Just before election, Obama doubles down on illegal immigrant fly-in program

In an attempt to curb the ongoing surge of Central American illegal aliens crossing over our southern border, the Obama DHS yesterday announced the dramatic expansion of a 2014 program that puts so-called “refugees” from high-crime regions onto commercial airliners and brings them here directly to live and work. The initial surge, first reported on over the summer of 2014 and involving mostly unaccompanied alien minors (UAM) from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, caused outrage among the American public after apprehended minors began telling border patrol agents they were lured into making the dangerous journey by Obama’s apparent promise of amnesty—Indeed, statistics show the surge starting directly after his 2012 DACA decree which granted self-described “dreamers” deportation deferrals and work permits.

At the time, the embarrassed Obama Administration’s reaction was twofold (although neither involved actual enforcement of our immigration laws): 1) characterize the minors as “refugees” who were escaping a “surge” of drug-related violence back home; and 2) bring down the surge-figures by simply saving the minors the dangerous trip (and smuggler’s fees) and fly them here directly. It’s that strategy which Obama’s implementing again, but this time on a bigger scale.

{mosads}Just like before with its 2014 predecessor, the In-Country Refugee/Parole for Central American Minors program (or “CAM” for short), DHS’s new announcement is slathered with mentions of the “vulnerable residents” of Central America whom will be screened and interviewed by agency staff for “refugee status” before being flown in from abroad. But according to internal DHS documents recently obtained by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), denial rates for refugee-status under the 2014 CAM program have been around 90 percent. This only makes sense given the actual definition of “refugee.” Under U.S. immigration law, only those who face persecution on account of “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” can be admitted into the country as a refugee. It does not cover those fleeing from “high-crime” regions of the world like Central America. Of the thousands who’ve come here under the old CAM program, almost 9 out of 10 have been ‘paroled’ into the country under a dramatic expansion of DHS’s once dormant “humanitarian parole” authority.

So if Obama’s DHS officials know most UAMs will get rejected from CAM under US refugee law, why are they bothering? Why not just refer to CAM as solely a parole program? It’s likely the political usefulness of the word “refugee” itself. The emotive term fulfils the crucial element of emotional blackmail which the president is always eager to employ when imposing his open-borders experiment on the American people.

Other documents IRLI’s obtained also disrupt DHS-optics. Again, as with the 2014 CAM program, the announcement of the new expansion assures that only “lawfully-present parents” are able to “request refugee status” for their minor children (and now, following the changes, their adult children and even the “caregivers” of their children). But IRLI’s documents show a whopping 91 percent of CAM-applicants (that is, those already residing in the US who’ve filed an ‘Affidavit of Relationship’ with a CAM-minor) are in the country under Temporary Protected Status (TPS): a program whereby the DHS Secretary can defer deportation of those whose homelands have been plagued by war or natural disaster. To stress, these are temporarily present and otherwise removeable aliens; not exactly the “lawfully-present” individuals the American public would think of when they read DHS’s press release. And more fundamentally, why are temporarily present aliens bringing their kids (and now their kids’ “caregivers”) into the country in the first place? Under TPS, once the problem in their home countries subsists, they’re supposed to return home.

Once again, we see President Obama trying to deflect the effects of a disastrous policy (i.e. DACA and its resulting UAM-surge) and then make it worse by attempting to hoodwink the public. If his latest move isn’t stopped in the courts or by Congress, the abuse and insults against the American citizenry will only continue.