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Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
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(I remember when a couple of people on Marxmail were posting encomiums
to Obama in 2008. I would like to tell them "I told you so" but they are
long gone.)
NY Times, June 29 2014
Obama to Seek Funds to Stem Border Crossings and Speed Deportations
By JULIA PRESTON
President Obama will ask Congress to provide more than $2 billion in new
funds to control the surge of illegal Central American migrants at the
South Texas border, and to grant broader powers for immigration
officials to speed deportations of children caught crossing without
their parents, White House officials said on Saturday.
Mr. Obama will send a letter on Monday to alert Congress that he will
seek an emergency appropriation for rapidly expanding border enforcement
actions and humanitarian assistance programs to cope with the influx,
which includes record numbers of unaccompanied minors and adults
bringing children. The officials gave only a general estimate of the
amount, saying the White House would send a detailed request for the
funds when Congress returned after the Fourth of July recess that began
Friday and ends July 7.
Wave of Minors on Their Own Rush to Cross Southwest BorderJUNE 4, 2014
The president will also ask Congress to revise existing statutes to give
the Homeland Security secretary, Jeh Johnson, new authorities to
accelerate the screening and deportation of young unaccompanied migrants
who are not from Mexico. Fast-track procedures are already in place to
deport young migrants from Mexico because it shares a border with the
United States.
Mr. Obama will also ask for tougher penalties for smugglers who bring
children and other vulnerable migrants across the border illegally, the
officials said.
“This is an urgent humanitarian situation,” Cecilia Muñoz, the director
of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said in a telephone
interview on Saturday. “We are being as aggressive as we can be, on both
sides of the border,” she said. “We are dealing with smuggling networks
that are exploiting people, and with the humanitarian treatment of
migrants while also applying the law as appropriate.”
After the president declared a humanitarian crisis in early June,
federal emergency management officials have been coordinating with the
many federal agencies involved in finding detention shelters for the
unaccompanied youths and in stepping up enforcement measures to deter
more migrants from coming.
“The uptick in activity at the border and the steps the administration
has put in place are extraordinary,” a White House official said. “We
are maxing out our capacities within the existing appropriated monies.”
Federal officials have opened shelters to detain unaccompanied children
at three military bases and are seeking facilities for other shelters.
Border authorities are required to turn over unaccompanied minors within
72 hours to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees
the shelters and seeks to locate family members in this country who can
receive the youths.
While many unaccompanied children may qualify for some legal status
here, many others would not. Authorities want to eliminate delays in
deporting children determined to have no legal option to stay, the White
House officials said.
On Thursday, Mr. Obama directed tough comments to Central American
parents in an interview on ABC News. “Do not send your children to the
borders,” the president said. “If they do make it, they’ll get sent
back. More importantly, they may not make it.”
White House officials said they were not asking Congress to change other
existing legal protections for children apprehended without their
parents. The administration is working with the governments of the three
countries that are home to most of the migrants — El Salvador, Guatemala
and Honduras — to ensure the children are safe once they are returned,
the officials said.
Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat whose district includes a long
stretch of the South Texas border, on Saturday visited about 1,000
migrants detained at the Border Patrol station in McAllen. He urged
Congress to approve quick changes to laws on the handling of
unaccompanied minors.
“When it’s Central American countries, there is a different process,”
Mr. Cuellar said. “One of the things we need to do is tweak the law, to
give Border Patrol the power to treat anybody the same as we treat
Mexicans.”
The influx in the Rio Grande Valley has also included many families,
especially women with children. To discourage more families from
embarking on the dangerous journey across Mexico, the administration is
detaining more of them after they are caught.
House Republican leaders chastised the president last week, saying his
lax enforcement of immigration laws had unleashed the flow. “Word has
spread to the Americas and beyond that the Obama administration has
taken unprecedented and most likely unconstitutional steps to shut down
the enforcement of our immigration laws,” Representative Robert W.
Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said at a hearing.
“It seems that Obama fiddles while our borders implode.”
Mr. Goodlatte said he would work with the White House to strengthen the
administration’s enforcement powers.
The new proposals to deal with the border came as immigrant rights
groups signaled in more than 40 coordinated protests in 23 states during
the weekend that they were still hoping for action by the president to
slow the pace of deportations.
The demonstrations were small, but fervent. In Chicago, a rally by
activists on Friday in front of the offices of the federal immigration
enforcement agency included a mock trial of Mr. Obama, who was accused
of engaging in harsh deportations. On Saturday, protesters marched
through the Boston Common, and in Detroit, they rallied in front of the
federal building.
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