California Foster Parents Asked to Take in Unaccompanied Minors From Central America

Foster parents in California are being asked if they can take in unaccompanied Central American children who have recently crossed the southern border.

Automated emails and phone calls from the state’s Community Care Licensing Division (CCLD) have asked foster parents if they can take anywhere from one to 26 or more children.

Travis and Sharla Kall received a voice message and then a follow-up email in mid-March with the request.

“At first, it was just strange,” Travis Kall told The Epoch Times. He thought it was a mistake until Diandra Causey, a friend and also a foster parent, confirmed with her agency that it was a request to foster unaccompanied minors who had recently crossed the border illegally.

“We were outraged. They’re literally going to use the foster system to facilitate human trafficking,” he said.

Causey’s agency sent her a confirmation email stating that CCLD 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.”

The email, which The Epoch Times obtained, adds that the agency will compile a list of its families and hopes to partner with the California Department of Social Services “in this endeavor.”

NTD Photo
A group of i*****l i*******ts wait for Border Patrol after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in La Joya, Texas, on April 10, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Unaccompanied minors—children under 18 who cross the border without a parent or guardian—have traditionally fallen under the purview of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after being processed by Border Patrol.

During influxes of unaccompanied minors, HHS has operated as a proxy foster system, charged with placing children with a parent or sponsor in the United States—most often a parent or close family relative who already is in the country illegally.

On April 10, The Epoch Times talked to two boys from Honduras who had just crossed the U.S.–Mexico border into La Joya, Texas. One said he was 17, the other 13; they said their father was in South Carolina. Another group included a girl, 16, and two boys, aged 14 and 7; they said they were from Honduras and their father was in Houston.

“Parents living here will hire a criminal organization to bring their child into the country,” former Acting ICE Director Tom Homan told The Epoch Times. He criticized the Biden administration for facilitating 18,000 family separations in March by dismantling border security measures.

The number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border illegally hit a record monthly high in March, with 18,663 children apprehended by Border Patrol—more than double that of February. April is projected to be higher still.

“We know 31 percent of women had been assaulted making that trip. We know children have been assaulted, we know there’s children in the hands of criminal cartels, we know what happens to them … and it’s just a travesty,” Homan said.

By law, unaccompanied minors can’t be returned to their home country unless they’re Mexican or Canadian nationals (from contiguous countries).

The foster system, however, has usually been reserved for American children who are in dire circumstances and don’t have a parent to look after them.

“That’s why they’re there, because they are in terrible situations,” Travis’s wife, Sharla Kall, told The Epoch Times. “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.”

She said foster parents are being placed “between a rock and a hard place” because there are currently 30,000 American children in the Los Angeles County foster system waiting for placement.

“We have children that are in horrible conditions right here, right here in our own neighborhoods,” she said. “Someone loses a bed and it’s not fair.”

The majority of unaccompanied minors entering the United States are between the ages of 12 and 17, which is also the most difficult age group for finding foster care placements.

The California Department of Social Services said it sent out the initial survey to licensed children’s residential facilities in response to a request from HHS. The department declined to respond to an Epoch Times query asking how many Central American minors it’s trying to place in foster care.

The Kalls both said they believe they’d be fueling the human trafficking trade if they participated in the new initiative.

“Do I want to help them, yes. But I want to know why they’re really here. I find it hard to believe that someone didn’t traffic them here,” Sharla Kall said. “There’s no way that all of these kids came voluntarily. I can’t fathom that. Not in the world that we live in, not when human trafficking is a $150-plus-billion industry.”

NTD Photo
Minors are housed at the Donna Department of Homeland Security holding facility, the main detention center for unaccompanied children in the Rio Grande Valley run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in Donna, Texas, on March 30, 2021. (Dario Lopez-Mills/AP Photo)
Once an unaccompanied minor is placed into the foster system, they’re automatically on a fast track to citizenship through a special immigrant juvenile status. The SIJ status provides a green card to individuals and entitles them to qualify for state sponsored programs, financial aid, t***sitional housing, and other supportive programs, according to the Los Angeles County Social Services website.

“If you’re going to have the American people and their tax dollars supporting these children, then we deserve to know the plan. We deserve to know, are you throwing them into this special immigration status? Is that your goal?” Sharla Kall said. “Show me the plan and we will do it, because we are a great country and we are a great people. And we do care. But we deserve to know exactly what’s happening. So that we can properly help.”

Currently, the administration is spending at least $60 million per week on detaining more than 20,000 unaccompanied minors.

The Kalls, who are currently fostering 4-month-old twins, also run a nonprofit organization, Goods for Hope, that fights human trafficking.

“They’re asking us to participate in the very thing that we’re fighting against,” Travis Kall said of the foster agency.

“American citizens need to call their congressmen and senators and tell them they don’t want their money going to human trafficking.”

https://www.ntd.com/california-foster-parents-asked-to-take-in-unaccompanied-minors-from-central-america_601418.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2021-04-22

“Homosexuality Is Not Hardwired,” Concludes Head of The Human Genome Project
Tue Mar 20, 2007 - 12:15 pm EST

By LifeSiteNews.com

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By A. Dean Byrd, Ph.D, MBA, MPH

Reprinted with permission of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH)

Francis S. Collins, one of the world’s leading scientists who works at the cutting edge of DNA research, concluded that "there is an inescapable component of heritability to many human behavioral traits." However, he adds, "for virtually none of them, is heredity ever close to predictive."

In reviewing the heritability (i.e., influence of genetic factors) on personality traits, Dr. Collins referenced the research of Bochard and McGue for the estimated percentage of these traits that can be ascribed to heredity.

The heritability estimates for personality traits were varied: General Cognitive Ability (50%), Extroversion (54%), Agreeableness (42%), Conscientiousness (49%), Neuroticism (48%), Openness (57%), Aggression (38%) and Traditionalism (54%).

Such estimates of heritability are based upon unbiased, careful analyses of studies conducted with identical twins. The studies lead to the conclusion that heredity is important in many of these personality traits. It is important however, to note that even in such studies with identical twins, that heritability is not to be confused as inevitability.

As Dr. Collins would agree, environment can influence gene expression, and free will determines the response to wh**ever predispositions might be present.

Dr. Collins succinctly reviewed the research on homosexuality and offers the following:

"An area of particularly strong public interest is the genetic basis of homosexuality. Evidence from twin studies does in fact support the conclusion that heritable factors play a role in male homosexuality. However, the likelihood that the identical twin of a homosexual male will also be gay is about 20% (compared with 2-4 percent of males in the general population), indicating that sexual orientation is genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA, and that wh**ever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations [emphasis added]."

The heritability estimates for homosexuality is substantially lower than General Cognitive Ability, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Openness, Aggression and Traditionalism!

Dr. Collins noted that environment—particularly childhood experiences—as well as the role of free will and choice affect us all in profound ways. As researchers discover increasing levels of molecular detail about inherited factors that underlie our personalities, it’s critical that such data be used to illuminate the issues, not provide support to ideologues.

Citing such dangers, Dr. Collins referred to the book written by activist Dean Hamer, who declared the discovery of the "God gene" (this same author also is associated with "discovering the gay gene").

Dr. Collins noted that the "evidence" in Hamer’s book "grabbed headlines," but was "wildly overstated."

A reviewer in Scientific American suggested that Hamer’s book on the "God gene" should have been titled, "A Gene That Accounts for Less than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study."

Unfortunately, much of the research in areas such as homosexuality has been misrepresented; not only in the media, but also by the scientists themselves through a tendency to overestimate the quantitative contribution of their findings.

Regarding the contributions of genetics to areas such as homosexuality, Dr. Collins concluded, "Yes, we have all been dealt a particular set of cards, and the cards will eventually be revealed. But how we play the hand is up to us."

I agree.

Reference:
Collins, Francis S. (2006). The Language of God, A Scientist Presents Evidence For Belief. New York: Free Press.

I think some of our pretend conservative economists also predicted an immediate and DEEP recession. If I remember correctly it was going to be the end of the world as we knew it. Well, more and more, as c***d seemed to be moving behind us, and the economy starting to improve by leaps and bounds adding jobs--nearly a million a month--and income growth, giving Americans real tangible hope where only despair lay before under the fumbling missteps of one Donald J Trump.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/as-economy-spikes-republicans-are-still-waiting-for-the-biden-depression-that-trump-predicted/ar-BB1fX3wZ?ocid=msedgntp