Officials in Lynn, Mass., reportedly suspect that some adult illegal aliens pretend to be unaccompanied children and then seek enrollment in the city’s high schools.

In the ongoing humanitarian and law enforcement crisis that is affecting the entire country, tens of thousands of impoverished Central American illegal aliens, including both accompanied and unaccompanied minors, have flooded across America’s southern border in the Rio Grande Valley, stretching the Border Patrol’s resources to the limit. By granting (without Congressional approval) what amounted to a form of amnesty for about 800,000 younger illegal immigrants in 2012, and other selective enforcement or non-enforcement of existing laws, critics have accused President Obama of contributing to if not creating this border chaos.

Authorities are releasing many of these illegal immigrants from detention centers on a promise to appear at an immigration court hearing months down the line.

The Obama administration is also transporting many of the undocumented newcomers to locations all across the country often without the knowledge of state or local officials. As The Inquisitr previously reported, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heinemann, among others, is not happy with the Obama administration’s plan to house and ultimately release hundreds of illegal immigrants in his state, compounded by the lack of communication and secrecy being employed by the federal government about the relocation of illegal aliens, including unaccompanied minors.

As far as the Bay State is concerned, “illegal immigrants are being secretly flown to Massachusetts and kept in local lockups in an under-the-radar operation that has alarmed lawmen who are raising health and security concerns amid recent spikes in detainees coming up from Texas during the latest border crisis,” the Boston Herald reports.

Commenting of these unconventional high school enrollments, the chief of staff to the mayor of Lynn told National Review that “Some of them have had gray hair and they’re telling you that they’re 17 years old and they have no documentation. If my children went to the public schools, I’d be very uncomfortable with all of these unaccompanied minors [that] are placed in the ninth grade.”

School superintendent Catherine Latham added that in the case of potential age discrepancies, “officials visit the residences of the ‘minors’ to attempt to verify the age of the individuals in question. The school system has turned away a handful of people who appeared too old, Latham says, but she’s suspicious of a quite a few other cases.”

As it is, the influx of school-age children has “overwhelmed the city, and strained available resources.”

As the Washington Examiner metaphorically sums up the surge at the border, “The flood of underage — and many not-so-underage — illegal immigrants from the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador crested in the Rio Grande Valley, but now the waters are being diverted and channeled to other parts of the United States.”