Twenty of America’s twenty-seven Republican governors urged the Biden administration Tuesday to get a handle on the situation at the southern border, saying the US frontier with Mexico was “neither closed or secure.”
In a letter to President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, appointed by Biden to handle the crisis, the governors complained that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) went behind their backs by asking nonprofits and private organizations to put up unaccompanied children apprehended at the border.
“Allowing the federal government to place a potentially unlimited number of unaccompanied migrant children into our states’ facilities for an unspecified length of time with almost zero transparency is unacceptable and unsustainable,” the letter reads.
“We have neither the resources nor the obligation to solve the federal government’s problem and foot the bill for the consequences of this Administration’s misguided actions.”
The letter’s signatories include border state Govs. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Greg Abbott of Texas. Other prominent governors who signed on include Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Brian Kemp of Georgia and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.
immigration attorneys, advocates and mental health experts tell AP that while some shelters are safe and provide adequate care, others are endangering children’s health and safety.
Some caregivers are not vetted with full FBI fingerprint background checks, an oversight for which Biden criticized the Trump administration. Perhaps most shockingly, an HHS official told the wire service the agency has received reports of abuse resulting in a handful of contract staffers being dismissed from working at emergency intake sites earlier this year.
The governors blamed the White House’s “reckless federal policy reversals” — including halting construction of the border wall and rolling back asylum agreements with Central American countries — for what they called “a self-created crisis that exploits families, undermines public safety and threatens our national security.”
https://nypost.com/2021/05/11/govern...border-crisis/
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