About 211 per day – that’s how many unaccompanied alien children the federal government released to relatives and friends throughout American communities during the month of January.
It’s also the month that saw the end of the amnesty-affirming Obama administration and the ushering in of President Donald Trump, who promised throughout his campaign to bolster U.S. border security, boost interior immigration enforcement and end the revolving door of illegal immigration in America.
But, as expected, that trend certainly didn’t start right away.
According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the executive branch, still under former President Obama throughout the bulk of the month, released another 6,551 illegal alien children to sponsors throughout the country in January. While notably fewer than the 7,686 illegal alien kids Obama released in December, that’s still a pretty hefty sum.
To recap, a total of 26,911 children have been apprehended, processed and released to sponsors (typically relatives also living here illegally) since October, the start of the current fiscal year.
Only time will tell whether the steady flow of unaccompanied children being caught at the border and released into American communities will continue. Border crossings dropped by nearly 30 percent in the month of January, an annual trend that also regularly occurred during the Obama era. However, the Trump administration has already taken strong measures to decrease the continual flow of illegal immigration, including authorizing future construction on a border wall and increasing the number of agents along the Southwest border.
Trump’s recent slew of executive orders on immigration also effectively scraps the previous Obama administration’s method of dealing with children who cross the border without a parent or guardian, only to be sent to family members already living here. Instead, the Trump administration said they will process minors in accordance with current federal immigration law, which defines an “unaccompanied minor” as a child who doesn’t have a parent or guardian already living in the United States.