Will he also call up the National Guard to babysit?
Via Boston Globe
Governor Deval Patrick provided new details Thursday about a federal request to house some of the migrant children crossing the US border, saying he has asked officials to find a location for several hundred Central American children for about four months.
A day after lending his support for a temporary facility, Patrick said the shelter would be secure “without being a jail,” administered by the US Department of Health and Human Services, and allow immigration officials to hold processing hearings for the children.
Camp Edwards, part of an expansive military reservation on Cape Cod that took in evacuees from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, is under consideration.
“It bears remembering they’re children and they’re alone,” Patrick said. “I think we are the kind of country, and the kind of Commonwealth, who can step up.”
Immigration advocates hailed Patrick’s plan to host the children, but Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson joined other critics in denouncing the idea as a drain on public resources. Some cities and states, such as Connecticut, have rejected calls to take in the migrants.
Patrick’s willingness to respond to what he called a “humanitarian crisis” was backed by the leading Republican and three Democratic candidates running for governor and other state officials, but met with criticism from some immigration opponents and the ranking Republican in the Massachusetts House, in addition to the Bristol sheriff.
Hodgson suggested it would encourage illegal immigration.
“It’s a nonstop flow of people because they know if they get in, they can stay,” he said.
Well over 50,000 unaccompanied minors — most from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — have been taken into custody after illegally crossing the border since last fall. The federal government expects to receive at least 60,000 such children this year, compared with fewer than 14,000 in 2012.