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July 22, 2021 - Epoch Times

14:44

20K Kids Cross Border; Costing Taxpayers $60M/ Month to House Them | Facts Matter

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	Good evening.
	Two days ago, in addressing the crisis over at the US southern border, Joe Biden signed an executive memo, which, among several other things, prohibits federal agencies from using the term illegal alien.
	They now have to be referred to as undocumented non-citizens.
	Meanwhile, foster parents over in California are receiving automated emails as well as automated phone calls from the local agency over there asking whether they can house between 1 and 26 Central American children.
	And furthermore, in terms of the border, it's not only people that the customs agents are intercepting.
	In fact, just a few days ago, a shipment of over 170,000 fake masks from China were seized over in Texas.
	And lastly, a group of House Republicans is forming a new caucus that will focus on nationwide election reform, limiting the power of big tech, and cutting down on illegal immigration.
	Let's go through these stories together.
	This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
	Now let's start today's discussion over at the U.S. southern border.
	And to start with, I'd like to mention that in our previous episode, we said that Joe Biden had finally called the situation at the border a crisis.
	In fact, that was the first time in his tenure as president that he used that word to describe what was happening down there at the border.
	Specifically, here's what he told a reporter.
	We're going to increase the number of refugees allowed into the country.
	The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people.
	However, soon after that impromptu interview, the White House came out and made a statement saying that regardless of what Joe Biden said, it is not the position of the Biden administration that there is a crisis on the border.
	In fact, here is what a White House official said: "The president's use of the 'crisis' label does not represent the administration's official position." Now, really take a moment here to digest this for a second.
	The White House just said that the official position of the Biden administration is not what Joe Biden says it is.
	That's very interesting.
	And it calls into question who is actually formulating the official position of the Biden administration.
	Now, Jen Psaki, she went a step further and she clarified that when talking about the crisis, Joe Biden was actually referring to the crisis in Central America, not the crisis at the U.S. southern border.
	Here's what she told reporters: "The president does not feel that children coming to our border seeking refuge from violence, economic hardships, and other dire circumstances is a crisis.
	He does feel that there is a crisis in Central America, the dire circumstances that many are fleeing from." Now, in that statement, she mentioned unaccompanied minors, of which right now there are many at the U.S. southern border.
	In fact, just last month, which was March, over 18,000 children were apprehended by Border Patrol, and this month, which is April, is projected to be even higher.
	And by many different measures, this influx of migrants is overloading our immigration system.
	And so the big question is this.
	What is the Biden administration doing to combat this problem?
	Well, there are two things worth mentioning.
	First of all, Joe Biden signed an executive memo ordering both ICE, as well as Border Patrol, to stop using the term illegal alien.
	According to this new memo, instead of using the term illegal alien, officials should now refer to them as undocumented noncitizens, or undocumented individuals, or simply as migrants.
	Also, in that same memo, it says that instead of calling them unaccompanied alien children, they will now be called noncitizen unaccompanied children.
	And instead of undocumented aliens, it is now undocumented citizens, undocumented individuals, or simply migrants.
	Now, specifically, how this change in language will actually help to solve the problem at the U.S. southern border is currently unknown.
	But here's how the acting director of the Border Patrol explained it.
	We enforce our nation's laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact.
	The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody.
	However, regardless of what the federal government refers to them as, there is still the real problem of tens of thousands of kids currently being housed at migrant facilities over at the U.S. southern border.
	And so what is the administration actually doing about that tangible problem?
	Well, our reporter who is down there right now discovered that, among several other things, foster parents in California are receiving automated emails as well as automated phone calls asking them if they will take in unaccompanied Central American children.
	Now, if that sounds unbelievable to you, well, it also seemed unbelievable to this couple right here until they received one of these voicemail and email combos for themselves.
	At first, they told us that they thought these messages might have been a mistake.
	However, they followed up with the agency and realized that it was not a mistake.
	The local foster care agency was indeed asking local foster parents whether they can take anywhere between one and 26 or more Central American children.
	Here's what part of that email said.
	The Community Care Licensing Division, which is the local foster care agency, is trying to address the needs of a record number of unaccompanied children who are arriving from Central America who are escaping impossible situations such as poverty, violence, and natural disasters.
	Now, the foster parents that we interviewed were not thrilled to receive this email.
	This is what they told us.
	We were outraged.
	They're literally going to use the foster system to facilitate human trafficking.
	Now, there are several things that we should unpack here.
	First of all, according to the former director of ICE, Mr. Tom Homan, he said that Central American parents who are already here in the United States, who live in America, will actually hire criminal organizations to bring their children from Central America into the United States.
	He says that is a common practice.
	Secondly, by law, unaccompanied minors cannot be returned to their home country unless they are from either Mexico or Canada.
	Unless they're from either one of those two countries, we cannot send them back and we have to deal with them here in the United States.
	And thirdly, the foster care system has been traditionally reserved for American children who find themselves in dire circumstances and don't have a parent or legal guardian to look after them.
	And so, it's not only unprecedented to use the American foster care system to house migrant children, but according to the parents that we interviewed, it's also not fair.
	Here's what they said.
	That's why foster parents are there, because American children are in terrible situations.
	They're sitting in a home being neglected, perhaps they're in a home with domestic violence, perhaps they're in a home with drug abuse.
	We have children that are in horrible conditions right here, right here in our own neighborhoods.
	Someone loses a bed and it's not fair.
	For your reference, by the way, the family that we interviewed lives over in Los Angeles, which at the moment has 30,000 American children who are waiting to be placed in a foster home.
	And they're saying that it's unfair to utilize this system to house migrant children when there are so many American children who are waiting to be placed in a warm bed.
	Now furthermore, this family that we interviewed said that they believed they would be actually fueling the human trafficking trade if they were to participate in this new initiative.
	Here's what they said.
	Regardless, at this moment, the Biden administration is spending at least $60 million per week in detaining more than 20,000 unaccompanied minors over at the U.S. southern border.
	Now, if you would like to read more about this foster care initiative or about these new language guidelines for illegal immigrants, those links will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
	And by the way, that is that same little description box that is right below that like button that I hope that you take a moment to smash.
	Because you already know that videos that are like this, talking honestly and openly about what is happening in this world, are routinely censored, throttled, or sometimes outright removed by big tech giants like YouTube.
	However, when you smash that like button that's below this video, you are forcing the YouTube algorithm to share this video out to potentially thousands of more people, letting the truth be known far and wide.
	Now, while we're on the topic of the U.S. border, it's worth noting that migrants are not the only entity being smuggled in.
	In fact, last Thursday, it was reported that border and customs officials seized over 170,000 counterfeit masks that were coming here from China.
	The shipment was actually coming through Houston on its way to New York, and it contained 170,000 fake N95 masks, which had an estimated retail price of almost $350,000.
	Now, the director of the Houston Border Patrol Agency, he said this in a statement.
	Counterfeit goods not only hurt the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers, but they also pose substantial health and safety hazards for American consumers.
	In this instance, these counterfeit N95 respirators may not be effective at filtering airborne particles.
	Now, besides whether these face masks are effective at all, the shipment of fake masks from China bespeaks of another problem, the economic danger that China poses to America.
	And in fact, sending a few hundred thousand fake masks to our borders actually pales in comparison to some of the other things that the Chinese Communist Party is currently doing in their all-out fight against American dominance.
	Things like creating a database of Americans' DNA, or having high-level researchers here in America steal trade secrets and sell them back to China.
	And in order to combat this problem, two U.S. senators, they just introduced a bill to protect U.S. workers from what they call China's unfair trade practices.
	Now this bill, which by the way is bipartisan, it was co-sponsored by a Republican and a Democrat, both from Ohio, and it's called the Eliminating Global Market Distortions to Protect American Jobs Act.
	And specifically, one of the things that this law will fight back against is economic dumping.
	Here's how one of the senators explained it.
	Nowhere is China's disdain for the free market more evident than in the steel overcapacity crisis.
	Twenty years ago, China produced 18% of the world's supply of steel.
	Now it is roughly 50%.
	Today it is steel, but tomorrow it could be electric vehicles or semiconductors.
	This overcapacity is the result of deliberate choices by China to subsidize their industries and degrade the free market in pursuit of global market dominance, all at the expense of American jobs.
	Now, specifically, what this senator is referring to here is that over the last two decades, the Chinese Communist Party has created large state-owned enterprises in several industries, including aluminum, steel, as well as solar panels, and they subsidize those industries, making it almost impossible for companies in other countries to compete.
	Then, if you remember, President Trump attempted to fight back against these unfair trade practices, and a few years ago, he imposed tariffs on a long list of Chinese imports, which included things like aluminum and steel, which then sparked the whole so-called U.S.-China trade war.
	Now, of course, that did die down a bit with the signing of the Phase 1 China trade deal, wherein China actually pledged to buy an additional $200 billion worth of American goods as well as American services in the years 2020 and 2021.
	However, deals with communists are typically worth about the same as the paper that they're printed on.
	And along that line, according to a new report, China has only bought about 57% of what they promised to under that Phase 1 China trade deal.
	And so, let's see whether this new Senate bill actually gets any traction, whether it makes its way through the Senate and then to the House, and, if it does, whether it actually has any teeth.
	Now if you would like to read more about this new Senate bill, or if you would like to read more about these counterfeit masks that came over here from China, the links to those articles will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
	And now let's talk a bit about the Supreme Court.
	Two days ago, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a lawsuit which challenged Pennsylvania's election rules.
	Now, as typical, the Supreme Court did not provide their reasoning for not taking up the case, and instead they simply wrote this.
	Now, this Pennsylvania lawsuit was brought forth by a Republican candidate in that state who lost his race in 2020, and he was arguing that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overstepped their authority when they extended the date that mail-in ballots were allowed to be received in that state.
	Now, the argument in that case was that Pennsylvania Supreme Court rewrote election deadlines, which went against the Constitution, which gives the authority only to state legislatures and not to state judges to handle federal election laws.
	Regardless, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, just as they declined to hear any of the cases which were related to the 2020 election.
	However, even though the Supreme Court does not wish to weigh in, some lawmakers in Congress are taking it upon themselves to reform the election laws nationwide.
	Leading the group is a woman by the name of Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	She's a Republican congresswoman from Georgia, and she is leading the creation of something called the America First Caucus, which has a focus on reforming nationwide elections, limiting the power of big tech, and cutting down on illegal immigration.
	As part of this caucus's creation, a new document which outlines its platform was just released, and here's what it reads in part.
	It is the firm belief of this caucus that American policymaking needs to get back to first principles, restore a long-term time horizon amongst our nation's leaders, and instill a greatly internalized sense of service to the American people on part of our elected leaders.
	Now, in explaining the need for this new caucus, Congressman Louie Gohmert, who is considering joining this caucus, described it this way.
	As I understand it, it's following up a bit like we're taught when we get on an airliner, and that is before you help somebody else, you put your own mask on first so that you are capable of helping somebody else.
	If you would like to read more about this America First caucus, the link to that will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
	And now lastly, as we already mentioned in several previous episodes, on the very same day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, YouTube made a unilateral decision to demonetize our program.
	We can now no longer run any ads before, during, or after our episodes, and the Super Chat feature has just been disabled.
	They are essentially snuffing out our ability to monetize our independent journalism.
	However, if you would like to support us, I will throw a link into the description box below this video to a page where you can subscribe to The Epoch Times.
	It only costs a few dollars every month, but by subscribing, you will have unfettered access to all of our investigations, all of our reports, our opinion content, all of our infographics, our video documentaries, and if anything ever happens here on YouTube, you will have continuous access to all of our video programs, such as Facts Matter, Crossroads, American Thought Leaders, and all the rest.
	And until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.

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