Free Republic

It was only a matter of time before the government would enlist teachers to work in the migrant shelters sprouting up due to the crisis at the border.When people accuse me of being a glorified babysitter because I’m a teacher, I usually laugh and respond, “Who said anything about being glorified?” During the COVID-19 lockdowns, I can now add, “Who said anything about being a babysitter?” These days, teachers in many parts of the country are paid for doing next to nothing since reopening schools would expose them to the virus. For teachers who have returned to the classroom, much...

The border crisis is turning deadly. On March 20, a nine-year-old girl drowned in the Rio Grande. Why aren’t major media outlets more interested? On the evening of March 20 in Eagle Pass, Texas, a small town on the U.S.-Mexico border about 150 miles west of San Antonio, U.S. Border Patrol agents on riverine patrol were flagged down by people on the Mexican side of the river. They alerted the agents to a woman and her two small children, a boy and a girl, lying unconscious on a sandbar near the south side of the riverbank.The agents, with the help...

There is a direct line from those who attacked the Trump administration for “family separation” at the border to the current pain and suffering of thousands of migrant children. Now that the Biden administration has carried out a policy these critics argued for, the result is a humanitarian disaster, and those who were most vocal about the care of migrant children are now silent.First, the backstory. A legal ruling says the federal government can’t detain migrant children in the United States for more than 20 days. If adults bring children with them to the southern U.S. border, assuming these children...

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) has moved to block the Trump administration's construction of a shelter for unaccompanied migrant children in the district The Washington Post reported that Bowser blocked the shelter's construction by using emergency regulations that bar the city's child welfare agency from issuing licenses to facilities that house more than 15 people. Federal officials had planned to oversee the construction of a 200-bed facility in the Takoma neighborhood built by Maryland-based contractor Dynamic Service Solutions. The federal government awarded Dynamic Service Solutions with a $20.5 million contract to build the facility, but the D.C. Child and...

Full headline: DHS chief Nielsen: Central American countries ‘want their children back’ but U.S. can’t send them because the law doesn’t allow itHomeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told a House committee on Thursday that Central American governments in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have said they want the U.S. to return their children, but that can’t happen under current law. “What we hear from the Northern Triangle governments – they have said this publicly. I am sure that they will tell you when you visit them – is they want their children back,” she told the House Homeland Security Committee....

Is a policy ‘child abuse’ simply because Trump is executing it? Family separation is over, for now. The executive order President Trump signed yesterday fits within his statutory authority, complies with existing law, and directs his attorney general to petition federal courts to grant him greater authority to “detain alien families together.” The title of the order, “Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation,” contains its own plea that the legislative branch step up and exercise its constitutional authority. This is all good. Families shouldn’t be separated merely to prosecute misdemeanors or during asylum proceedings. The administration should pursue...

The Trump administration may place up to 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children on military bases starting as early as next month, according to a new Pentagon memo. The notification, sent to lawmakers on Wednesday and first reported by The Washington Post, says the Defense Department received a request for assistance from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). “HHS has requested DOD determine its capabilities to provide up to 20,000 temporary beds for unaccompanied children at DOD installations,” the document states. If the Pentagon finds that it can provide such lodging, “the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) requests the...

... Word of the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy, which calls for prosecuting everyone who crosses the border illegally, has been traveling along the migrant trail that winds through Mexico and Central America. People learn of it by television, by social media and, mostly, by word of mouth. While the policy has stirred controversy in the United States, with lawmakers from both parties calling for its end in the face of defiance from the Trump administration, it has sowed confusion for the migrants bound for the United States, who are struggling to make sense of what it means for...

BROWNSVILLE, Tex. — In the loading docks, children sat in a darkened auditorium watching the animated movie “Moana.” Where there were once racks of clothes and aisles of appliances, there were now spotless dorm-style bedrooms with neatly made beds and Pokemon posters on the walls. The back parking lots were now makeshift soccer fields and volleyball courts. The McDonald’s was now the cafeteria. All this made it difficult to visualize what the sprawling facility used to be — a former Walmart Supercenter. The converted retail store at the southern tip of Texas has become the largest licensed migrant children’s shelter...

"A crowd of 300 angry protestors forced three buses carrying 140 undocumented migrant children and their parents to turn around in Murrieta, California, on Tuesday after they blocked the road. The dramatic confrontation between the flag waving protestors and the Homeland Security buses came one day after Mayor Alan Long urged residents to resist the federal government's plan to transfer the Central American migrants to California to ease overcrowding of facilities along the Texas-Mexico border. Holding up banners that said 'Return to Sender' and suggesting the children should be sent to the White House instead, the irate protestors succeeded when...