Meuser

Meuser

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It feels as if U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser was among the few people to get it right in the last two weeks when it came to flights transporting unaccompanied minor illegal immigrants to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport.

Meuser, R-Dallas, said he was told that many of the children have suffered from abuse and/or molestation.

“These kids are traumatized,” Meuser said in an interview with the Times Leader’s Bill O’Boyle. “And then they are being placed on planes and taken who knows where.”

Meuser’s remarks followed a conference call Wednesday with the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to discuss the recent flights.

“We got some answers, and we got some bureaucratic baloney,” Meuser bluntly told O’Boyle.

Before we proceed any further, let us recap some of those answers from HHS, as related to us by Meuser:

• He said he was told all passengers are tested and at have received at least one vaccination; all minors receive vaccinations appropriate to their age, including against COVID-19, and are not transported unless they have tested negative for COVID-19.

• He said the majority of the children are being released to family members, while others are being sent to HHS contracted facilities.

• He was told that HHS is doing its best to move these children into their sponsorships, which includes foster homes in metropolitan areas.

• Upon being released from HHS custody, the minors will begin “standard immigration proceedings.”

• None of the undocumented children remained in Luzerne County, Meuser said he was told.

• HHS attributed their increased use of charter flights to the increased volume of unaccompanied minors at the southern border.

After several days in which political leaders and multiple media outlets scrambled to figure out what was happening, we praise Meuser for using his powers as a member of Congress to cut through the chatter and relay the answers he received to the public and the media.

If only everyone — federal agencies included — had been more transparent from the start, some of the needless fear and controversy surrounding these flights could have been avoided, and perhaps we could have had a reasonable policy discussion from the start.

Except, of course, some people clearly don’t want to have a reasonable policy discussion. They want to grandstand. They want to stir up fear and outrage. And in that, they succeeded.

We note, in particular, Lou Barletta, the former Congressman and Hazleton mayor who is seeking the Republican nomination to run for governor.

In a Dec. 23 letter sent to Gov. Tom Wolf and Attorney General Josh Shapiro, Barletta demanded information from them about a flight from El Paso, Texas, that landed at the airport on the night of Dec. 17 and disembarked “as many as 180 illegal immigrants.”

Republican Barletta pressed Democrats Wolf and Shapiro for answers to numerous questions, including whether the governor and AG were aware of the flight, and if so “what was your reasoning for permitting it to land?”

Barletta’s letter also laid out his many concerns about the flights, including the difficulties of screening and performing background checks on illegal immigrants, the rising tide of Omicron virus cases, rising crime in Pennsylvania (including murders in Philadelphia) and the presence of “sanctuary cities” (he notes Luzerne and Lackawanna counties are not among such jurisdictions) which refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

Barletta cited his familiarity with the issue of illegal immigration from his days as a mayor and a member of Congress.

One would think a former member of Congress would know the difference between federal and state governments, and understand that governors and AGs aren’t in the position of determining whether planes can land in their states, let alone planes chartered by federal agencies.

The Wolf administration pointed that out in reply; Barletta responded by blasting their “flippant and childish answer that shows blind trust in an incompetent and uncaring Biden administration. …”

The interrogation made for great political fodder, especially considering that Shapiro is so far the only Democrat officially in the running to succeed Wolf — and therefore Barletta’s likely opposition were he to obtain his own party’s nomination. It failed to bring any clarity to a confusing situation, serving only to inflame partisan rhetoric.

This is not to say Meuser didn’t take aim at Washington and the Biden administration. He raised legitimate questions about federal immigration policy and whether Biden’s approach has made the situation worse.

What is clear is that the situation at the southern border is not new — this has been a problem across administrations — and it remains dire. These flights are a symptom, they are not the problem.

Meuser took the right approach. Barletta did not.

— Times Leader