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‘Ghost criminals’: How Venezuelan gang members are slipping into the U.S.Cases linked to Tren de Aragua, including sex trafficking and a shooting, show how hard it is for border agents to vet migrants from nations that won't provide criminal background info. June 12, 2024, 5:30 AM CDT By Laura Strickler, Julia Ainsley, Didi Martinez and Tom Winter U.S. law enforcement and immigration officials have launched more than 100 investigations of crimes tied to suspected members of a violent Venezuelan gang, including sex trafficking in Louisiana and the point-blank shooting of two New York City police officers, according to two Department of Homeland Security officials. The cases involving the Tren de Aragua gang show how hard it is for U.S. border agents to vet the criminal backgrounds of migrants from countries like Venezuela that won’t give the U.S. any help. More than 330,000 Venezuelans crossed the U.S. border last year, according to Customs and Border Protection data, and Venezuela, like Cuba, China and a handful of other countries, doesn’t provide any criminal history information to U.S. officials. In the June 3 New York shooting, which both police officers survived, the alleged shooter had been encountered by the U.S. Border Patrol after having crossed into Texas illegally, according to New York police. He was then released into the U.S. to await an asylum hearing. It’s unclear whether his alleged affiliation with Tren de Aragua was known to Venezuelan authorities. Even if it was, that information wouldn’t have been available to the Border Patrol. As former Border Patrol agent Ammon Blair told NBC News, unless agents get a Venezuelan migrant’s criminal history from Interpol or “they already have a criminal record inside the United States, we won’t know who they are.” The NYPD calls them “ghost criminals,” with little to identify them except gang tattoos. “Their identity may be misrepresented; their date of birth may be misrepresented,” said Jason Savino, assistant chief of detectives for the NYPD. “Everything about that individual could potentially be misrepresented.” A surge of VenezuelansDuring the Trump administration, border officials encountered about 3 million undocumented people crossing into the U.S. Though a breakdown by country of origin isn’t available for those years, the migrants tended to come from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico, all of which share law enforcement data with the U.S.
19,000 unaccompanied migrant children have come to Tenn. since 2015; most ended up with familyBY: ADAM FRIEDMAN - JUNE 11, 2024 5:00 AM Almost 19,000 unaccompanied migrant children have crossed the United States border and ended up in Tennessee since 2015. Most of the children coming to the state have been placed with family members like a parent or sibling, with a vast majority arriving since the coronavirus pandemic. The placement of unaccompanied migrant children made headlines in Tennessee three years ago when news reports emerged of the abuse of some of the children placed in a Chattanooga facility. There were also news reports of a late-night flight to Chattanooga transporting children to Tennessee around the same time, prompting many state Republican leaders to express concern over the lack of transparency from the federal government about the children’s presence. The unaccompanied children have ended in many of the state’s counties, but slightly less than half have ended up in the two Middle Tennessee counties home to Nashville (6,926 children) and Murfreesboro (1,112).
Congress Examines the Tangible and Intangible Costs of Illegal Immigration to American SchoolchildrenJune 10, 2024 FAIR Take | June 2024 The issue of mass illegal immigration has risen to the top of Americans’ list of concerns, and for good reason: It impacts every aspect of life in this country. One of those areas — that often falls under the radar – is the impact it is having on American schoolchildren. Last week, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing to examine both the tangible costs of mass illegal immigration on American schools and the intangible – but no less important – impact it is having on the quality of the education. “Wreaking havoc,” was the succinct and disturbing conclusion of Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.), who chairs the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education. Rep. Bean estimates that about 500,000 school-age children have entered the United States illegally since President Biden took office and, presumably, are in classrooms all across the country. But shockingly, even the U.S. Department of Education cannot provide a firm number. Under questioning at another hearing in early May, Secretary Miguel Cardona could not provide concrete numbers. Nor would Cardona say whether there is a point at which the Biden administration would agree that the numbers exceed our educational system’s ability to manage the influx. Under a 1982 Supreme Court ruling, Plyler v. Doe, local schools are obligated to provide illegal alien children with a taxpayer-funded K-12 education. The cost is staggering. According to a 2022 FAIR report, the price tag for educating children of illegal aliens was $70.8 billion a year. The report examined data from 2020, which pre-dated the unprecedented surge of illegal immigration that began when President Biden took office in 2021. Based on Rep. Bean’s estimate of 500,000 new illegal aliens in U.S. public schools and the average per-child cost in a U.S. public school, the recent influx has added at least $9.7 billion in new costs to taxpayers. The committee heard from educators from all across the United States, all of whom reported that their school systems cannot provide the resources necessary to meet the needs of the illegal alien children, much less those of their American classmates. School officials told the committee that they cannot even prepare for the new burdens that are being heaped upon them, as newly arriving illegal aliens often “show up overnight.” Predictably, educators from sanctuary jurisdictions complained about lack of federal funding, but money alone cannot magically produce new teachers, administrators and service providers, proficient in dozens of languages, to meet the needs of kids showing up from all across the globe. Nowhere in the country is the impact being felt more acutely than in New York City, where the per-student cost for the school year just ending was about $38,000. The city had to accommodate 21,000 new migrant students when the school year began last September (a figure that continues to grow as new illegal aliens show up), adding about $800 million to the tab.
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