Author: Esme E. Deprez
Bridget Michalko
8/17/2014 Reflection 2
Ten years ago, the government would usually have to deal with about 6,200 illegal immigrants that were minors a year. Last year, that number shot up to 25,000. Currently, there are about 57,000 unaccompanied children trying to cross the border. This causes population problems and the U.S. government is aware of that. Recently, President Obama and different congressional Republicans have started to think that the best way to fix this crisis is to not let them cross over at all. The simplest solution to this problem may be to send the kids back home. This, however, is easier said than done. With tens of thousands of these children coming through it would be too hard for the government to send out the number of military personnel that is needed to help them all get back home. After all, some of these children are only toddlers.
Most people trying to illegally cross the border try to sneak past and enter the U.S. secretly, however, most of the children caught at the border didn’t even try to run. Most of them hope that if they get caught, it will be easier to make it to their parents and get permission to stay in the United States. This is different from how Reyna has to act in the story The Distance Between Us. When Reyna has to cross the border, she could have been killed if she didn't continue to run or hide when the border patrol came her way. Not only was she not unaccompanied, she was with her father, but she would have been handled differently than they handle the children currently if she had been caught. Children that came in from Mexico can immediately be sent back without any kind of hearing, but in 2008 a law was passed that said immigrants from non-bordering countries must be allowed to plead their cases before a judge. Although this is good for the immigrants, it puts a huge weight on the U.S. government to provide hearings for the thousands of immigrants that come through the system every year. The influx has even pushed wait times for a hearing with a judge all the way back for more than a year and a half, according to researchers at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
With a wait that long, the children have to be taken care of while they wait for their hearings. This means that the government has to supply the children with food and other health necessities as well as shelter and a place to sleep. This would have been okay if it didn’t cost $879 million dollars for the entire process. Cost to take care of these immigrants and get them to a good home, wherever it may be, has definitely taken its toll on the U.S. and uses a lot of resources and supplies.
The first thing the children must do when they come in is to go to one of the CBP processing centers in the southern bordering states. There, agents conduct screenings on the children to find out who they are or how old they might be. Some children don’t come with anything except the phone number of a parent already in the United States. The CBP is also in charge of making sure that the children are fit to travel. This includes feeding, bathing, and clothing all of the children that come in. In some places, such as the agents in Fort Brown in Brownsville, Texas, are found buying sandwiches and drinks for the kids at grocery stores or washing their clothes.
Once all of that is finished, the children are then turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) which is a part of the Department of Health and Human
8/17/2014 Reflection 2
Deporting 57,000 Immigrant Kids Will Be Logistics Nightmare
Ten years ago, the government would usually have to deal with about 6,200 illegal immigrants that were minors a year. Last year, that number shot up to 25,000. Currently, there are about 57,000 unaccompanied children trying to cross the border. This causes population problems and the U.S. government is aware of that. Recently, President Obama and different congressional Republicans have started to think that the best way to fix this crisis is to not let them cross over at all. The simplest solution to this problem may be to send the kids back home. This, however, is easier said than done. With tens of thousands of these children coming through it would be too hard for the government to send out the number of military personnel that is needed to help them all get back home. After all, some of these children are only toddlers.
Most people trying to illegally cross the border try to sneak past and enter the U.S. secretly, however, most of the children caught at the border didn’t even try to run. Most of them hope that if they get caught, it will be easier to make it to their parents and get permission to stay in the United States. This is different from how Reyna has to act in the story The Distance Between Us. When Reyna has to cross the border, she could have been killed if she didn't continue to run or hide when the border patrol came her way. Not only was she not unaccompanied, she was with her father, but she would have been handled differently than they handle the children currently if she had been caught. Children that came in from Mexico can immediately be sent back without any kind of hearing, but in 2008 a law was passed that said immigrants from non-bordering countries must be allowed to plead their cases before a judge. Although this is good for the immigrants, it puts a huge weight on the U.S. government to provide hearings for the thousands of immigrants that come through the system every year. The influx has even pushed wait times for a hearing with a judge all the way back for more than a year and a half, according to researchers at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
With a wait that long, the children have to be taken care of while they wait for their hearings. This means that the government has to supply the children with food and other health necessities as well as shelter and a place to sleep. This would have been okay if it didn’t cost $879 million dollars for the entire process. Cost to take care of these immigrants and get them to a good home, wherever it may be, has definitely taken its toll on the U.S. and uses a lot of resources and supplies.
The first thing the children must do when they come in is to go to one of the CBP processing centers in the southern bordering states. There, agents conduct screenings on the children to find out who they are or how old they might be. Some children don’t come with anything except the phone number of a parent already in the United States. The CBP is also in charge of making sure that the children are fit to travel. This includes feeding, bathing, and clothing all of the children that come in. In some places, such as the agents in Fort Brown in Brownsville, Texas, are found buying sandwiches and drinks for the kids at grocery stores or washing their clothes.
Once all of that is finished, the children are then turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) which is a part of the Department of Health and Human
Services. There, they are put into shelters contacted by companies and nonprofits.
While they are there, the ORR is in charge of providing services such as classroom
instruction, exercise, and medical care for all of the children. However, the
Department of Defense has had to step in and help house all of the children, but
there still doesn’t seem to be enough housing for the constant flow of children.
Eventually, many are sent to live with relatives throughout the U.S. or sponsors that
will house them while their cases are looked through and deliberated. Since
October, more than 40,000 children have been dispersed this way.
A growing chorus of immigration advocates all say that because the homelands the children are coming from are terrorized by gangs and violence the children should be treated as refugees and be allowed to stay. However, White House Secretary Josh Earnest said that he doesn't think this will work for many, and that most of the children will be repatriated in the end.
If the children do end up being sent home, they get sent home via air and are put on airplanes provided by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement-informally known as ICE-and are flown home. Because of trouble with logistics, even though each child is accompanied by two ICE agents on the flight, it adds a huge task for the already overwhelmed agents and sometimes corners will get cut and the job won’t be perfect. Even before the recent wave of immigrant children, the system wasn't perfect. According to Amy Thompson, an agent that followed flights from Houston to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, while researching the process where the children are sent home she noticed some agents leaving the children unattended once they were back in the airports in their homelands. Even with these problems, not much can be done because there are so many children going through the system every year that additional help can’t always be provided.
When I first read how much of a problem deporting so many children was, I thought that the government was being stupid. Just stop them before they even cross over and make them go back themselves with the smugglers. Then, I realized how stupid I was being. Obviously, if the children are with a smuggler, they are most likely going to be a bit harder to catch than I was making it sound. Of course it would be hard to simply "catch them as they crossed over". The U.S. is a large country with a lot of places people could sneak across. Not only that, but making children turn around and find their way back home was just cruel. Many children interviewed in other articles told of how hard the journey was. They were often hungry and tired and they couldn't stop to rest. It wasn't the healthiest journey in the world and making them turn around without resting or finding shelter would probably have killed some of them. That was when I realized that having to deport all of the children that were coming in really was a big problem and that it would probably need a lot of work to get them all safely back home.
A growing chorus of immigration advocates all say that because the homelands the children are coming from are terrorized by gangs and violence the children should be treated as refugees and be allowed to stay. However, White House Secretary Josh Earnest said that he doesn't think this will work for many, and that most of the children will be repatriated in the end.
If the children do end up being sent home, they get sent home via air and are put on airplanes provided by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement-informally known as ICE-and are flown home. Because of trouble with logistics, even though each child is accompanied by two ICE agents on the flight, it adds a huge task for the already overwhelmed agents and sometimes corners will get cut and the job won’t be perfect. Even before the recent wave of immigrant children, the system wasn't perfect. According to Amy Thompson, an agent that followed flights from Houston to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, while researching the process where the children are sent home she noticed some agents leaving the children unattended once they were back in the airports in their homelands. Even with these problems, not much can be done because there are so many children going through the system every year that additional help can’t always be provided.
When I first read how much of a problem deporting so many children was, I thought that the government was being stupid. Just stop them before they even cross over and make them go back themselves with the smugglers. Then, I realized how stupid I was being. Obviously, if the children are with a smuggler, they are most likely going to be a bit harder to catch than I was making it sound. Of course it would be hard to simply "catch them as they crossed over". The U.S. is a large country with a lot of places people could sneak across. Not only that, but making children turn around and find their way back home was just cruel. Many children interviewed in other articles told of how hard the journey was. They were often hungry and tired and they couldn't stop to rest. It wasn't the healthiest journey in the world and making them turn around without resting or finding shelter would probably have killed some of them. That was when I realized that having to deport all of the children that were coming in really was a big problem and that it would probably need a lot of work to get them all safely back home.
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