On Monday, Oklahoma Republican Governor Mary Fallin called on President Barack Obama to end the secrecy surrounding the transfer of illegal immigrant juveniles to states across the country and accused the Obama administration of intentionally burdening states to use their limited resources to care for illegal immigrants.
“Provided these reports are true – and I have no reason to believe they are not – your administration appears to be pursuing a course that actively shifts the costs of Washington’s failed immigration policies onto our states,” she wrote in a letter to Obama. “You are intentionally placing a greater burden on our already over-burdened education and health care systems. Even more disturbing, the federal government appears to have gone to great lengths to distract and confuse the public from discerning the true nature of these policies.”
The Obama administration, which had vowed to be the most transparent in history, has released more than 30,000 illegal immigrants to sponsors around the country this year. Governors of states like Arizona, Nebraska, Tennessee, Maine, Idaho, and Oklahoma have complained that they were never even informed before illegal immigrants were dumped in their states.
Fallin noted that “more than 1200 illegal immigrants have been held at Fort Sill” military base and many will “never be deported and will remain in the United States.” She also noted that “at least 212 illegal immigrant children have already been placed with sponsors in Oklahoma where they are eligible under federal law to attend public school and receive emergency health services.” She demanded “an explanation for my constituents as to why the policy of your administration is to ask the state of Oklahoma to indefinitely host a large population of illegal immigrants and to pay for their educational and health needs after they are released from Fort Sill.”
Six of the seven members of Oklahoma’s Congressional delegation recently urged the Obama administration, which plans to send an additional 5,000 illegal immigrants to Fort Sill military base, to reconsider using the base as a permanent facility for illegal immigrants. Housing illegal immigrants at the military base, they said, endangers national security and, in the words of Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), “is a very real threat to U.S. military readiness.”
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