Obama Fundraises as the Border Disintegrates

Posted By Arnold Ahlert On July 9, 2014 @ 12:40 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments

As the orchestrated chaos at America’s southern border remains unrelenting, President Obama is doing what he does best: ignoring another crisis in favor of fundraising. And despite that fundraising taking place in Texas, the state hardest hit by the onslaught of illegal alien children, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest insisted Monday that Obama had no intention of visiting the border. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was incensed. “President Obama needs a wakeup call — and visiting the border and seeing firsthand the severity of this ongoing crisis is that wakeup call,” he said in remarks prepared for airing on Senate floor.

It’s not going to happen, and even Democrats are beginning to get exasperated. On Sunday, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), whose congressional district sits on the U.S.-Mexican border, accused the White House of being late to the game. “With all due respect to the administration, they’re one step behind. They should have seen this coming a long time ago,” Cuellar told CNN’s Candy Crowley on “State of the Union.”

Actually they did, and not just recently. On January 29, 2014 an ad placed at the FedBizOpps.Gov website was looking to procure escort services for 65,000 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs). Contained in the same ad was a far greater indicator of the Obama administration’s ultimate intentions once that crisis developed. Whoever provided the escort services was also expected to transport “these juveniles to Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) shelters located throughout the continental United States.” That would be the ORR whose mission is to “provide people in need with critical resources to assist them in becoming integrated members of American society.”

In other the words, the administration was not only anticipating a crisis before one developed, it had seemingly decided that the massive influx of illegals would be categorized as “refugees.” Yesterday the United Nations got into the act, urging the administration to embrace that definition as a means of making thousands of illegals eligible for asylum, rather than sending them home. When asked whether the administration considered the current border assault a refugee crisis, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said it was “a humanitarian situation that requires urgent attention.”

Yet urgent attention is exactly what is lacking, and the administration is citing the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 as the reason. Enacted by a Democratically-controlled Congress and signed by President Bush, the law offers additional protections to UACs who are not from Canada or Mexico. Those protections include an opportunity to appear at an immigration hearing, consult with an advocate, possibly retain counsel, and receive placement by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is tasked with placing the child “in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.”

Unfortunately for Obama, another Democrat has challenged his interpretation of the statute. “That law already provides the administration with flexibility to accelerate the judicial process in times of crisis,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) who helped craft the Act. “The administration should use that flexibility to speed up the system while still treating these children humanely, with compassion and respect.”

Again, it’s not going to happen, and Sundance at the Conservative Treehouse website nails down exactly why. He explains that the Obama administration’s strategy of telling the public one thing, and doing exactly the opposite behind the scenes, is in full swing. “In the foreground we will continue to see President Obama and fellow travelers say they are opposed to the influx and committed to stopping it,” he writes. “However, in the background they are giving specific instructions to the federal agencies to continue promoting the process and affirming the intent.”

Thus, as Fox News reports, Obama is “holding off on seeking legal changes to speed up the deportation process for illegal immigrant children.” Instead, the president is seeking a whopping $3.7 billion for housing, immigration judges, detention facilities, and legal aid, associated with latest influx of illegals. The AP lays out the details—and plays a devious game in the process. They note the largest allocations include $1.1 billion “for the Department of Homeland Security to help deter border-crossers and increase enforcement,” $433 million “for Customs and Border Protection to cover overtime costs and for additional facilities to detain unaccompanied children while they are in Border Patrol custody,” and $1.8 billion “to the Department of Health and Human Services for the care of unaccompanied children, including shelter and medical care.”

Note that the overwhelming amount of this spending is directed at maintaining a status quo that does nothing to address the ongoing assault on our borders. As for the level of seriousness, there is another $600 million dollar request in the package—for fighting wildfires in Western states. In the meantime, there is no timetable for speeding up the deportation process.

Yet note something far more important: last weekend, Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) issued a calculating directive to its personnel. According to an internal ICE email obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies and shared with Breitbart News, usage of the term “UAC” is to be discontinued and replaced with “unaccompanied children.” The email goes even further. “The appropriate messaging on documents should be using the term : unaccompanied children all lower case. (Unless capitalizing would be grammatically correct),” the email states.

Less than a week later, the Associated Press has taken its cues, as the leftist impulse to control the narrative takes hold. That impulse was abetted to the point of absurdity by radical leftist Sally Kohn who contends the words “illegal immigrants,” or “illegals” are the equivalent of calling black Americans the n-word, and gay americans the f-word. “Today, most people find the n-word and the f-word incredibly offensive,” she explains. “Let’s hope that most if not all people will feel the same way about the words ‘illegals’ and ‘illegal immigrants’ in the not too distant future.”

As for the reality of speeding up the deportation process, Obama claims he will get to it, and the Republican House is reportedly working on an effort to change the 2008 law. But the president knows for certain the Democratically-controlled Senate that passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill last summer isn’t about to alienate its pro-amnesty constituency. A senior Democratic staffer in the Senate illuminated pre-ordained reality regarding Obama’s ostensible effort. “He can’t get it passed,” the staffer insisted.

And because Obama can’t get anything resembling an enforcement bill passed, the spending package is in jeopardy as well—which may be exactly what the president wants. That reality was inadvertently revealed by the Washington Post:

Republicans argue that Obama must stop the flow of illegal immigrants to the border and ensure that the entire border is secure before focusing on the tens of thousands who are already in detention facilities there…Democrats, meanwhile, say that the first step must be to provide more funding to pay for new detention facilities and legal services to work through the debilitating backlog of children who are already at the border. Providing an influx of money for detention centers and to pay for additional judges, several Democrats have argued, is more urgent than altering the 2008 law in terms of addressing the current crisis.

Such a stalemate aligns perfectly with a president far more interested in paying lip service to the nation’s problems than dealing with them, even as it allows him to once again paint Republicans as the obstructionist party for failing to embrace the “bigger picture” of comprehensive immigration reform.

As an added bonus, the president can get back to his fundraising. Fundraising that includes visits to Dallas and Austin, where he will be rubbing elbows with pro-amnesty Hollywood stars at events where ticket prices range from $5,000 to $32,400. One of those fundraisers will be at the Austin home of Mexican director Robert Rodriguez, whose movie “Machete” depicts the murders of people opposed to illegal immigration. Obama has even agreed to meet with Texas Governor Rick Perry on Wednesday in Dallas to discuss the current crisis.

Dallas is more than 400 miles from the Mexican border.

In the meantime, the crisis continues unabated. Illegal immigrant children afflicted with tuberculosis, scabies, chickenpox and lice remain at Lackland Air Force base in Oklahoma, illegal alien criminals are being released in Virginia and Arizona, the ongoing protests in Murrieta, CA threaten to escalate, and a leaked DHS internal report from ICE reveals that only 0.1 percent of the Central American minors illegally entering the U.S. were deported in FY2013.

And amidst it all, the restrictions the Obama administration are attempting to impose on members of Congress and the media are astounding. The HHS is telling members of Congress visiting the immigration detention center at Lackland that they cannot take pictures, use recording devices, or interact with staff or children. On Thursday when the media’s tour begins, they will be subjected to the same restrictions.

The Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell offers the proper perspective on this administration’s efforts. “Imagine after Katrina that reporters are getting ready to go to New Orleans, and the Bush administration says to reporters, now one thing: no recording devices, no questions, no interacting with staff or children, no photos, and no interviews, but other than that you can cover Katrina,” he said yesterday on Fox’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto.” “The response would be that this is the statement of a dictatorship,” Bozell added.

This is indeed Obama’s Katrina moment with one giant difference: the same mainstream media that completely excoriated George W. Bush as indifferent at best, and racist at worst for flying above the city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina remain appalling passive in the face of transparent insensitivity borne of nothing more than crass political calculation. “We’re not worried about those optics,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest responding to a reporter who asked him if the Obama administration should be worried about how it will look for the president to be in Texas and avoid the border. Americans might ask themselves what kind of leader sees thousands of Third World children as “optics.” Or perhaps more accurately, political props for advancing a pro-amnesty agenda.

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