A Tunica, Mississippi, board of supervisors has rejected a proposal to support housing unaccompanied illegal immigrant children in two abandoned casino hotels.
On May 30, the board voted 3-2 against supporting the controversial plan which brought resistance from Mississippi officials and residents.
Shantrell Nicks, an attorney representing Rapid Deployment, a company contracting with the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HSS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), informed the board that the Harris Casino hotel, which the company inspected, is suitable for housing children who have crossed the border illegally.
“This would serve as a children’s shelter to serve as an influx-care facility,” she said. “It’s a humanitarian effort.”
She called it a “short-term solution” to reuniting children with their families who have crossed the border.
“These children have crossed the border because they are trying to escape situations of asylum, specifically some type of abandonment or abuse,” she said.
Ms. Nicks said the federal government would fund the project, and that it would be a “self-contained facility” where the children would be educated, fed, and receive medical treatment.
After making her initial proposal, she said there had been a misunderstanding that the children were taken from their parents, which she clarified was not the case.
The children crossing the border were either sent by their parents to find a better life, she said, or separated from them during the crossing.
“Again, it’s a temporary solution,” she said. “They are children ages 4 to 17. They don’t have any adults with them. They’re not with families. They won’t be visitors in and out of the site.”
She said the project will save the federal government money while facilitating the spending of federal tax dollars in the Magnolia State.
The controversy erupted, Ms. Nicks said, when Rapid Deployment began reaching out to local contractors for estimates on restorations.
“Again, to the sheriff and to the members of this community, security will be provided by the federal government,” she said. “It will be a fully fenced facility. Kids will never be left unattended.”
Their length of stay, she said, would be less than 30 days.
“There’s no strain on the local government as a result of this temporary children’s shelter,” she said. “We are not going to attempt to enroll these children in local schools. We’re not seeking any state or county funding.”
‘Many Unknowns’
Board member Michael Johnson said in the meeting that with the many unknowns regarding the project, the strained entertainment and gaming revenue could be even more challenged.“We’ve worked really hard to try to figure out how to make this county sustainable with less income from gaming from when it first started to when it first started to now and it took a lot of hard decisions by this board but we’ve gotten there,” he said. “We are able to sustain what we have with less revenue.”
Another issue is that no one knows what would happen if the proposal doesn’t work, he said.
The gaming revenue has decreased from $30 to $14 million, he said, and he worries what would happen if it sank lower.
“The fear of what would happen in a failure, with everything else we’ve ever supported, we knew what happened in failure,” he said.
Ms. Nicks, who had argued that the facility would bring more tax dollars to the county, said her team has contacted the gaming industry in the county, where there are six major casinos, and the industry welcomed the proposal.
Mr. Johnson asked for clarification on who would be spending time in the county if it’s going to be a closed-off facility. Ms. Nicks responded by stating that it would primarily be staff, including doctors, nurses, caseworkers, project managers, security officers, and attorneys.
“We’re talking about a large population that would be used to run the facility,” she said.
Tunica County ‘Lacks the Necessary Infrastructure’
U.S. Sen. John Wicker (R-Miss.) protested the proposal in a press release. “If the plan was approved, up to 2,000 children would have been housed at a vacant hotel,” he said.Constituents voiced concerns, he said, about how the project would affect the community.
“It was clear that Tunica County’s health care, transportation, and other services were not prepared for this sudden influx,” he said. “I am glad this decision has been halted for now, but I am still worried about a similar proposal in the future and have shared those with HHS.”
In his letter to the HSS, he stated that Tunica County doesn’t have the resources to support the endeavor.
“HHS would need to provide childcare, health care, security, psychiatrists, translators, transportation, and other services to support such as large influx of unaccompanied children in a rural area that lacks the necessary infrastructure and labor to support such an undertaking,” he said.
The Epoch Times contacted HHS for comment.
