Caroline May

There is a “looming refugee crisis” in the Americas as women and children from Central America and Mexico say they are fleeing regional violence, the United Nations Refugee Agency cautioned Wednesday.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) is calling on President Obama to rescind his push to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees over the coming year until the administration can assure no terrorists will be admitted.

“Immigration, counting both new admissions and births to immigrant women, was responsible for three-fourths of the growth in our population this century,” the report published this week by the immigration reduction group Negative Population Growth reads. “If current trends continue, immigration will add another 100 million people to the United States in the next 50 years.”

DHS expanded family detention last year in response to the unprecedented run on the border by illegal immigrant adults with children. The government had pointed to detention as a deterrent to the ongoing influx of illegal immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border — which has seen more than 108,000 family unit members apprehended attempting to illegally enter the U.S. over the past two fiscal years.

At current immigration levels, the U.S. will add approximately the population of Los Angeles very three years within the coming decade, according to Republican staff on with the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest.

The CHANGE Act would replace the term “alien” with “foreign national” and replace “illegal alien” with “undocumented foreign national” in federal materials.

Customs and Border Protection revealed Friday that earlier this week Border Patrol Agents from the Santa Teresa Station intercepted five individuals climbing through a hole in the border fence. The agents chased the five subjects, finding them as they tried to hide in desert brush. One of the five illegal immigrants was Mario Perez-Contrera who had, what CBP described as, an “extensive criminal history.”

While the word “alien” has been used to refer to foreign nationals in the U.S. for more than 220 years, the term dehumanizes immigrants and should be stripped from federal law, according to Rep. Joaquin Castro (R-TX). He’s introduced a bill to replace “alien” with “foreign national” and “illegal alien” with “undocumented foreign national” in federal law and executive agency documents.

During September, the final month of the fiscal year, nearly 10,000 unaccompanied minors and family unit members were apprehended illegally entering the U.S. through the southern border. That is, Border Patrol intercepted 4,476 unaccompanied minors and 5,273 illegal immigrant family unit members.