WASHINGTON – The White House toughened its stance on the situation created by the massive arrival of unaccompanied and undocumented Central American children along the U.S. southern border, saying that “most” of them do not meet the requirements to be allowed to remain in the country for humanitarian reasons and will be deported.“Based on what we know about these cases, it is unlikely that most of these kids will qualify for humanitarian relief... and what that means is, it means that they will not have a legal basis for remaining in this country and will be returned,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a press conference.
To date, the Barack Obama administration had only said that undocumented minors who reach this country will be submitted to a deportation process, but the immigration court makes each decision case by case and considers the risks each might run upon returning to their country of origin.
The U.S. government on Tuesday will send Congress its definitive plan for speeding up deportation of undocumented Central American children who come to this country, most of them from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Various media estimate the supplementary emergency budget that Obama will ask Congress to approve in order to deal with the border situation will come to about $2 billion.
In addition, Obama will ask that more authority be granted to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to accelerate the process of deporting the minors, who are currently being housed in federal shelters or with relatives while they await the processing of their cases.
According to government data, some 90 unaccompanied children and teenagers cross the U.S.-Mexico border every day, and some 52,000 have been detained in the last nine months, a figure that could climb to 100,000 by the end of the year.
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