In 2012, Barack Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano rolled out the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” program, also known as DACA. Over 800,000 illegal immigrant children (or more) have been blocked from deportation and allowed to remain in the US through the DACA program through 2021.
Donald Trump moved to terminate DACA but the Supreme Court backed immigration advocates in 2020.
In July 2021, a federal judge ruled that first-time DACA applicants were barred from applying to the program. All individuals whose DACA requests were approved prior to July 16, 2021 will continue to have DACA status and all DACA requests that were approved before July 16 will continue to be eligible to renew DACA and DACA work permits.
DACA allowed noncitizens who were then under the age of 31 and had entered America before turning 16 years old and before 2007 to request that the government not deport them. DACA children, also called “DREAMers” for the sake of political optics, were not granted technical citizenship status, but were granted most of the benefits of citizenship anyway, including driver’s licenses, work permits and social security numbers. In many states this kind of documentation also allows them to vote despite living in the US illegally.
Even though DACA has been shut down, Joe Biden has allowed over 257,000 illegal minors into the US to be relocated according to recent data from US Customs and Border Protection. They are not accompanied by parents and are often farmed out to foster or “sponsor” homes across the country. Keep in mind these are official government stats, which tend to under-report illegal immigration activity.
Like Obama, Biden has continued to ignore constitutional law on immigration, which says that only Congress is able to determine immigration levels within any given period of time.
The scheme is rather obvious – Import illegal immigrant children using their age and circumstances as an empathy shield against critics, then keep them in the US so long that it then becomes socially unacceptable to deport them when they are adults. Thus, they receive de facto citizenship without Congress having a say in the matter because “the poor children,” and leftists buy hundreds of thousands of future voters in the process.
These unilateral policies have created an epidemic of illegal migrants, especially young children, along US Border states, along with rampant human trafficking and other highly unsavory criminal activities. Border and refugee agencies have struggled to keep up with the constant arrivals of children, with thousands coming per week setting new records.
Open border advocates claim that many of these children are sent into the US alone because they already have family on the other side. This is nonsense. In order to apply for asylum or refugee status under DACA or any other immigration program, one of the requirements is that the child has no parent or legal guardian living in America.
They also claim that the children are exploited in their home countries and this is why they must stay within the US, but there is no evidence to support the notion that the majority of illegal children are escaping exploitation. What we do know is that if children make these claims they are more likely to receive refugee status and be resettled or get asylum later on. In other words, the incentives to claim abuse and exploitation are numerous. The vast majority of DACA children cross the border with no plan and no one to take care of them, with the chance of kidnapping growing each year. Truly, this must be the act of loving caring parents that want the best for their kids.
American taxpayers shell out AT LEAST $9.4 billion per year to provide care for illegal migrant children including DACA recipients. Some estimates indicate that the Biden Administration is spending over $60 million per week to shelter unaccompanied minors.
And here is perhaps the real reason why parents would send their vulnerable children into the US alone: Free child care, and potential future citizenship which they can then use to bring more family members into the US later. The real exploitation of migrant children is often committed by the parents, it’s not something they are running away from.
The real solution would be to coordinate with the Central and South American governments and send the children straight back to their families. Denial of legal citizenship for the rest of the parents’ lives as punishment might send a message. If there are no incentives, the mass migrations will stop. If these countries will not cooperate, taxes can be raised on imports until they see reason. But Biden will never do this.
There is talk among Democrats of instituting DACA 2.0, in order to ensure that the march of child migrants continues for many years to come and the numerous associated problems only get worse. New measures do not seem to matter though, because Biden is stepping over border laws and encouraging illegal immigration anyway, creating a creeping humanitarian disaster from which there seems to be no escape.
He released them because they didn’t pass the sniff test.
How many did he keep because they smell good?