Detentions of migrant kids at Texas-Mexico border drop, Border Patrol says

[TexasTowelie]

Source: AP

McALLEN — The U.S. Border Patrol has detained fewer unaccompanied children entering South Texas illegally in the past 10 days, agency officials said Thursday.

In recent months, the Border Patrol’s facilities in South Texas have been overwhelmed by a surge in the number of children entering the country without their parents. More than 57,000 children have been arrested since October, more than double the number compared to a year earlier.

The Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector Chief Kevin Oaks made the comment about declining child arrests following a media tour of a new processing facility for them in McAllen. The 55,000-square-foot converted warehouse is scheduled to open Friday and temporarily house as many as 1,000 children until they can be turned over to the Health and Human Services Department and sent to shelters.

“We arrested 80 juveniles yesterday, so within the last 10 days we’ve seen a decrease in the number of juveniles arrested,” Oaks said. Later, Roel Rodriguez, the agent who will head the new processing facility, said that daily arrest tally was down from 200 to 300 unaccompanied children at the surge’s height.

Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20140717-detentions-of-migrant-kids-at-texas-mexico-border-drop-border-patrol-says.ece

[alp227]

1. But but but OBAMA'S POLICIES ARE AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT MAGNET!!!!

In reality, the administration has publicly issued multiple statements against sending unaccompanied children to the border, and the US even created a song for Central American radio with such a message!

Homeland Security Sec. Jeh Johnson said on June 25:

This journey is a dangerous one, and at the end of it there is no free pass. There are no permisos for children who come to the United States. The journey from Central America into south Texas is over a thousand miles long. It is hot. It is treacherous and you are placing your child in the hands of a criminal smuggling organization. It is not safe.

My overall message is that it is not safe to send your child on the over 1,000-mile journey into Mexico, into South Texas. If you’re a parent considering doing this, DACA is not available for your child. Comprehensive immigration reform, the earned path to citizenship is not available for your child. It is a dangerous, dangerous journey.

The following day on an ABC interview, Obama said:

Our message absolutely is don't send your children unaccompanied, on trains or through a bunch of smugglers. We don't even know how many of these kids don't make it, and may have been waylaid into sex trafficking or killed because they fell off a train. Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they'll get sent back. More importantly, they may not make it.

On July 7, White House Press Sec. Josh Earnest stated:

It's unlikely that most of these kids will qualify for humanitarian relief. It means they will not have a legal basis for remaining in this country and will be returned.

That came the day after Jeh Johnson stated in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press:

Our message to those who come here illegal: Our border is not open to illegal migration. And we are taking a number of steps to address it, including turning people around faster. We've already dramatically reduced the turnaround time, the deportation time.

But right wingers have never cared about reality. After all, they've been promoting all sorts of fiction like "OBAMA IS MUSLIM! OBAMA WASN'T A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN!" etc. so why trust them on the immigration issue?

Edit to add original AP link, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/official-fewer-kids-detained-recently-border

[jonjensen]

2. train derailments

There have been suspicious train derailments in mexico with children getting killed when the trains derail.

[NaturalHigh]

3. Any link to that?