Undocumented Immigration News 2014: League City, Texas City Council Bans Shelters for Unaccompanied Migrant Children
This week League City, Texas' city council, passed an ordinance that bans shelters for any of the unaccompanied minors who illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.
"I do not trust federal agencies to bring their mismanagement into our town," Councilwoman Heidi Thiess, who introduced the resolution on July 3, said ahead of the proposal's approval according to KHOU. "It does have an impact on our local resources, emergency services [and] public safety -- all of our resources, including education."
The resolution stops city departments from adhering to federal requests to either process or house any of the 52,000 children, mostly Central Americans, caught by U.S. Border Patrol since October. The city council passed the resolution with a 6-2 vote after listening to both sides of the debate from 26 different people for a total of 90 minutes, Galveston County's The Daily News reported.
"At this point and time I feel it was necessary due to the inaction from the federal government and from our state government, that we needed to do something locally," Theiss told Fox News Latino.
Some residents don't approve of the move, however.
"For me, we need to extend out a hand to these kids because you were a kid, I was a kid," Carlos Rivas told FNL. "They are wrong because it can be your kid or someone else's kid who is living over there."
Joel McMann, a League City United Methodist Church pastor, told The Daily News that the ordinance means the city is "shutting our doors to children." Meanwhile, George Barba, a 78-year-old "son of an immigrant" said he was "offended" by the resolution.
Still, Heiss argues that without the resolution, various detention centers and temporary housing facilities could take over the city.
"I have the facts and the statistics and the reports to back up my concerns, and this is a way to show the people of League City that we are responsible to them," she continued.
Some residents agree with the councilwoman.
"There is a legal way to do it, that's one thing, and then there's the illegal way," Keith Murray explained to FNL. "You have to go back,"
"We need to take care of our people," an anonymous resident added. "We can't take care of everyone in the world."
Some experts suggest that League City may not have the right to enforce the resolution.
"City councils get frustrated with immigration problems, but it's simply not the city's legal right to tell the federal government what they can and cannot do in the area of immigration," Gerald Treece, KHOU's legal expert and South Texas College of Law professor, told the local news station. "Even states don't have the authority to do this, much less a city."
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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.
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