The Department of Health and Human Services has written in a letter to Sen. Patty Murray that it plans to “reallocate” up to $266 Million in FY 2018 to funding for the Unaccompanied Alien Children program. Included in the “reallocation” are reductions to the National Institutes of Health and refugee resettlement programs.
So far this month, discharges from custody have been running at a rate of around 0.6 to 0.7 percent per day, less than half the 1.5 percent shown in reports obtained by Yahoo News from early April and from late July. Meanwhile the intake of unaccompanied immigrant children into ORR facilities has remained relatively steady, with average daily referrals from Customs and Border Protection in the range of 100 to 200.
“This is not a story about a historically large surge in arrivals,” said Mark Greenberg, a former official with HHS’s Administration for Children and Families. “The story is fundamentally about a significant slowdown in children being released from care.”
So, the Trump Administration puts into place a program that falls most harshly on children and, when called to task, it takes the money from other social programs.
Are we surprised?
No, we are not surprised.
This administration's fundamental goal seems to be to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted.
It has a second fundamental goal, which was stated in Trump's campaign slogan, as understood non-euphemistically: Make America White Again.
Department of Ill Health and Human Disservices.