Tag: Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service

Montgomery County Maryland Plans to ‘Welcome’ up to 3,000 Unaccompanied Alien Children This Year

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 4 Comments

But, they are not alone and likely some of the other top ‘welcoming’ counties in America will see numbers higher than that.

How many UACs is your county getting? https://www.breitbart.com/border/2019/01/12/dhs-two-ny-ms-13-stabbing-suspects-exploited-unaccompanied-minor-loophole-to-enter-u-s/

See the data maintained by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and note that MoCo, although among the highest counties that will absorb the illegal alien teens, is not the highest.

And, by the way, the data at ORR is only through March and you know the April 2021 invasion is surely one of the largest in many years.

If you don’t see your county, it doesn’t mean your state is off the hook, state data is here.

‘Non-profit’ organizations in the county are scrambling for money they say they need to keep the mostly teenaged boys out of gangs.  

What a mess.  If you live in this wealthy Maryland County that borders Washington, DC, move!  But, first get your kids out of the school system which will see the disastrous impact of Biden’s Open Borders policy first.

LOL! the Biden gang has put out the word that Unaccompanied Alien Children, a title used for years, is now verboten and we must refer to the illegal aliens as Unaccompanied Minors.  So therefore, my message to you is to keep using the accurate term—Unaccompanied Alien Children.

From WUSA9:

As Montgomery County expects wave of unaccompanied minors, local nonprofit works to expand capacity

There have been at least 104 undocumented migrant children resettled with family or sponsors in Montgomery County since October, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. However, the latest data is from February which likely means many more children have already relocated to the county.

As of late April, Montgomery County Public Schools recorded 70 students are believed to be unaccompanied minors. Officials expect 3,000 undocumented children to reach the county by this year or as early as summer.

The federal data base shows that Montgomery County received 178 UACs through the end of March, so if 70 registered for school, where are the other 108?  And, why is the database not up to date?

The Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services (MCHHS) is partnered with eight organizations: Identity, Inc., Family Services, Inc., CASA, Mary’s Center, Impact Silver Spring, Catholic Charities, LAYC (Latin American Youth Council) and Ayuda.

About eight or so years ago, I posted often about CASA, see here if you are interested.

The county had planned to call FEMA and the Office of Refugee Resettlement for federal funding since it’s one of the top 10 receiving sites for asylum-seeking children.

“The call took place but there were no commitments from FEMA about funding,” a MCHHS spokesperson said.

One of the major concerns to avoid is the involvement of gangs.

Community leaders know gangs are preparing themselves to recruit many of the young people as members offer what could seem like a family environment.

[….]

A Montgomery County police spokesperson said the department is working with the Department of Health and Human Services to address gang preventative measures for all undocumented minors.

[….]

In Virginia, there have been 119 resettlements in Fairfax County.

The sponsors who help happen at the federal level. The Office of Refugee Resettlement works with organizations such as Bethany Christian Services & Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Services on sponsoring children. These organizations previously are certified and licensed at the federal level.

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, headquartered at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, is a federal refugee contractor which I write about often at RRW.  The UACs, however, are NOT refugees, remember that!

Two Major Refugee Contractors Receive Millions to Move Illegal Aliens from the Border to Interior US

$55 million is their take (of your money) for the children! over the last twelve months.

 

P.S. Maryland Republican Governor Hogan is apparently not saying a word about the ‘children’ flooding into the state for taxpayers to support. Twenty other governors are saying NO, even as the federal government ignores them.

Unaccompanied Alien Children Taking Spaces from American Kids in Foster Care

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 3 Comments

But, at least in some states Republican governors are saying NO!

“I do not want our kids harmed as the result of President Biden’s bad policies.”

(Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts)

One Republican Governor who apparently doesn’t mind helping Biden out of the border crisis mess is never-Trumper and Jeb Bush pal Republican Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland.

MD Republican Gov Larry Hogan apparently okay with UACs taking Maryland foster care slots.

Or, does he even know that an organization in our state, which received $55 million in the last 12 months from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement specifically to care for the UAC kids, is using Maryland’s foster care system to place the mostly teenaged ‘children’ (who have so-far found no relative in America willing to take them) into Maryland homes?

Makes me wonder what Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is doing with $55 million (75% of their federal boodle) that is for the children if they are simply placing them in other taxpayer-funded foster care as this news at CBS suggests.

From CBS Baltimore:

For months now, we’ve seen images of federal facilities packed with thousands of unaccompanied minors at a time when there are a record number of children reaching the southern border, most coming from Central America. The sheer volume of children is overwhelming the federal government’s resources with thousands of children packed into facilities never meant to handle this amount.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, LIRS CEO previously was a candidate for governor of Maryland and before that she worked for Michelle in the White House.

But one Baltimore based organization, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, is working to move kids out of those facilities and into the homes of families eager to help.

[….]

“Our focus is getting these children out of Customs and Border Protection facilities,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah***, CEO of LIRS.

[….]

LIRS pairs kids with foster families across the country, including dozens here in Maryland.

[….]

But in the meantime, Vignarajah says the need is still great as the children continue to arrive at the southern border. “We have seen unprecedented numbers of children coming across the border and so we need more parents than ever before and so if anyone out there is willing to open up their home and hearts, these children could use their care,” she said.

More here.

Other state leaders ARE putting American children first!

From Pew Trusts:

(Just so you know, until a few short weeks about the ‘children’ illegally crossing our borders were referred to as Unaccompanied Alien Children, however a Biden administration edict now directs all media to refer to them as Unaccompanied Migrant Children, or simply Unaccompanied Children! Here Pew does what they are told!)

Republican Governors Block Unaccompanied Migrant Children

FORT WORTH, Texas — The federal foster care system was unprepared to house the record nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children who came to the United States in March, so the Biden administration asked some states to temporarily house them.

Republican governors in Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming said no.

“This is not our problem,” said Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds. “This is the president’s problem. He’s the one that has opened the border and he needs to be responsible for this and he needs to stop it.”

The governors claim that unaccompanied children would displace those already in state foster care or limit states’ ability to make new placements.

“Nebraska is declining their request because we are reserving our resources for serving our kids,” Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts said in an April 13 news release. “I do not want our kids harmed as the result of President Biden’s bad policies.”

 

Who is paying?

But federal officials note that care providers for unaccompanied children are paid via federal grants and operate separately from state child welfare systems.

Is LIRS paying the families directly out of their federal payola?  If so, they need to explain it!  And, explain who is monitoring the care the illegal alien kids are getting once placed in foster care homes.

Of course as Pew admits there are still costs to state taxpayers:

Caring for unaccompanied children does require some limited state resources, because states license and monitor foster care providers contracted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency in charge of housing unaccompanied minors.

However, there currently are no federally funded foster care providers for unaccompanied minors in any of the five states where Republican governors have expressed concerns, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services records analyzed by Stateline show.

Pew goes on and on consuming many column inches on the subject of bed space and how much, or how little, Trump left us with when the Dems stole the 2020 election.

Contractor middlemen….

Pew reports something we already knew (at least for LIRS and the USCCB).

Foster care providers who care for unaccompanied children include the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, BCFS Health and Human Services, Upbring, and Urban Strategies.

But, still unclear is how does this contract system work? And, why are middlemen even necessary?  Couldn’t the feds just send money directly to state agencies willing to participate?

I wondered where Endeavors is in all of this? That is another give-or-take $500 million for housing the ‘children.’

There is much more at Pew.

I guess we can conclude that our tax dollars (to care for the illegal alien kids) go through a bunch of contractor middlemen masquerading as non-profits (skimming off generous salaries and office overhead) as they go about looking for states willing to put unaccompanied alien children into their state’s foster care system thereby displacing needy American kids.

As I have been saying all along, federal refugee contractors put Americans Last!

Is that what your governor is doing as well?

 

*** I just had a look at a recent IRS Form 990 for LIRS, and Vignarajah is pulling down an annual salary and benefits package of a quarter of a million (apparently a pay cut from the previous CEO who left under a cloud).

Since LIRS is about 87% federally funded, they are a fake non-profit.  LOL! You can be assured that this ‘religious’ federal contractor is not passing the plate on Sundays to pay for their ‘charitable’ work.

See this post I wrote a year ago at RRW about Krish and her hubby, the Washington DC Leftie power couple, working another angle—we must welcome more migrants of all stripes due to global warming!

And, somehow that is going to help America’s wildlife and our great outdoor spaces—say what?

Refugee Advocates Join Forces with Major National Wildlife Protection Group

 

 

Evangelical Lutheran Church Declares Itself a Sanctuary Church, First in Nation

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 5 Comments

Here is one version of the news this week.  Notice they work closely with Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service*** which is almost completely federally funded.

It appears that these Lutherans have run out of poor and homeless AMERICANS in need of Christian charity.

Screenshot (1064)

Evangelical Lutheran Church Declares Itself a Sanctuary Denomination

 

MILWAUKEE, Aug. 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), today at the 2019 ELCA Churchwide Assembly declared itself a Sanctuary Denomination, dedicated to serving and supporting the protection of migrants in communities nationwide. The ELCA is the first mainstream church body in America to declare itself a sanctuary denomination. The movement was spearheaded by the Metropolitan New York Synod (MNYS), one of the 65 synods of the ELCA.

“Christians have offered sanctuary for two thousand years, continuing an ancient biblical practice in which cities and houses of worship provided refuge and asylum for people fleeing injustice,” stated Christopher Vergara, who serves as chairperson of MNYS’s AMMPARO/Sanctuary Ministry. “Beginning in the 1980s, the Sanctuary Movement was a faith-based initiative to protect Central American refugees fleeing civil war and seeking safety in the United States. Today, the New Sanctuary Movement is a revived effort to protect undocumented migrants from needless jailing procedures and deportation, and to address the dire situation within the Department of Health and Human Services that has resulted in the stripping of services to refugees and unaccompanied children.”

By its vote, the ELCA Churchwide Assembly deemed that sanctuary means not only provision of shelter but also:

A response to raids, detentions, deportations, and the criminalization of immigrants and refugees;

A strategy to fight individual cases of deportation, to advocate for an end of mass detention, and to amplify immigrant voices;

A vision for what communities and the world can be; and

A moral imperative to take prophetic action of radical hospitality rooted in the ancient traditions of our faith communities.

[….]
Working locally with organizations like Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Lutheran Social Services, The New Sanctuary Coalition, The New York Immigration Coalition, and the ELCA’s AMMPARO program, the MNYS has created a network of sanctuary congregations ready to help protect refugees and undocumented people from arrest and deportation.The pillars of the program lie in education, advocacy, and awareness.

This post is filed in my ‘Charity fraud’ category.
*** You should be making it clear to elected officials that any ‘charity’ receiving federal funding should be disqualified from receiving federal grants and contracts if it participates in breaking federal law!

Michelle Malkin Calls Out Lutheran Refugee Contractor as Anti-Trump Political Agitator

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 7 Comments

“Will a single American elected official please stand up and challenge the continued public funding of this subversive religious racket?”

(Michelle Malkin)

 
Refugee Resettlement Watch may be down temporarily, but thankfully patriots with bigger megaphones have taken up the call to educate Americans about the supposedly ‘religious’ charities that live off of us—taxpayers—in order to promote an Open Borders agenda.
michellemalkin
Thanks to reader Richard for tipping me off to Michelle Malkin’s recent column about Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service‘s leading role as an anti-Trump community agitation group (while they collect millions in federal grants and contracts from the Trump Administration)!
Continue reading “Michelle Malkin Calls Out Lutheran Refugee Contractor as Anti-Trump Political Agitator” →