The man who heads the federal agency responsible for many of the 50,000 unaccompanied alien children from Central America who have entered the U.S. illegally in recent months told attendees at a conference on Tuesday that those working with refugees should look to Jesus Christ as a role model.
“Jesus was a refugee, and that’s a very good reminder to all of us,” Eskinder Negash, director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), said at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) 2014 Migration Conference in Washington, D.C.
In the case of unaccompanied alien children, U.S. law requires that those who do not come from a contiguous country, i.e. Mexico or Canada, be transferred to the custody of ORR where they will be reunited with family or placed elsewhere until deportation proceedings can be completed.