Santa Clara County to take up border kids crisis on Tuesday
Source: San Jose Mercury News
SAN JOSE -- Santa Clara County officials Tuesday are considering a "host family" plan to temporarily house some of the thousands of children stranded far from home and without their parents at the Mexican border in what many have called a humanitarian crisis that has reignited the national immigration debate.
The idea being presented to supervisors on Tuesday is in its early fact-finding stages. But County Executive Jeff Smith said that after long talks with community groups they felt the best model involves using individual homes to locate small numbers of undocumented, unaccompanied immigrant children currently being housed in detention centers until a court decides whether they can stay stateside or must return to the land they fled.
"We decided that if we're going to do something, let's do something that's better and more humane than the warehouse model," Smith said. "That means by definition a relatively small number of kids but if you presume other places around the nation might be interested, it can add up."
In other parts of the country, placing immigrants -- who are mainly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador -- has proven to be contentious. Flag-waving residents have taken to the streets in protest, blocking a bus in the border town of Murrieta. And demonstrators on both sides of the issue have faced off in Oracle, Arizona.
Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/immigration/ci_26275336/santa-clara-county-take-up-border-kids-crisis
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