Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has requested that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) develop a strategy for how to provide “health care, sheltering” and other services to immigrants in the event of a significant increase in immigration to the United States.
“DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, according to a statement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, recently directed ICE to develop a national-level mass migration plan,” Government Services News reports. “The plan will outline how to address the health care, sheltering, processing, transition and disposition of large numbers of undocumented individuals who may arrive in the U.S. as the result of mass migration.”
“It’s really all about preparedness,” explained Mike Webster, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations Incident Response Unit acting unit chief. DHS is calling for the plan in order to prepare for instances for mass migration to the America, such as in the 1990s when “thousands of Haitians and Cubans [immigrated] into South Florida,” GNS explained.
The plan is billed as a national security measure, authorized under the Presidential Policy Directive on National Preparedness.
