Source: https://cis.org/Report/Unaccompanied-Alien-Children-and-Crisis-Border
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 04:36:06+00:00

Document:
Andrew R. Arthur is a resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.
The number of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) apprehended entering illegally along the Southwest border, which had bottomed out in April 2017 following the inauguration of Donald Trump, surged almost 685 percent by February 2019. Similarly, the number of UACs deemed inadmissible at the ports of entry along that border surged 385 percent between March 2017 and February 2019.
Those UACs, and migrants from Central America (from which most of the UACs hail) generally, face great dangers in traveling to the United States. In May 2017, Doctors Without Borders (commonly known by its French acronym "MSF") reported that more than two-thirds of the migrant and refugee populations entering Mexico reported being victims of violence during their transit toward the United States and that almost one-third of women surveyed had been sexually abused during that trip. The United Nations has also reported that the smuggling of aliens is big business for criminal organizations, valued at $3.7 to $4.2 billion a year. The processing of those migrants has in addition placed a huge burden on the Border Patrol, both in terms of manpower and in financial costs for humanitarian aid.
Flawed U.S. laws and policies encourage UACs to make that trip to the United States, and encourage the parents and other relatives of those UACs to pay criminal organizations to bring them to this country. In particular, by law, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is required to turn all of those UACs from non-contiguous countries (that is every country other than Canada and Mexico) over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) within 48 hours of the point at which they were identified as UACs, for prompt placement in the least restrictive setting "that is in the best interest of the child". In FY 2018, the average UAC spent 60 days in an ORR shelter before being released.
Generally, most are released to a parent or other family member in this country, the majority of whom do not have lawful status in the United States. This legal requirement makes the U.S. government a de facto co-conspirator with the smuggling organizations. Not surprisingly, the number of UACs from those non-contiguous countries (especially the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA) countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) has surged in recent years as family members in the United States and UACs have exploited this loophole.
Those UACs are supposed to subsequently appear for removal proceedings in immigration court after release, but often failed to do so. In fact, in half of all case completions involving UACs, the alien failed to appear for court, compared to an already high average of 25 percent for aliens generally.
In the past eight years, the demographic makeup of the population of aliens who have been apprehended entering the United States illegally between the ports of entry or who are deemed inadmissible at those ports of entry along the Southwest border has changed dramatically.
The trip from the NTCA to the United States is a dangerous one, largely controlled by criminals for whom smuggling is big business. The proceeds of that smuggling go to fund other criminal organizations that are undermining the rule of law in Mexico and the United States.
Alien smuggling undermines the rule of law, both in the United States and abroad.
Human smuggling is the facilitation, transportation, attempted transportation, or illegal entry of a person or persons across an international border, in violation of one or more countries' laws, either clandestinely or through deception, whether with the use of fraudulent documents or through the evasion of legitimate border controls. It is a criminal commercial transaction between willing parties who go their separate ways once they have procured illegal entry into a country. The vast majority of people who are assisted in illegally entering the United States and other countries are smuggled, rather than trafficked. International human smuggling networks are linked to other trans¬national crimes including drug trafficking and the corruption of government officials. They can move criminals, fugitives, terrorists, and trafficking victims, as well as economic migrants. They undermine the sovereignty of nations and often endanger the lives of those being smuggled.
Not surprisingly, as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has reported, human smuggling is a large and profitable criminal enterprise. Specifically, in its 2018 Global Study on Smuggling of Migrants, UNODC estimated the revenue for smugglers along the land route to North America to have been between $3.7 billion and $4.2 billion per year from 2014 to 2015.20 Needless to say, as the number of aliens smuggled goes up, this figure can be expected to rise.
Drug cartels that operate along the Mexico-U.S. border are another tentacle in the migrant smuggling business.
"They are our ticket into the United States, because they are the ones who control the border," the coyote saId. In Reynosa and the surrounding state of Tamalulipas, the Gulf Cartel controls the border. Los Zetas control regions to the west.
Ramón said he pays the cartel for each client; more for adults, less for minors. The cartel's men sometimes show up before the groups cross, to count the migrants and make sure the coyotes pay the right amount.
"If you fail to pay for just one person, you are breaking your word. And your word is the only thing that counts here," he said.
Illicit drugs, as well as the transnational and domestic criminal organizations who traffic them, continue to represent significant threats to public health, law enforcement, and national security in the United States. Drug poisoning deaths are the leading cause of injury death in the United States; they are currently at their highest ever recorded level and, every year since 2011, have outnumbered deaths by firearms, motor vehicle crashes, suicide, and homicide. In 2016, approximately 174 people died every day from drug poisoning. ... The opioid threat (controlled prescription drugs, synthetic opioids, and heroin) has reached epidemic levels and currently shows no signs of abating, affecting large portions of the United States. Meanwhile, as the ongoing opioid crisis justly receives national attention, the methamphetamine threat remains prevalent; the cocaine threat has rebounded; new psychoactive substances (NPS) are still challenging; and the domestic marijuana situation continues to evolve.
To reiterate: the smuggling of migrants the United States is a big business for the criminals who are involved, and the downstream effects of that business have consequences both north and south of the Southwest border.
Cartels and their numerous illicit operations are not the only criminal dangers that lax American laws relating to UACs pose to the United States.
In the United States, MS-13 gang members have been involved in local crimes including extortion, drug distribution, prostitution, robbery, and murder, as well as in more transnational illicit activity such as drug trafficking and human smuggling and trafficking. While some of the illegal activities help support the gang's criminal finances, others facilitate the maintenance of territory as well as gang brand and unity.
MS-13 has a reputation for particularly violent criminal activity. Some experts see this violence as serving both internal and external purposes. Internally, violence may help recruit — it serves a brand-identifying purpose — in addition to providing discipline and cohesion. Externally, it can help establish territory as well as social and political control.
In recent years, this violence has been demonstrated in a reported wave of violent homicides and other criminality attributed to MS-13 in certain locales. For example, authorities have been investigating a spate of killings and other violent activities on Long Island, NY, attributed to MS-13. In May 2017 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Suffolk County (NY) police commissioner estimated that since 2016, 38% of murders in the county were attributable to MS-13. In a series of five superseding indictments, federal prosecutors with the Eastern District of New York have indicted two dozen MS-13 members with crimes including at least 15 murders, as well as assaults, arson, and drug distribution. The series of indictments includes charges in the high-profile killings of teenagers Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas.
ICE and other law enforcement agencies moved aggressively against MS-13 beginning in 2005, seeking to disrupt activities, arrest, prosecute and deport gang members and associates where possible, and dismantle individual cliques and criminal enterprises. The gang's strength was significantly diminished and soon ICE shifted focus to other gangs it considered to be a greater threat.
Today, a smaller percentage of MS-13 members is believed to be here illegally. Some are U.S.-born, others have obtained green cards or have Temporary Protected Status; some have Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA). But when the gang leadership decided to launch a more concerted effort to enlarge in the United States, it was able to take advantage of the Obama administration's catch-and-release policies for unaccompanied minors apprehended at the border to move in younger members from Central America. For example, one MS-13 clique leader in Frederick, Md., who had received a DACA work permit and was employed as a custodian at a middle school in Frederick, Md., and who was recently incarcerated for various gang-related crimes, reportedly was told by gang leaders in El Salvador to take advantage of the lenient policies on UACs to bring in new recruits, knowing that they would be allowed to resettle in the area with few questions asked. Several of these unaccompanied minors now have been arrested and incarcerated for various crimes, including a vicious random attack on a sheriff's deputy in 2015.
Again, to reiterate: Many foreign nationals from the NTCA (including many if not most UACs) claim in applying for asylum that they fear harm of the hands of criminal gangs, and in particular MS-13, in their home countries. At the same time, the lax immigration policies that encourage those aliens to enter the United States are exploited by that gang to both bring in new members and to recruit UACs who have already entered to assist it in its violent criminal activities in the United States. The proceeds from those activities, in turn, are funneled back to the NTCA to support MS-13's violent criminal activities there.
That MSF report also describes some of the physical hazards that those migrants face during their journey: "Migrants and refugees walk for hours in high temperatures, on unsafe and insecure routes to evade authorities, ... risk falling from the cargo trains that transport them along the route, or ride on overcrowded trucks without food, water or ventilation for hours."
Each of these are dangers that the Trump administration (as the Obama administration before it, as I have noted previously) has attempted to prevent through its border policies. At the present time, however, due to the aforementioned loopholes, those policies have been unsuccessful.
When the agents have a medical situation involving a child in a family unit, they have to stop the processing of the entire family as long as the child is sick and in medical care. It is no wonder that the so-called "time in processing" [TIP] for aliens apprehended in the Yuma Sector has increased from eight hours in 2005, when the majority of aliens who were apprehended were Mexican nationals who could be quickly returned across the border, to 78 hours today, when the majority of aliens who are apprehended are ... OTM ... family groups.
These OTMs also require additional processing because of the added paperwork associated with their cases: determining their route of travel to the United States, taking biometrics, processing those who will be placed into removal proceedings, and planning for the return of those who will not be.
In any event, that additional processing time also comes at a cost, another one that saps resources away from the Border Patrol's vital national security mission.
The changing demographics of the aliens who are entering illegally, and the increase in the TIP for those migrants, has also caused logistical issues for the Border Patrol. The processing facilities the Border Patrol uses were built to handle single, adult males, not large numbers of families and UACs. Nonetheless, I have been told, Border Patrol has attempted to keep family units together while they are being processed, but this is not always possible. In no circumstances, however, can UACs be kept with unrelated adults.
In FY 2018, the Yuma sector, which has jurisdiction over 126 miles of the border, spent $350,000 for humanitarian support, according to Justin Kallinger, operations officer for the sector. That money paid for more than $150,000 in meals, $15,000 for baby formula and diapers, and $27,000 for blankets. Already in FY 2019, the sector has spent $400,000 to cover humanitarian costs, including more than $240,000 in meals, $45,000 in baby formula and diapers, and $33,000 in blankets. All told, the Border Patrol expects to pay $1.2 billion in humanitarian costs border-wide.
Unfortunately, the costs do not end there. In FY 2018, the sector incurred more than $700,000 in medical care costs to cover 1,700 aliens who were apprehended and who had to be transported to the hospital. Among those who required medical care were a 17-year-old girl, who broke three vertebrae when her smuggler told her to jump from the top of a 30-foot fence, and her 14-year-old sister, who followed after her and fractured her ankle. Other aliens show up sick, particularly children, some of whom are suffering from illnesses not generally seen in modern American society, including mumps, measles, and tuberculosis, as well as others with influenza, scabies, and other skin diseases.
Once UACs have made it to the United States through these perils with the assistance of criminal organizations, they generally go into the care of ORR.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said, "It's just a system that has so many gaps, so many opportunities for these children to fall between the cracks, that we just don't know what's going on — how much trafficking or abuse or simply immigration law violations are occurring."
The assertion that unaccompanied alien children (UAC) are 'lost' is completely false. This is a classic example of the adage 'No good deed goes unpunished.' [ORR], which is part of [HHS], began voluntarily making calls in 2016 as a 30-day follow-up on the release of UAC to make sure that UAC and their sponsors did not require additional services. This additional step, which is not required and was not done previously, is now being used to confuse and spread misinformation.
Sponsors are supposed to undergo background checks, fill out a two-page form about their relationship to the child, list the names of others in the household, and check boxes declaring whether anyone in the home has been convicted of a crime or accused of physical or sexual abuse, neglect, or child abandonment. Sponsors who are not parents or guardians are supposed to submit fingerprints.
But that doesn't always happen. In a November letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, [Sen. Charles] Grassley complained that background checks are often not thorough, sponsors are not properly vetted and many are not fingerprinted.
The processing of UACs places ORR in a no-win situation: Take time to adequately vet potential sponsors in the United States, and be accused of (and run the risk of being sued for) using delay tactics to release those UACs to willing sponsors in the United States. Fail to adequately vet potential willing sponsors, however, and be blamed for the inevitable exploitation of, or harm to, at least some portion of that UAC population.
Returning to the vetting process, in assessing the suitability of a potential sponsor, ORR also evaluates that sponsor's ability to ensure that the UAC will appear at all future removal hearings.88 Most aliens who are apprehended entering the United States illegally are subject to expedited removal under section 235(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).89 UACs, however, are not, but rather are placed directly into removal proceedings.90 Many fail to appear for those proceedings.
This is the fourth case with the same factual situation this Court has had in as many weeks. In all the cases, human traffickers who smuggled minor children were apprehended short of delivering the children to their ultimate destination. In all cases, a parent, if not both parents, of the children was in this country illegally. That parent initiated the conspiracy to smuggle the minors into the country illegally. He or she also funded the conspiracy. In each case, the DHS completed the criminal conspiracy, instead of enforcing the laws of the United States, by delivering the minors into the custody of the parent living illegally in the United States. In response to this Court's inquiry about this policy in the instant case, the Government responded with a copy of the 1997 Flores v. Reno ... settlement agreement and a copy of a portion of the Homeland Security Act. No other explanation was offered — no doubt because there is no explanation. The DHS has simply chosen not to enforce the United States' border security laws.
As Judge Hanen noted, nothing in the Flores settlement agreement or section 462 of the Homeland Security Act (or the TVPRA or the INA) prevents DHS from placing any sponsor of a UAC into removal proceedings. Section 224 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2019,99 however, effectively bars DHS from using information obtained from HHS "to place in detention, remove, refer for a decision whether to initiate removal proceedings, or initiate removal proceedings against a sponsor, potential sponsor, or member of a household of a sponsor or potential sponsor of" a UAC, with limited exceptions. As Judge Hanen's logic suggests, this simply encourages parents to have their children smuggled to the United States by criminals with impunity.
There is no apparent legal requirement that ORR conduct such post-release checks, or be responsible for the post-release care of UACs, although notably Congress is free to implement such requirements.105 If it were to do so, however, it would be incumbent on Congress to provide ORR the necessary resources to undertake this task.
As noted, most UACs are released to parents or guardians in the United States. Given this fact, those alien minors would not appear to be "UACs" under section 462(g)(2)(C) of the Homeland Security Act, 6 U.S.C. § 279(g)(2)(C).
Without specific authorization to treat alien minors as UACs, both DHS (in transporting to ORR) and ORR (in care and placement) would appear to be in violation of the Antideficiency Act.
There has been significant debate concerning the reasons why there has been a recent surge in the number of UACs (and family units) entering the United States illegally in recent months.
In Honduras, murder rates have fallen by over half since 2011 — from 86.5 per 100,000 to 42.8 per 100,000 in 2017. During that same time, the annual number of apprehensions of Hondurans at the U.S.-Mexico border quadrupled, albeit with fluctuations.
Guatemala saw a very similar trend, with murder rates falling from 38.6 per 100,000 to 19.0 per 100,000 between 2011 and 2017. At the same time, the annual number of Guatemalan apprehensions more than tripled — from approximately 18,000 to 66,000.
Neither poverty nor insecurity is a basis for immigration relief in the United States, at least for those who enter illegally. The notation in that article that "pairings" consisting "of one parent and one child" will "all but ensure the family will be processed quickly and released from U.S. custody in a matter of days" reflects the flaws in the Flores settlement agreement and TVPRA.
U.S. court restrictions on the government's ability to keep children in immigration jails — and the sheer volume of people arriving — have left Homeland Security agencies defaulting increasingly to the overflow model Trump deplores as "catch-and-release."
It was the first time many of the migrants had been on an airplane. For Dionel Martinez, it was the second.
The 48-year-old Guatemalan came to the United States three decades earlier, working as a landscaper until he was deported — his only other time on a plane.
"We're going to Pennsylvania," he said. A friend had arranged a job at a pizzeria there.
With the savings from his first stint in the United States as a young man, Martinez was able to buy some land in his home country and start a family. But a drought this year had left them hungry.
"There was no harvest," he said. "Not one grain of corn."
His son Darwin, 13, came with him to the United States this time. The boy fainted during the journey, his father said, when they had to stand for hours in the back of a cattle truck.
Martinez said he paid 30,000 Guatemalan quetzals, about $2,500, to a "coyote" smuggling guide. It was a cheap rate, but it meant that he and his son traveled through Mexico in trucks, like cargo.
Across rural Guatemala, Martinez said, word has spread that those who travel with a child can expect to be released from U.S. custody. Smugglers were offering two-for-one pricing, knowing they just needed to deliver clients to the border — not across it — for an easy surrender to U.S. agents.
"If this continues, I don't think there will be anyone left in Guatemala," Martinez joked. The men from his village near the town of Chiquimula were all leaving, he said, bringing a child with them.
With respect to UACs, Judge Hanen's logic above, coupled with the fact that most UACs are released to their parents and the fact that Congress has blocked HHS from sharing information about sponsors with DHS for removal purposes would suggest that loopholes in lax immigration laws are encouraging parents of UACs in the United States (including those without status) to pay smugglers to bring their children to this country.
Finally, the presence of those parents in the United States would appear to undermine the claims of fear of their children who remained abroad until being smuggled into the United States. It is difficult to conceive of a scenario in which parents would willfully abandon children in a perilous situation in order to escape to safety themselves. Absent significantly changed circumstances, however, that is the only conclusion that can be drawn if those UACs' asylum claims are to be believed.
The number of UACs, in particular from the NTCA countries, entering the United States illegally along the Southwest border is large, and growing larger every month.
Nationals of those countries (including UACs) are taking advantage of loopholes in our lax immigration laws to effectuate such entry and to seek economic opportunities in the United States.
This is not to say that violence and corruption are not endemic in the NTCA, or that no asylum claims made by nationals of those countries are valid. If a national of one of those countries, however, (correctly) believed that he or she could enter the United States illegally with a child, and be released shortly thereafter with the ability to remain in this country indefinitely, and thereby make a significantly higher wage, it only makes sense for them to do so.
Similarly, if a foreign national parent in the United States from an NTCA country were to believe (again, correctly) that if he or she paid a smuggler to bring a child to the United States, that the child would be quickly reunited with that parent, it is only logical that the parent would do so. A parent of a UAC who is willing to pay the smuggling free and risk the safety of that child could offer that child significantly better economic possibilities, educational opportunities, and health care. For many, obviously, that temptation is too great to pass up.
The number of UACs apprehended along the Southwest border will continue to increase until the loopholes that encourage those UACs to enter illegally, and their parents to pay smugglers to bring them, remain, despite the obvious dangers that those UACs face on that journey.
As the number of UACs increases, Border Patrol will be even more overwhelmed by the processing of those UACs (and family units), ICE and the immigration courts will be even more overwhelmed by removal hearings for those foreign nationals, and ORR will be even more overwhelmed by the number of UACs that it must care for and place with sponsors in the United States.
1 "To Secure the Border and Make America Safe Again, We Need to Deploy the National Guard", Department of Homeland Security, April 4, 2018.
2 "Southwest Border Migration FY 2019", U.S. Customs and Border Protection, February 8, 2019.
3 "U.S. Border Patrol Southwest Border Apprehensions by Sector Fiscal Year 2019", U.S. Customs and Border Protection, February 8, 2019.
5 William A. Kandel, "Unaccompanied Alien Children: An Overview", Congressional Research Service, January 18, 2017, p. 7.
6 "Southwest Border Inadmissibles by Field Office Fiscal Year 2019", U.S. Customs and Border Protection, March 5, 2019.
9 "Facts and Data, General Statistics", Office of Refugee Resettlement, February 13, 2019.
12 See William A. Kandel, "Unaccompanied Alien Children: An Overview", Congressional Research Service, January 18, 2017.
15 "About the Office", Executive Office for Immigration Review, August 14, 2018.
16 Section 208(b)(3)(C) of the INA, 8 U.S C. § 1158(b)(3)(C).
17 "Obtaining Asylum in the United States", U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, November 19, 2015.
18 "Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime", National Security Council, July 25, 2011.
19 "Transnational Organized Crime: A Growing Threat to National and International Security", National Security Council, July 25, 2011.
20 "Global Study on Smuggling of Migrants", United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2018, at 10, 22.
21 Damiá S. Bonmati, "A day in the life of a coyote: Smuggling migrants from Mexico to the United States", Univision, December 21, 2016.
24 Jay Root, "How one migrant family got caught between smugglers, the cartel and Trump's zero-tolerance policy", Texas Tribune, March 7, 2019.
25 Brianna Lee, Danielle Renwick, and Rocio Cara Labrador, "Mexico's Drug War", Council on Foreign Relations, January 24, 2019.
27 "2018 National Drug Threat Assessment", U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, October 2018.
28 Kristin Finklea, "MS-13 in the United States and Federal Law Enforcement Efforts", Congressional Research Service, August 20, 2018, summary.
30 Jessica Vaughan, "MS-13 Resurgence: Immigration Enforcement Needed to Take Back Our Streets", Center for Immigration Studies, February 21, 2018.
31 "Unaccompanied Alien Children and Family Units Are Flooding the Border Because of Catch and Release Loopholes", Department of Homeland Security, February 15, 2018.
32 "Treasury Sanctions Latin American Criminal Organization", press release, U.S. Department of Treasury, October 11, 2012.
33 "The Obama Administration's Government-Wide Response to Influx of Central American Migrants at the Southwest Border", The White House Office of the Press Secretary, August 1, 2014.
35 Scott Johnson, "Busy 'Pipeline' Migrant Route Makes Texas Town Hub for Human Smuggling, Easy highway access and a frontier lawlessness has transformed Falfurrias", National Geographic, August 10, 2014.
36 Steve Inskeep, "The Rarely Told Stories Of Sexual Assault Against Female Migrants", transcript, National Public Radio, March 23, 2014.
40 "Forced to Flee Central America's Northern Triangle, A Neglected Humanitarian Crisis", Doctors Without Borders, May 2017.
43 "Declining Deportations and Increasing Criminal Alien Releases – The Lawless Immigration Policies of the Obama Administration", Hearing Before the House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, 115th Cong. (2016), statement of Ronald Vitiello, U.S. Border Patrol acting chief.
44 Andrew Arthur, "Border Patrol's Expensive New Mission", Center for Immigration Studies, February 10, 2019.
45 "Unaccompanied Children, Agency Efforts to Reunify Children Separated from Parents at the Border", (GAO-19-163), Government Accountability Office, October 2018, at 7.
49 Homeland Security Act of 2002, Pub. L. 107-296 (2002), § 462.
50 6 U.S.C. § 279 (2019).
52 Flores v. Reno, Stipulated Settlement Agreement.
53 "The Flores Settlement: A Brief History and Next Steps", Human Rights First, February 19, 2016.
54 Flores v. Lynch, 828 F. 3d 898 (9th Cir. 2016).
56 "Unaccompanied Alien Children and Family Units Are Flooding the Border Because of Catch and Release Loopholes", U.S. Department of Homeland Security, February 15, 2018.
58 See Andrew Arthur, "Fake Family Units at the Border", Center for Immigration Studies, February 15, 2019.
60 See William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, §235, Pub. L. 110-457 (2008).
62 Id. § 235(a)(2), 8 U.S.C. § 1232(a)(2).
63 Id. at §§ 235(a)(3) and (b), 8 U.S.C. §§ 1232(a)(3) and (b).
64 Id. at § 235(c)(2), 8 U.S.C. § 1232(c)(2).
66 "Facts and Data, General Statistics", Office of Refugee Resettlement, February 13, 2019.
67 "Unaccompanied Alien Children Program", fact sheet, Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, December 2018.
68 William A. Kandel, "Unaccompanied Alien Children: An Overview", Congressional Research Service, January 18, 2017, at 8.
74 "Unaccompanied Alien Children Program", fact sheet, Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, December 2018.
81 "Facts and Data, General Statistics", Office of Refugee Resettlement, February 13, 2019.
82 John Burnett, "Lawsuits Allege 'Grave Harm' To Immigrant Children In Detention", NPR, January 24, 2019.
83 E.J. Montini, "The feds lost — yes, lost — 1,475 migrant children", USA Today, May 25, 2018.
85 Andrew Arthur, "The Last Word on 1,475 'Lost' Children: They're not lost, and releasing more will simply encourage more to come", Center for Immigration Studies, June 1, 2018.
87 Abbie VanSickle, "Overwhelmed federal officials released immigrant teens to traffickers in 2014", The Washington Post, January 26, 2016.
88 See "Oversight of HHS and DHS Efforts to Protect Unaccompanied Alien Children from Human Trafficking and Abuse", Hearing Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 115th Cong. (2018), statement of Steven Wagner, acting assistant secretary, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, at 6.
89 Section 235(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b).
90 Hillel R. Smith, "An Overview of U.S. Immigration Laws Regulating the Admission and Exclusion of Aliens at the Border", Congressional Research Service, November 27, 2018.
91 "Unaccompanied Alien Child (UAC) In Absentia Removal Orders", Executive Office for Immigration Review, October 24, 2018.
92 "Total Unaccompanied Alien Children (0-17 Years Old) Apprehensions By Month - FY 2010", United States Border Patrol, undated.
93 "Southwest Border Migration FY2018", U.S. Customs and Border Protection, November 9, 2018.
94 "Comparison of in absentia rates", Executive Office for Immigration Review, October 24, 2018.
95 Joseph J. Kolb, "Implementation of a Law to Protect Trafficking Victims Has Become a Public Safety Issue", Center for Immigration Studies, November 3, 2016.
96 William A. Kandel, "Unaccompanied Alien Children: An Overview", Congressional Research Service, January 18, 2017, at 10 n.51.
97 U.S. v. Nava-Martinez, Crim. No. B-13-441-1 (S.D. Tex. December 13, 2013).
99 H.R.J. Res. 31, § 224,116th Cong. (2019).
100 "Facts and Data, General Statistics", Office of Refugee Resettlement, February 13, 2019.
101 See "Oversight of HHS and DHS Efforts to Protect Unaccompanied Alien Children from Human Trafficking and Abuse", Hearing Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 115th Cong. (2018), statement of Steven Wagner, acting assistant secretary, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, at 7.
106 6 U.S.C. § 279 (2019).
107 William A. Kandel, "Unaccompanied Alien Children: An Overview", Congressional Research Service, January 18, 2017, at 1 n. 8.
108 See 8 C.F.R. § 236.3(b)(1) , (release of juveniles).
109 "Antideficiency Act Resources", Government Accountability Office, undated.
110 Matthew Sussis, "No Relationship Between Homicide Rates in Central America and Illegal Border Crossings", Center for Immigration Studies, March 4, 2019.
113 See Andrew Arthur, "Looking for Push Factors in Central America: The pull factors are likely stronger, but at least CBP is trying", Center for Immigration Studies, October 18, 2018.
114 Andrew Arthur, "Humanitarian and National Security Disaster at the Border: A Congress-and court-caused Katrina", Center for Immigration Studies, March 8, 2019.

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