As President Joe Biden and his administration continue to downplay the surge of illegal aliens, many of them unaccompanied minors, at the U.S.-Mexico border, Americans across the nation are grappling with the changes and effects the Democrat’s disastrous border crisis is having in their communities.
While the number of migrant children crossing the border continues to rise, the number of available beds and holding space provided by the federal government keeps shrinking, forcing the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and other government agencies to manage the influx of crossings by opening more facilities, investing in hotel rooms to house migrants, and engaging the help of nongovernmental organizations.
Last week, a family located in a suburb of Seattle, more than 1,000 miles from the southern U.S. border, was asked to vacate the home they used to foster approximately 20 children over the last seven years because the nonprofit that provided it to them has “chosen to pursue a different strategic vision” and is beginning to “provide a different scope of services in support of unaccompanied youth.”
Using federal funds offered by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), Friends of Youth will turn the house, once used to give the family’s foster children who struggle with “severe behavioral problems” a place to live, into a facility for illegal and unaccompanied migrant children, despite the state’s widespread housing shortage for troubled youth requiring “therapeutic beds.” The decision, foster father Edmundo Serena Sanchez told King 5, “had a devastating impact on the four children in his foster care who will likely be required to move to new foster homes” because he can’t afford a house large enough to hold them.
That same week, the Department of Health and Human Services’ ORR requested federal workers to volunteer for “120-day deployments” to assist with the overwhelming number of unaccompanied migrant children flooding the border every day. The offer to become a temporary “field program specialist” that “involves supervising children and assisting with their possible placement with family members living in the U.S.” will allow federal employees to keep their “current rate of pay.”
“Details will involve contact with migrant children and a variety of federal and non-federal entities, possibly including HHS, DHS, American Red Cross, and other Federal employees. This is a reimbursable detail. Travel, lodging and per diem will be provided by ORR. The detail is not a promotion opportunity,” the job posting reads.
In California, while parents eagerly await a return to classroom learning after a year of online instruction, teachers from the San Diego Unified School District, many of whom have not taught in-person since March of 2020, were asked to volunteer to teach the unaccompanied migrant children housed in the San Diego Convention Center.
“The San Diego County Office of Education is providing the educational program for the unaccompanied migrant children who will be staying at the San Diego Convention Center through July,” an office spokesman told Fox News. “All children in California, regardless of immigration status, have a constitutional right to education. We also have a moral obligation to ensure a bright future for our children.”
The decision to allow teachers in the convention center angered some parents and district leaders who have repeatedly pleaded for children, especially those struggling with disabilities, to be able to return to in-person instruction.
“We have 130,000 kids who haven’t been allowed in a classroom for over a year in the San Diego Unified School District. It’s great that there’s in-person learning for those unaccompanied minors from Central America, but I wish every child in San Diego County was allowed the same opportunity for in-person teaching,” San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond told Fox News.
Teachers will be sent to the San Diego Convention Center to provide in-person learning for the migrants being sheltered there.
But, many schools across San Diego have yet to resume in-person classes. https://t.co/arQL4NcGRz
— KUSI News (@KUSINews) March 29, 2021
