by WorldTribune Staff, December 2, 2016

Some 70 percent of “minor refugees” allowed into the U.S. under a program President Barack Obama instituted via executive order were actually adults, a report said.

The program, which has cost taxpayers $1 billion in 2016, was designed to help minor refugees from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras who were seeking out “human smugglers” to get safe transportation across the U.S.-Mexico border.

When Obama signed the order in 2014, the State Department released a statement saying: “This program will allow certain parents who are lawfully present in the United States to request access to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for their children still in one of these three countries. The refugee/parole program will not be a pathway for undocumented parents to bring their children to the United States, but instead, the program will provide certain vulnerable, at-risk children an opportunity to be reunited with parents lawfully resident in the United States.”

State Department data, however, indicates that only 480 of the 1,600 illegals admitted under the program are actually children, according to MRC TV.

“A full 70 percent of those aliens who’ve been allowed into the United States under the president’s program for ‘minors’ are adults (over the age of 18),” the MRC TV report said.

The program has also been ineffective in slowing the number of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The program hasn’t made a notable impact on the number of unaccompanied children and families who’ve elected to come into the United States illegally via the Mexican border – which is the very problem the initiative was supposedly created to alleviate,” MRC said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports it apprehended another 4,973 unaccompanied illegal alien children at the U.S.-Mexico border in October, up 97 percent from the 2,519 border agents apprehended in October of last year. That same month, the Obama administration released more than 6,000 illegal alien children to sponsors living in the United States.

  70 percent of illegals admitted under Obama’s ‘minor refugee’ program are adults, human smugglers, illegal immigration, WorldTribune.com