During the last two years of the Obama administration, immigration officials handled the surge of youths across the border by delivering over 100,000 of them to households headed by other illegals, and the result was that 36 percent of the kids never showed up for court hearings.
A new analysis of the prior administration’s open door policy for illegal youths mostly from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, also showed that only 25 percent of those who did go to court were given permission to stay.
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The Center for Immigration Studies, in its latest analysis of the crisis in unaccompanied alien children, said:
“From FY 2014 – FY 2016, 106,802 UACs were placed in illegal alien households throughout the country as a result of Obama administration policies. Approximately 13,000 of these minors skipped out on their immigration court hearings. This represents 36 percent of the cases completed. Of those whose cases have finished, a mere 25 percent have qualified for permission to stay.”
The Center’s policy director, Jessica Vaughan, said that the handling of the kids ended up hurting them, sometimes by delivering them into gangs and the sex trade.
“The Obama administration policies on the surge of youth and family arrivals from Central America has been a failure and a disaster, not only for communities where they have settled, but often for the kids too, as many have fallen prey to abuse, exploitation, and conscription into gangs,” she said. Vaughan added, “All the Obama administration cared about was releasing the kids from custody, leaving schools, police and immigration courts to deal with the problem. The solution has to be to deal with the cases at the border, and to hold family members who have broken our laws responsible for their choices.”
Joseph J. Kolb, the author of the new report, said also that federal authorities have had trouble even reaching the illegal guardians, some of who are the parents of the youths, by phone.
“A significant share of sponsors and youths have not been reached in follow-up phone calls from ORR. Nine percent of parental sponsors, 15-18 percent of non-parental sponsors, and less than half of the youths have been reached in these calls. The compliance rate of UACs housed with illegal sponsors is not tracked,” he wrote.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com
