Last-minute cancelations of two flights to southern California, each carrying 140 illegal immigrant children and family members, may only be temporary.
As public awareness grew and flight time grew near, U.S. Border Patrol has decided to cancel plans to fly the detainees from overcrowded detention centers in Texas to San Diego and El Centro to be processed.
Breitbart News previously reported that the flights of 300 being flown from Texas to California were commencing in an effort to relieve the overwhelmed Border Patrol agents. Agents and resources are stretched to the limit looking after overcrowded detention centers full of illegal aliens, many of them children, from Central America. That has left the border even more vulnerable, less patrolled and susceptible to breaches.
Numbers of those arrested for illegally crossing the border in the Rio Grande Valley alone are now at 174,000 since last October.
Ralph DeSio, spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection agency, said of the cancelations, “This whole thing is in a very fluid state” and “I’m not sure if the plans will be reactivated but, as we’re speaking here this moment, it has been canceled. Tomorrow is another day,” reported the Associated Press.
Border Patrol could decide to resume these flights after public outcry has calmed. Given that plans in place had the detainees being moved up to Murrieta, in Riverside County, for processing after landing in San Diego, citizens are watching to see if the agency changes airport destinations.
Border Patrol union spokesman Gabe Pacheco was quoted an the AP report saying, “It’s just a matter of time. They’ll do it when no one’s paying attention,” in reference to the resuming of illegal immigrant transfer flights.
About two dozen protestors in Murrieta showed up Sunday in opposition to the transfer, according to the Press Enterprise. They made their concerns known to U.S. Rep. Kevin Calvert (R-CA) last week. Calvert, on Sunday, denounced the planned transfer of detainees to the area, calling the plans outrageous and irresponsible due to the lack of preparation and equipping of facilities marked to process those transferred.
The city of Escondido, California has also been reported as looking at a public use permit that would allow an out of use local hospital to be repurposed “for Government Services to operate an “unaccompanied youth care facility serving minors between 6 and 17 years of age,”” according to of local residents Larry and Kitty Demry. The Demrys also note that the city would be expected to cover “financial costs of society issues that are a result of this detention center” that would reportedly process and house illegal immigrant youth.
Breitbart Texas editor Brandon Darby told Breitbart News Saturday, “The Obama administration has devised a plan to continuously shift holding areas for the children to avoid state or local Child Protective Services coming in to investigate them. So long as the children are housed on federal property such as military bases, the government can avoid scrutiny.”
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