Many of the 515 will be or are housed at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery. Just had someone tell me the Feds have mandated that they will be put in schools. 50K this year alone? And the POTUS vacations in Martha's Vineyard. From wkrg.org Tiffany McCall
Over 50 thousand unaccompanied minors crossed the U.S.- Mexico border illegally so far this year. Of those 37,477 have been placed with a sponsor families. 515 children have ended up here in Alabama.
Congressman Bradley Byrne says the next step is deciding if they can stay in the U.S.
"It's like a court proceeding but it's not with a jury, but there's special judges that listen to the facts of each individual child's case. In case that child can make the factual case as to why they qualify under asylum statutes. In other words they're fleeing political persecution or something like that. Most of them can't do that. We need to expedite the process as quickly as possible and return them back to their families where they belong," Byrne said.
He says the House of Representatives worked on passing the legislation to provide the funding to get the children through the legal process quickly, but they hit a speed bump when the Senate chose to take a break through Labor Day before taking up the bill.
"We passed the legislation in the House before we left. We passed the money to pay for it before we left, but the Senate left and didn't do anything. So the next step is for the senate to take up our legislation, if they want to make changes that's fine, but do their jobs," he said.
Of the 515 children placed here in Alabama, I asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to break how many are in Mobile, but it tells me it does not have sponsor data broken down county by county. However, the director of the Guadeloupe Center says so far its had about 25 individual cases where they were contacted by families to get paperwork started at the Mobile County Health Department.
Congressman Byrne says he is pleased that the proposal to house the illegal immigrant children at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery was scratched.
Catholic Social Services in Mobile says they have received dozens of emails and phone calls from people inquiring about whether the will place illegal immigrant children, but the organization tells me they only handle legal refugee cases, not illegal immigrant cases.
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