California foster parents are reportedly being asked how many migrant children they are able to house, including the option of “26+” minors.
“This is an emergency message, please respond to this urgent message from the Community Care Licensing Division (CCLD),” a voicemail obtained by the Daily Mail to foster parents said. “CCLD would like to know how many available beds you have to serve additional youth.”
The CCLD is part of California’s Department of Social Services.
Foster parents Travis and Sharla Kall told the outlet that they also received an email with the same message, in addition to links to options ranging from zero to “26 +” children they could potentially take in.
“Usually the maximum amount of children you are allowed to foster at any one time is six,” Travis Kall said. “We called our case worker and she told us that everyone was calling her because they had got that same call.”
The Kalls said that a friend who uses a different agency to foster children received the same message.
“At any given point in time there are 30,000 plus children in the L.A. County foster care system alone,” Sharla Kall said. “So to ask us already certified foster parents to take on children from another country when we can barely take care of our own foster crisis doesn’t seem beneficial to either side because either way someone loses a bed.”
The CCLD did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
“I consider it human trafficking,” Travis Kall said. “It’s not the burden of taking kids in because we have the heart for it, but these are kids that were taken from the border for a money scheme and now they’re going to use us resource parents to take care of them.”
The report comes as a crisis on the southern border has continued, with leaders in border states slamming Biden administration policies and calling for more transparency.
“There is a real crisis on the border. The Biden administration won’t admit it,” Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw said last week. “And they created it by executive orders rescinding Trump’s policies that were actually working.”
U.S. officials along the border are on track to apprehend more than 16,000 migrant children in March. The last record high for minor migrant apprehensions occurred in May 2019, when more than 11,000 unaccompanied minors crossed the border.
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The White House has not labeled the situation a “crisis,” despite the thousands of people crossing the border and recent photos showing migrant children living in an overcrowded Texas tent facility.
“Children presenting at our border, who are fleeing violence, who are fleeing prosecution, who are fleeing terrible situations is not a crisis,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday.
