The Biden Administration has hit the ground running with immigration policy changes.  Read about these changes and let us know what you think in the comments . . .

According to The Gateway Pundit, “Joe Biden’s pick for Attorney General refused to state that illegally crossing our border is a crime during his nomination hearing on Monday.

During the hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley asked the nominee, Merrick Garland, if he believes that illegally crossing our borders should remain a crime. . . .

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BREAKING: Merrick Garland refuses to state illegally crossing the border is a crime pic.twitter.com/BCN1QE43jE

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) February 22, 2021

. . . “I haven’t thought about that question… uhhh… uhhhhhhh… I just haven’t thought about that question,” Garland reluctantly replied. “I think the uh, the uh, president has, uh, made clear that we are a country of uh with borders and uh a concern about national security. Um, I don’t know of proposal to uh decriminalize, but um, still make it unlawful to uh, enter.”

Garland continued to assert that he does not know the answer to the question and hasn’t thought about it. . . .

“This is again, ah, uh, a question of allocation of resources. We will uh, the department, will um ah um, I don’t know,” Garland rambled nearly incoherently. . . .

When questioned by Hawley about if he considers Antifa and Black Lives Matter attacks on the courthouse in Portland to be “domestic terrorism,” Garland said he might not, because those attacks happened at night.

First migrant facility for children opens under Biden

According to The Washinton Post, ”

The emergency facility — a vestige of the Trump administration that was open for only a month in summer 2019 — is being reactivated to hold up to 700 children ages 13 to 17. . . .

At the same time, the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border has been inching up, with January reporting the highest total — more than 5,700 apprehensions — for that month in recent years.

But immigration lawyers and advocates question why the Biden administration would choose to reopen a Trump-era facility that was the source of protests and controversy. From the “tent city” in Tornillo, Tex., to a sprawling for-profit facility in Homestead, Fla., emergency shelters have been criticized by advocates for immigrants, lawyers and human rights activists over their conditions, cost and lack of transparency in their operations. . . .

During the campaign, Biden pledged to undo former president Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies. In his first month in office, Biden signed several executive orders reversing many of those policies. Last week, he and House Democrats introduced a plan that would provide a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants. The administration also reversed some of Trump’s expulsion practices by accepting unaccompanied children into the country, a change that also is contributing to an increase of minors in government facilities, officials said. . . .

Mark Weber — a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees services for migrant children — said the Biden administration is moving away from the “law-enforcement focused” approach of the Trump administration to one in which child welfare is more centric.

At the 66-acre site, groups of beige trailers encircle a giant white dining tent, a soccer field and a basketball court. There is a bright blue hospital tent with white bunk beds inside. . . .

The operation is based on a federal emergency management system, Weber said. The trailers are labeled with names such as Alpha, Charlie and Echo. Staff members wear matching black-and-white T-shirts displaying their roles: disaster case manager, incident support, emergency management. . . .

HHS has 13,200 beds for children, having exploded in growth in the past four years — adding more than 80 facilities for a total of about 200. Weber said putting children in permanent shelters is preferable to the influx shelters like Carrizo, but nearly half of those beds are unusable during the pandemic.

As of Sunday, there were about 7,000 children in HHS custody, over 90 percent capacity under pandemic-era requirements, Weber said. Carrizo is expected to close when the pandemic ends, he said. . . .

Weber said the facilities received a bad rap under the Trump administration because many people associated them with the detention centers run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. . . .

The majority of child migrant facilities are subject to state licensing requirements; temporary influx centers like Carrizo are not. However, Weber said Carrizo would “meet or exceed” Texas licensing standards if applicable. The influx facilities also cost more: about $775 a day per child compared with $290 a day for permanent centers. . . .

Weber said the influx shelters keep children from ending up in Border Patrol stations, which have holding cells that were not designed for children. During the 2019 immigration surge, many migrants were stuck in overcrowded cells for prolonged periods that exceeded legal limits.

The detention centers overseen by ICE are reserved for adults or families and often are run by private prison companies. . . . .

Most of these children arrive to the United States planning to reunite with sponsors — usually relatives or friends of the family. Office of Refugee Resettlement case managers work with the children to identify and conduct background checks on the sponsors. If cleared, children are released to live with them while they go through the immigration court process.

“When I read they were opening again, I cried,” said Rosey Abuabara, a San Antonio community activist who was arrested for protesting outside the Carrizo camp in 2019. “I consoled myself with the fact that it was considered the Cadillac of [migrant child] centers, but I don’t have any hope that Biden is going to make it better.” . . .

Brandmiller, the lawyer, said people should take note of how these emergency shelters are often located in far-flung locations away from public view. . . .

HHS said its goal is that children will remain at Carrizo for about 30 days, though they are coming from at least two weeks of quarantine at other Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities in the region. The average stay for children in custody across its facilities is 42 days. In the 2020 fiscal year, migrant children spent an average of 102 days in federal government custody, according to HHS.

So far, no children in HHS care have been hospitalized for covid-19, Weber said. . . .

But Brandmiller is worried this is the latest government tactic to deter immigrants from seeking refuge in the United States. She said the Biden administration should not be reviving old systems but looking for new solutions.

“If they were actually addressing the issues that are endemic in a system that has been established for many years and is flawed, if they were addressing the inadequacies instead of creating a parallel jail for kids, I would have more hope,” she said.

(Photo by Milo Espinoza/Getty Images)

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