California Social Services Requests Foster Families Take In Immigrant Children at Border
As the influx of immigrant children arriving at the border skyrockets each week, California government agencies are calling for foster families to step up and house additional children, a request that carries its own inherent problems.
The Community Care Licensing Division (CCLD), a division of California’s Department of Social Services sent out a voice message to foster parents, requesting immediate action.
The message, originally obtained byDailymail.com.:
‘Usually the maximum amount of children you are allowed to foster at any one time is six,’ said Travis Kall, who currently fosters two 4-month-old twins with his wife, Sharla, while also caring for their biological twins, aged 6.
The couple received an email with the option to choose how many children they are able to house, ranging anywhere from 1 to 26-plus.
“At any given point in time there are 30,000-plus children in the L.A. County foster care system alone,” Sharla said.
“So to ask us already certified foster parents to take on children from another country when we can barely take care of our own foster crisis doesn’t seem beneficial to either side because either way, someone loses a bed,” she added.
Travis and Sharla, who run an anti-human trafficking nonprofit, believe the children at the border are being tragically used for “a money scheme, and now they’re going to use us resource parents to take care of them.”
Likewise, chief counsel at ACLJ Jay Sekulow expresses his growing concern over the number of children subjected to human trafficking.
Did you know that over 100,000 unlawful immigrants are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border each month? Some children are being led to America by human traffickers. Pres. Biden must take responsibility & stop his policies that allow this crisis to grow. Read: https://t.co/4APAPmBDQh
— Jay Sekulow (@JaySekulow) March 25, 2021
“The Biden Administration has been an abject failure when it comes to ensuring the safety of unaccompanied minors who cross our border,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbot said in a statement. “President Biden’s refusal to address the border crisis is not only enabling criminal actors like human traffickers and smugglers, but it is exposing innocent unaccompanied children to illness and potentially unsafe living conditions.”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, along with a group of his fellow Republican senators who visited the border to gain firsthand views of the situation, calls the crisis “a humanitarian tragedy” but also an “insane policy” on the part of the Biden administration.
Last night at the US-Mexico border:
Migrants are not trying to avoid detection – they are trying to get caught.
There is a loophole in our law which incentives bringing 6 year old children with you to the border.
It’s a humanitarian tragedy…..and literally insane policy. pic.twitter.com/72HjwtnY2i
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 26, 2021
In response to the request for Americans to house the illegal immigrant children, CDSS released the following statement:
In the case of unaccompanied minor children who cross the border, responsibility for their care falls under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Should any unaccompanied minors in this situation be placed by the federal government in licensed children’s residential facilities or homes in California, our role at CDSS is to ensure licensed facilities meet California’s health and safety standards. In response to a request from HHS for an expedited effort to determine which licensed facilities may be willing to assist, CDSS sent out a survey to licensed homes. {eoa}
