The Obama Administration is giving out false information about the 90,000-strong-and-worsening surge of illegal aliens being allowed to remain in the U.S. by falsely telling the public that it’s only admitting children, says an immigration researcher.
According to Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, two-thirds of those being permitted to resettle in America’s interior are full families, not unaccompanied minors. She attributes the huge surge to the lenient policies of President Obama and says it will lead to more smuggling of drugs and other contrabnd across our southern border, as well as greater illegal immigration.
Ms. Vaughn made the claims Thursday on “The Ernest Istook Show” on The Washington Times Radio Network.
“My sources tell me that about two-thirds of the people being apprehended [and allowed to remain] now are not children, but they are entire families, because they heard they will be allowed to stay,” she told me. “They are letting them stay instead of removing them. There’s definitely something we could do about this.”
She described a systematic pattern of lies and deception by government officials to create an almost totally open southern border with Mexico by pretending it’s only children who are crossing and being allowed to stay.
She says the Department of Homeland Security describes the huge surge as purely unaccompanied minors coming from Central America and passing through Mexico because “they’re trying to focus attention on the kids so that people won’t realize that in fact there are lots of others coming as well.”
“Career enforcement officials … are nearly besides themselves that they are not being listened to and that they are not being allowed to enforce the law,” Ms. Vaughn told me.
Many of the unaccompanied minors, she adds, are brought across the border by smugglers who are paid by the children’s parents who are already in the U.S. illegally.
The few persons in the surge who are being sent back are those who were previously deported or have known criminal records, she says, while others are being allowed to stay, given temporary shelter at military bases and then distributed around the country.
The phenomenon is not caused by any significant changes in those countries in Central America. According to Ms. Vaughn: “There has always been generalized violence, gang activity, poverty, poor economies. It has perhaps gotten worse in the last few years but what has really changed is that people have seen that if they come to the U.S. and especially if they travel with children, they will be allowed to stay.”
However, the Obama Administration “would like us to think” that something has happened in those nations to create the surge, rather than its own policies, she said. Mexico, she told listeners on the radio show, is also complicit ”by not controlling its southern border and by giving people permission to pass through if they say they are headed for the United States.”
Ms. Vaughn expects outcry as the illegal aliens are settled around the country. The adults being processed are being told to report back for possible future deportation, she says, but she does not expect they will show up for hearings. “Off they go into the woodwork,” she said.
By not providing information on the surge other than children, the government is frustrating reporters, she alleges.
“The Administration has to be constantly pressed for information and people need to verify it by going down there themselves, sending reporters down there to cover the story in person rather than accepting press releases and statements,” Ms. Vaughn said.
“Smuggling organizations and other enterprises that operate back and forth across our borders are going to get even stronger because they [law enforcement] have to deal with all these families that are coming across,” she said.
Hear the entire interview from “The Ernest Istook Show” here.
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