason for the huge increase in juveniles arriving illegally is much closer to home.

Consider Barack Obama’s 2012 executive order deferring deportation for two years for illegals’ who arrived as children. Mark Sappenfield writing in the Christian Science Monitor explained:

During the decade preceding fiscal year 2012, the federal government agency tasked with caring for unaccompanied minors who cross the border illegally dealt with an average of 7,000 to 8,000 cases a year, according to a Department of Health and Human Services fact sheet. In fiscal year 2011, the number was 6,560.

The following year, however, the number jumped to 13,625. This fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, 2014, federal officials are estimating that the number could be 80,000, according to an internal memo cited by The New York Times.

Border patrol agents report that the juveniles say they came because they believe children will not be deported, that amnesty will soon be forthcoming and they will be allowed to attain legal status.

Last week’s announcement that deferment only applies to minors who were brought to the US before June 15, 2007 was too little, too late.

At least 700 (and counting) of these children are now warehoused in Nogales at a makeshift holding center. Apparently ICE in Texas was too overwhelmed to check for infectious diseases before loading them on buses. According to Townhall.com scabies and tuberculosis are becoming a public health concern.

Presumably health evaluations will be done before the juveniles are released into the general population. Right now, just providing basic necessities, food and medical supplies is a challenge.

Townhall.com among others have posted pictures of the facility (a former warehouse) showing children crowded into chain link enclosures, sleeping on park benches or on the floor, awaiting the arrival of sufficient mattresses and other necessities. Despite the protests of AZ governor Jan Brewer, another thousand juveniles are to be sent to the Arizona facility over the weekend.

More than 1000 minors are also housed at Lockland Air Force Base in San Antonio and others are headed to a base in Ventura County, California.

According to The Washington Times:

Homeland Security Department internal estimates predict more than 90,000 “unaccompanied alien children,” or UAC as they are known in government-speak, will be caught on the U.S. border this year, and 140,000 will be apprehended next year. That doesn’t account for those that evade capture.

The president characterized the fiasco as “an urgent humanitarian situation.” Of course, he isn’t about to take responsibility for another Obama policy gone horribly wrong. Or maybe he doesn’t see it that way. Even Obama can figure out that when you are willing to pay for something you will get more of it. In that case, his drive for amnesty, and not incidentally additional votes for the Democratic Party, just got a major boost. It seems extremely unlikely to this blogger that this new crop of illegal juveniles will ever be sent back to their countries of origin. Nor is the need to provide them with social services disputable.

The Washington Post reported:

White House budget officials informed lawmakers Friday that the projected cost of caring for and resettling young migrants from Mexico and Central America could top $2.28 billion in fiscal 2015 — more than double what the Office of Management and Budget requested for 2015 a few months ago.

Experience indicates that when the government estimates the cost of social programs the actual numbers will be multiples higher.

2013 Census Bureau data showed that Americans receiving means-tested federal welfare benefits now outnumbered those with full-time jobs. That’s nearly $1 trillion annually to support those programs, not including Social Security, Medicare or unemployment. Obama Care subsidies will further increase costs and dependence on government. Now comes a whole new crop of dependents that will become adults as beneficiaries of the welfare state. Think of it as Obama making good on his vow to “fundamentally transform America.”

A dependent citizenry is a compliant one; at least until the money runs out. Or as Dennis Prager often says: “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.“Remember the 1989 movie, “Honey, I shrunk the Kids” in which a scientist father invents a machine and shrinks his and two other teenagers to the size of insects? Obama doesn’t need a machine; he has his phone, a pen and a Democrat controlled Senate that does not object to his usurpations of its constitutional power.