100 Refugee Kids Rescued From Clint, Texas, Turned Around And Sent Back To Clint, Texas

Also, the Border Protection commissioner got shitcanned.

The news is coming at us so fast we have to double up stories -- like little children being crammed into border detention cells without enough blankets for everyone, that is what it is like. Tuesday, we learned Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders, who has only been in the job for two months, will resign effective July 5, and will be replaced by current Acting ICE Director Mark Morgan.

The news of Sanders's resignation came by pure coincidence just hours after a CBP official told the Washington Post that 100 children would be returned to a Border Patrol detention facility in Clint, Texas; this was quite a surprise given that CBP had rushed to get over 300 kids out of that same border jail starting Monday, after lawyers reported the kids were filthy and poorly fed, and that the care of very young children had been left to slightly older kids -- like seven and eight years old. Probably just a coincidence that Sanders is deserting ship just as the news is full of just how horrible those baby jails were -- in this administration, that's something to be proud of.

Sanders was appointed to the acting CBP post in April, after then-commissioner Kevin McAleenan was made acting Secretary of Homeland Security. McAleenan replaced Kirstjen Nielsen, who was shitcanned for not being actively cruel enough. Sanders's departure is just the latest in a Homeland Security department that's been shedding top bureaucrats like parts flying off that '79 Ford Granada you got for $200 in college. On a gravel road. And the gravel road is Stephen Miller, maybe, according to the Post:  

The move to install Morgan at CBP appeared to be a victory for senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller, whose attempt to make the same move last month was blocked by Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who picked Sanders for the CBP job.

  The Post notes that Morgan met earlier Tuesday with senior CBP leaders, which "fueled speculation that Sanders was removed to clear a path for Morgan to take over at CBP."

Well so much for our pet theory that Sanders would follow in the footsteps of John Kelly, and take a lucrative offer to go profit off the appalling "care" of small children in the private sector. Still, he's probably qualified to run a daycare in Arkansas .

In what now appears to be unrelated news, WaPo reported earlier Tuesday that 100 children who had been removed from the unsanitary Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas, will be sent right back there, because there's no room for them in the baby jails run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. If it helps any, a CBP official said those darn lawyers are just lying their heads off about having seen filthy children who hadn't showered in weeks.

[The] official disputed the allegations Tuesday morning, arguing that the child detainees in its custody receive "continuous" access to hygiene products and adequate food while awaiting placement in U.S. shelters designed for children. The official said that the agency was working closely with the Department of Health and Human Services to move the unaccompanied children to appropriate shelters and that it had cut the number held in Border Patrol facilities from 2,600 to less than 1,000 in the past week.

That same official was the source for the information that 100 kids were headed straight back to Clint Tuesday "because of a lack of bed space in US shelters and not enough funding to expand facilities for children," so we're almost ready to wonder if they ever left in the first place. As for the specific claims by the lawyers, nothing could be farther from the truth, said the official:

"All of the allegations of civil rights mistreatment are taken seriously," the official said, noting that children receive hygiene products and food, including new clothing, hand sanitizer, soap, and water that are "continuously available." Showers are available every three days, or more frequently, when the number of detainees falls to a more manageable level, the official said.

We guess the lawyers, who interviewed more than 50 of the children held at Clint, must have been hallucinating, then. Or maybe the kids were all lying, just like their parents who claim they're fleeing gangs and murders in their home countries. We bet Fox News will explain all this real soon. Since there were never any problems at Clint, the kids being sent back is obviously nothing to worry about.

Oh, just one more thing, we ask the CBP official, our rumpled raincoat making us look deceptively ridiculous. It's probably nothing, but if there were no problems in that facility, why did you hurry to remove all 300 kids in the space of one day? Just wondering.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar, whose agency includes ORR, cried yesterday that HHS has all the kids it can handle, this is not his fault, poor him.

Azar told reporters at the White House on Monday that Congress must approve the emergency funding now because the agency has no more capacity to hold children, despite the fact that federal officials said earlier this month they are planning to open three emergency shelters to house approximately 3,000 to 4,000 children, two on military bases and one at a facility in South Texas.

"We are full right now. We are full," Azar said. "We do not have capacity for more of these unaccompanied children who come across the border. And what happens is they get backed up there at the Department of Homeland Security's facilities because I can't put someone in a bed that does not exist in our shelters."

In conclusion, everything is fine and if Congress will just vote to build WALL, and end asylum, and perhaps be more polite to Mr. Trump, America's protector, none of this would happen in the first place, the end.

The new acting commissioner of Border Patrol was unavailable for comment, having just exploded during a drum solo / been choked to death by Darth Vader / been named White House Communications director.

[ WaPo / WaPo ]

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