President Obama’s request for $3.7 billion in supplemental funding amounts to an “admission” that he plans for the influx of immigrant children to “continue indefinitely,” according to Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas).

Cruz said that only five percent of the funding would provide for “boots on the ground” along the southern border. “This is an HHS and social services bill that is entitled border security to make it appear as if it’s responding to the problem,” Cruz told National Review Online.


“But this supplemental bill is an admission by the president that he has no intention of solving this problem, and, indeed, that he anticipates it continuing indefinitely, because he is simply asking for money to deal with those kids who are coming after they’ve been brutalized, rather than taking the necessary steps to prevent them from coming here in the first place, to prevent them from being victimized,” Cruz also said.

The Center for Immigration Studies points out that almost half of the money requested would pay for resettlement of the immigrants.

“Of the $3.7 billion being requested, fully $1.8 billion (about 49 percent of the total) is for resettlement costs to be appropriated to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — not just for the UACs, but for entire family units, including adult men and women,” Dan Cadman writes. “There is no reason to think that the accommodations will be temporary, insofar as the funds include authorization ‘for acquisition, construction, improvement, repair, operation, and maintenance of real property and facilities.’”