(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., admitted this week that the crises of mass illegal immigration leads to the economic exploitation of children.
Hickenlooper described the crisis at the border on Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s José Díaz-Balart Reports.
“[There is] a lot of confusion and there’s been massive change over the last couple of years coming out of the pandemic, coming out of all the problems we’ve had at the border,” he said. “So many of these problems reflect a high volume of kids coming in, unaccompanied.”
He then outlined the next steps he thinks should be taken to manage the crisis in his state.
“[W]e are going to reach out to HHS and look at how do we do a better job of maintaining contact and checking in periodically with these sponsor families,” he said.
Hickenlooper, again, emphasized the problem of unaccompanied minors crossing the border.
“But that makes them [illegals that are children] vulnerable,” he said. “And I think we all have a responsibility to step up and say, alright, what is that ecosystem, what’s the chain of command by which we can make sure these kids are protected?”
Hickenlooper did not appear to call for amnesty for the illegal kids. Indeed, he acknowledged the need of vetting immigrants.
“[illegal children must] go through the adjudication process, while their refugee status or their opportunity to stay permanently in this country — as that goes through the formal paperwork,” he said.
The question, for Hickenlooper, then is not whether illegals should be vetted, though he did not call for better judgements or more scrutiny. He asked a different question.
“How do we make sure they’re not being exploited and abused?” he asked.
Hickenlooper’s argument tracks well with the 25 State Attorneys General that asked SCOTUS to preserve the criminal status of encouraging or inducing illegal immigration in March.
