Homeless Shelter Cleared to House Illegal Aliens, Dozens Infected with COVID-19

As if the illegal immigrant crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border were not bad enough, homeless Americans have been booted from a temporary shelter in southern California to make room for scores of migrants, dozens of them infected with COVID-19. Since the Biden administration rolled out the welcome mat, thousands of illegal aliens have entered the country, most of them minors classified as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) by the feds. Now the government is scrambling to meet its legal obligation of caring for them at facilities nationwide operated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

In this case, homeless residents were apparently cleared out of the San Diego Convention Center prematurely to accommodate up to 1,450 UAC, though city officials claim the decision to stop using the facility for the homeless predates the illegal alien crunch. Homeless San Diegans have been housed at the center for about a year as part of an initiative to halt the spread of COVID-19. The San Diego City Council voted to extend the program through March, but evidently it was cut short to bring in the illegal immigrants. The city will relocate about 500 homeless individuals to two local shelters, according to a local news report. “The convention center will be used to house migrants through July and will be operated by the federal government and the county,” the story says.

So far there are about 743 UAC at the convention center, according to government figures cited in a local news report this week. At least 82 of the migrant teenagers have tested positive for COVID-19. Just this week 247 girls arrived at the makeshift shelter and of that group, 32 have COVID-19, the article states. “Another girl who was placed in the COVID exposed group contracted the virus,” the news story reveals, adding that “officials said none of the minors who tested positive have needed to be hospitalized.” An HHS spokesperson named Bonnie Preston is cited in several news stories saying that the majority of the girls tested positive for the virus before arriving in San Diego and six tested positive upon arrival. The HHS spokesperson further reveals that about 250 UAC will arrive every other day until the convention center reaches its capacity.

There are around 11,551—and counting—illegal immigrant minors in HHS shelters and another 5,000 in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol, according to the government. In February alone, more than 7,000 UAC were placed in facilities funded by American taxpayers. Border Patrol figures show that in January there was a 64% increase in UAC over the same one-month period last year with two Texas sectors—Big Bend and Del Rio—seeing the biggest increase in UAC traffic over the same one-month period in 2020, 141% and 122% respectively. The problem is only going to get worse as thousands more are allowed in by the Biden administration. Under federal law HHS takes custody of UAC, identified as illegal immigrants under the age of 18, and must provide care for them. The agency funds and oversees around 170 state-licensed care facilities to house the minors when they arrive from foreign countries south of the border.

American taxpayers provide them with an array of services including classroom education, mental and medical health care, legal counsel, and a variety of recreational activities. The overwhelming majority of the migrants—72%—are not children but rather young adults or adolescents 15 to 17 years old, government records show. Most of the youths are from Guatemala and Honduras and 68% are male, which has tremendously boosted gang recruitment in this country. Federal authorities have for years confirmed that the nation’s most violent street gangs—including the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13)—recruit new members at U.S. shelters housing UAC. Long before COVID-19, health issues were a serios concern among the hordes of illegal immigrant minors allowed into the U.S. by the Obama administration because they brought in serious diseases, including swine flu, dengue fever and possibly Ebola.

The San Diego Convention Center accommodations are not the only special treatment that the illegal immigrants are receiving. They also get live teachers while the pandemic forces local children whose parents fund the public school system to receive instruction online. This week a federal lawmaker, Congressman Darrell Issa, blasted the idea in a statement following reports that teachers will be sent to the San Diego Convention Center to provide in-person instruction for the illegal immigrants. “For more than a year, parents and students in San Diego County have waited for educators to answer one question: When will our schools reopen with in-person instruction only? And for a year, they’ve been told to wait. The decision to provide in-person instruction to illegal migrants is outrageous and parents have every right to be angry.”