Xavier Becerra will face influx of immigrant children on top of pandemic in Biden Cabinet job
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Xavier Becerra appears during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on his nomination to be secretary of Health and Human Services on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2021. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP)Greg Nash / Associated Press
WASHINGTON When Xavier Becerra takes over as President Biden’s health and human services secretary, he won’t just be confronting a pandemic. He’ll also be responsible for the care of thousands of immigrant children.
Health and Human Services manages shelters for undocumented immigrant children who arrive in the U.S. by themselves. The California attorney general will take his post in the Cabinet amid a near-record surge of immigrant children coming to the southern border at a time when the shelter network is already near capacity and is constrained by the coronavirus pandemic.
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Aloisio Costa spends a lot of time doing what pastors do: praying, reading his Bible, writing sermons, attending to the needs of his church.
He leads the Assembly of God Bethel church in Nashua’s growing Brazilian community. Costa said that pastors in immigrant communities get involved in more than just the spiritual lives of their congregations.
“They’re mechanics, they’re lawyers, they’re psychologists,” he said. They’re parents they’re mother, father, whatever. We have to reinvent ourselves every time there’s a different need.”
That’s especially true for people who may be undocumented, don’t speak English or don’t have the same support structures they had back in their home countries, and also when it comes to their relationship with police.
Vehicle that fled police crashes, killing 8 immigrants, driver is charged
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A crash that killed eight suspected undocumented immigrants in Val Verde County was apparently part of an increase in smuggling activity with thousands of migrants crossing the Mexican border into the United States.
The crash on Monday follows one in early March in California that killed 13 undocumented immigrants. Smugglers are bringing more and more migrants across the Rio Grande on rafts and have been caught hauling hundreds of them in semi-trucks, making border enforcement once again a flash point in America’s political discourse.
The south Texas wreck also comes on the heels of criticism by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has blamed the Biden Administration for the surge and enlisted the Texas Department of Public Safety to help stem the flow of immigrants.