Tent cities for migrant children separated from their parents at the border? Sure, why not.
According to USA Today, the Department of Health and Human Services will be paying a visit to Fort Bliss Army base, just outside of El Paso, Texas to see if it would be a suitable location to set up a tent city designed to house between 1,000 and 5,000 migrant kids. According to the report, HHS officials are also eyeing Air Force bases in San Angelo and Abilene for the task.
So, tent cities built by the homeless are deemed illegal and get torn down by the government, but when the government wants to build one, it’s totally cool. Got it.
From USA Today:
The Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS is responsible for looking after more than 11,200 migrant children being held without a parent or guardian. Some 100 existing shelters, however, are now 95% full.
The number of migrant children held in U.S. government custody without their parents has increased more than 20% as a result of a new “zero-tolerance” policy by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. That policy directs the Border Patrol to refer all people caught crossing the border illegally for criminal prosecution, regardless of their situation.
Because of the Trump Administration’s no-exceptions policy on illegal immigration, enough children to entertain the notion of opening a tent city to contain them all have been ripped from their families over the past few months, while adults, whose only crime was to come to America looking for a better life, you know, like many of our ancestors did, are being locked away in federal prisons while awaiting deportation hearings.
You should know that none of this – the camps for kids, the threat of having families torn apart or being forced into prison – looks to be slowing the tide of illegal immigration. In May, Border Patrol agents rounded up over 40,000 individuals trying to cross America’s southern border. That’s the largest number seen since Trump took office.
Image: By U.S. Navy photo by Yeoman 3rd Class Jessica L. Bidwell – This Image was released by the United States Navy with the ID 070206-N-3589B-007