Biden plan to move migrant teenagers into North Carolina boarding school ‘alarming’

North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Walker expressed serious concerns over the Biden administration’s handling of unaccompanied minors at the southern border in light of a new operation to fly thousands of teenagers into his hometown.

The former Greensboro, North Carolina, congressman and Republican Study Committee chairman told the Washington Examiner on Friday that his fears stretched from the public safety of the residential community to the lack of information being shared by the government.

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Walker is also worried about the Biden administration’s growing reliance on these types of temporary emergency facilities, particularly given that this one would sit on a 100-acre American Hebrew Academy boarding school campus that the government would turn into a global “academy” for students on site despite its only holding children an average of 29 days.

“When you bring in 800 mostly older teenagers, mostly young, single males … I think anybody would be rightfully concerned about this, especially when you start saying, ‘Well, it’s not just going to be a temporary — we’re going to call this an academy.’ That’s alarming to people,” said Walker. “They said they were going to keep them on the property and they can’t get out. How do you do that?”

The 800 minors brought in starting in August would be discharged from the academy to adult sponsors around the country and their beds filled with others who had just come over the border. Walker said the lack of knowledge the community has about who is entering the community was alarming despite the government’s vetting policies at the border.

In several cases recently, males who crossed the border illegally and identified as minors were released into the United States only to be arrested for murder. Federal agency U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not yet explained why employees released people who were actually adults, as in the case of the person who killed a Florida man, or known members of international gangs to the Department of Health and Human Services, as in the murder case of Kayla Hamilton in Maryland.

Residents across the street from the campus have not yet been told of plans to move in buses of minors flown in from the border in the coming weeks, Walker said.

“It’s been very concerning about how secretive this has been from [HHS] because this has been going on for over a year and it’s been very difficult to get any information,” Walker said.

HHS has been secretive about renaming the American Hebrew Academy site the “Greensboro Piedmont Academy” if it is in fact a temporary influx housing site. The federal contractor that was paid millions to operate it has stood up a “Greensboro Global Academy” and website to recruit teachers from the community to apply for jobs.

The government’s adding more housing for minors goes against the reality that the number of children crossing the border has dropped since April. These emergency care sites were initially thrown up as a high volume of children crossed in 2021 and 2022, but those numbers have dropped from 10,000 children in custody at a time to 6,000 as of Thursday.

Children who come across the border illegally after being smuggled by cartels are taken into custody by the Border Patrol and then transferred to HHS’s Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.

HHS’s use of the “academy” is problematic because it is not licensed by the state to hold children in this type of situation. A leading organization that helps migrant children who come over the border said the practice of going around the rules that facilities be licensed must end.

“While it is valuable to expand infrastructure to care for unaccompanied children, the administration’s focus should be on licensed facilities and providers that adhere to stringent child welfare practices,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. “Recent history suggests that it is virtually impossible to ensure their safety and well-being through reliance on large-scale influx centers operated by entities with little to no child welfare experience.”

In 2021, the Washington Examiner reported the Biden administration’s plans to use the Greensboro boarding school to house children. When questioned by House Republicans, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said, “There is no plan that we can tell you to shelter children in North Carolina.”

Last year, the Washington Examiner exposed that the Interior Department, on behalf of HHS, had quietly signed a five-year contract with the American Hebrew Academy, which allowed the federal government to take over the campus through 2027.

Then the Biden administration brokered a no-bid deal with for-profit company Deployed Resources for $177 million to oversee housing children at the academy site for 12 months.

Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) described being stunned by the recent news that the government would in fact begin sending minors from the border into Greensboro in August.

“After the HHS Secretary misled me and others about housing migrants in North Carolina, it appears the Greensboro facility will soon be the largest active housing facility for unaccompanied minors in the country once it opens in August,” Hudson, whose district is directly below Greensboro, said in a statement. “My colleagues and I have been fighting for answers about this facility for months and this sudden announcement is a blatant stab in the back by the administration.”

The deal, made behind closed doors with New York-based Deployed Resources rather than through the normal public solicitation process, is the latest in more than $1 billion worth of backdoor payouts that the Biden administration has made in secret in its attempt to downplay its response to the migration crisis at the southern border.

Former acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan said the Biden administration should use family residential centers that ICE operates since they are largely vacant and well equipped for children.

“They’re sitting there empty,” Homan said Friday. “They’d rather put people in a hotel room or an Academy where they don’t have the resources that ICE has.”

The 100-acre Hebrew school campus opened in 2001 to educate Jewish high school students. It ceased operations in 2019. The campus has 16 dormitory buildings, 35 residential staff apartments, and an $18 million athletic center with an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

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The federal agency will provide classroom education, mental and medical health services, case management, translation services, legal services, and recreational facilities.

HHS and ACF did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The city of Greensboro did not respond to a request for comment. A public letter that ACF issued last week stated that it did not have an activation date set.