For the past two decades, an office within the Department of Health and Human Services has supervised children who cross the border without a parent or legal guardian. The government handed this duty to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, not its immigration enforcement agency, underscoring that the process shouldn’t be punitive but instead is meant to help safely place children with sponsors living in the United States.
That wall eroded during President Donald Trump’s first administration, when the ORR began to share identifying information about unaccompanied children and their potential sponsors with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, presaging a wave of arrests. Congress put limits on this sharing and President Joe Biden stopped the practice — but a new hire in Trump’s second administration has advocates and experts worried the separation between the agencies is once again breaking down.
Mellissa Harper, a veteran immigration enforcement officer at ICE, has been tapped to lead the ORR, according to three current and former government officials, and oversee the care of unaccompanied migrant children. The officials requested anonymity to discuss government operations. Her position is a federal detail, according to a federal employee directory, which allows career government employees to transfer between agencies for temporary roles.
All this immigrant stuff, all it does is make people hate America and fuels the human trafficking scene. The Republicans have installed a faucet to streamline the capturing and abuse of migrant children. Think about it. If you are smuggling people across the border, people without any other options, when we have such harsh penalties all it does is give cartels more leverage over people. It’s so horrible.
“triggering alarms” eh. The bbc yesterday used something like that yesterday; “raising concern” “sounding alarm” something like that. The Guardian used “Elon’s controversial salute”.
Headline writers: Stop. It’s not working. (Propublica, bless you, please don’t take this the wrong way, it’s more about corporate news but since you’ve used it as well . . )
We all went through four years of “raising alarms” and “very concerned” and “may be planning” and “seems to” in the headlines. Just stop. We’re not doing that now. If you want to crank out sludge and bland oatmeal for the sake of living another day, fine. But it’s not helping anyone but yourselves.
Say what it is. Use simple words, and don’t waffle. If you can’t say “Nazi” for some reason, find useful substitutes for it. "Contrary to common sense’ for example.