60,000 Children Are Living Proof of Obama's Failed Immigration Policies

Paul Babeu, sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, has defended his decision to publish the location where a group of illegal immigrant children from Central America were to be housed. Babeu told CNN's Anderson Cooper he was concerned that some of the children may have been older teenagers with gang connections or may have had diseases that would have threatened the health and safety of nearby residents. Babeu, a critic of Obama's immigration policy, said he is unhappy that he wasn't told about federal plans to shelter some of the children in his county. Instead, he said, he learned of the move from whistleblowers and confirmed the information with the facility. The children were supposed to have been housed at a ranch for troubled minors near Oracle, Arizona, about 100 miles north of the Mexican border. The people of Oracle, he said, have a right to know for the sake of transparency, but also for "significant public safety and potentially a public health issue." He told Cooper he would rather err on the side of safety than secrecy. "My question to Homeland Security was, give us a sense of the profile of these individuals. I and my deputies have our hands full. My county geographically is larger than the state of Connecticut. We don't have enough deputies to carry out all of our duties." The sheriff said his deputies arrest illegal immigrants every day who freely admit they've been deported up to 15 times. "There really, truly are no consequences," Babeu said. "This is a gaping wide hole...is there no end to this?" ~~~~~ Meanwhile, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley angered the White House by refusing to shelter illegal immigrant children at a facility in his state. Politico reports that the Democratic governor, a potential 2016 presidential candidate and the highest ranking Democrat to criticize Obama on the immigrant surge, told the Obama administration that it should not send any undocumented kids to an empty former Army Reserves Center in Westminster, Maryland. O'Malley's request came just hours after he had supported Obama's plan to shelter the illegal immigrant children, with a warning that deporting the unaccompanied children would be sending them home to "certain death." O'Malley said at the National Governors Association in Nashville, Tennessee, on Friday that these undocumented children should be treated with compassion and attacked President Obama’s plans to speed up deportations, appoint more immigration judges, and strengthen border security. The Washington Post says that within hours of O'Malley's refusal to shelter some of the children in Maryland, he received an exasperated call from Domestic Policy Director Cecilia Munoz to take issue with his comments. During the call, O'Malley said that the undocumented kids would face an inhospitable welcome at the facility in deeply conservative Carroll County, 35 miles from Baltimore. O'Malley talked to Munoz the day after the Department of Health and Human Services informed Carroll County leaders of their plan to turn the disused army reserves center into a detention center. The Post said that during the weekend graffiti was painted on the military center saying, "No illeagles here. No undocumented Democrats." Maryland State Police are investigating the message as a possible hate crime, the Post reported. Although the building has since been removed as a potential detention center, the content of the phone conversation was leaked by a Democrat outside Maryland who portrayed O'Malley as a hypocrite, the Post said. But O'Malley’s aides have since said that the governor’s phone comments were taken out of context and that he is working with the White House to find an alternative facility. "Governor O'Malley has been discussing this issue for weeks with the White House," O'Malley press secretary Nina Smith told Politico. "He has helped identify ways Maryland can assist with this humanitarian crisis, and he has directed the Maryland Department of Human Resources to take the steps necessary to find licensed providers who might be able to care for these children in Maryland." ~~~~~ Democrats are blaming the estimated 60,000 unaccompanied minors who have flooded across the southern US border from Central America, in the hope they will be allowed to stay, on a 2008 law with bipartisan support signed by President George W. Bush that allowed children from non-border countries to get hearings rather than be sent immediately back to their home countries. The 2008 law was aimed at protecting children from sex trafficking and resulted in about 4,000 children being retained for hearings annually until President Obama signed an executive order that allowed certain illegal immigrants who came as children to remain, causing the number of retained illegal immigrant children to jump to 10,000 and then to 21,000 and now to today's 60,000. ~~~~~ Meaningful immigration legislation won't happen unless the Senate has a Democratic leader "who's not living in his own alternate universe" like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who claimed this week the nation's southern border is secure, Republican Representative Peter King said Wednesday on Newsmax TV : "The border is broken. I mean, just common sense, if young kids are able to get across the border, we can imagine the drug dealers can come across the border, we have to be concerned about terrorists that would come across the border." King admitted there are no easy answers to the immigration situation, but "in an issue like this, you need people with good faith and good intelligence to come together. Either he's denying reality or he's just intentionally denying the truth. In any event, it makes it very, very difficult to even think of getting anything done." King isn't the only one speaking about Reid's claims. Tuesday, conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer speculated about Reid's mental health on Fox News : "You’ve got to wonder, you know, whether he’s really on his medication or not. I mean that’s so detached from reality, How many [children] do we have now? 60,000 at least? And we’re completely helpless. And it’s the helplessness that I think is driving the President and the Democrats to accept" changing the law. King said there are two main components that will enable the US to tighten the border : "One is the children are not the villains here, they're the victims, and they have to be treated humanely. But having said that, we have to include in any law we pass the provision that the children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras should be treated the same as the children from Mexico. Unless there's an immediate [threat] of political oppression or to their lives they will have to be returned." King added that returning the children to their home countries needs to be a "dramatic showing, so the parents will realize that this is for real." King also called for an increased presence of the National Guard on certain areas on the border : "We have to make clear that we're tough on fighting this. As far as getting extra judges, whatever else, we have to do that, but we can't turn this into a social services type enterprise." King joined growing bipartisan opposition to Obama's misuse of the 2008 law, which King said was "actually was extremely well-intentioned....to stop sex trafficking, but it is now being abused. We have to change the law." Asked about the potential of terrorists entering the US along with the flood of immigrants, King said : "If all these kids can come across, if others can come across the border, it's a lot easier for terrorists from the Middle East, Islamic terrorists to come across that border. We're just kidding ourselves if we don't realize the threat is there." ~~~~~ Dear readers, as the House examines the President's request for $3.7 billion to deal with the illegal children immigrant crisis, it seems it will grant about half of the $3.7 billion request, House Appropriations chairman Hal Rogers says : “We’re trying to sift out of his request those items and dollar numbers that need to be done immediately. The rest of what he’s requested we can consider as we process the regular 2015 appropriations bills.” To gain enough Republican votes, the grant will also include policy changes on border security and law revisions to speed up the deportation of unaccompanied minors, said Representative Pete Sessions, House Rules Committee chairman. For the first time, President Obama cannot "create facts" to spin his actions. This is not faraway Taliban or hide-and-seek about who knew what and when about Benghazi or blaming banks and George Bush for all his failed economic policies. Children - 60,000 of them - are living proof that Obama was wrong about allowing illegal children to stay in the US - and that he has been derelict in securing US borders. This time Mr. Obama must yield to Congress and the American people.