Proposed bill would cut aid to some Latin American countries to offset costs of immigrant housing

BEAUMONT, TX (KTRK) -- About 47,000 undocumented children have crossed into the United States since the beginning of 2014; 9,000 of them crossed in just the month of May.

The federal government is looking for places to hold them, and it was considering a former juvenile correctional facility in Jefferson County. Eight miles outside of Beaumont, it's been closed since last year.

Homeland Security apparently asked the county about availability.

"My understanding was that homeland security wanted a minimum guarantee of 120 days. There was no guarantee of a maximum," Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick said.

But Branick says after telling commissioners about it in court Monday, they decided it would not happen.

"Unfortunately we had recently issued requests for proposals by others who wanted to use this facility as a charter school," he said.

A permanent local tenant for the sprawling complex is much more preferable to a short term deal with homeland security, which is not finding temporary homes an easy get. A town in Virginia also just said no.

As politicians after another make their way to the border to tour what have become essentially refugee camps, there is outrage and compassion, but there is no solution yet on the border or in Washington.

"We've got to get a policy in place, you know we cannot have a sign out that says 'Open border for the United States, come one, come all.' And we're working on that right now," Texas State Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX 14) said.

Weber is proposing legislation that he says would help pay for the cost of housing the tens of thousands of undocumented children who crossed into Texas from four Latin American countries. He says he wants to reduce foreign aid to Mexico,Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to compensate for the taxpayer dollars spent on the recent flood of underage immigrants.

Weber estimates the cost to be roughly $50 million and says the reduced foreign aid funds would not include the money that goes to those countries to combat narcotics trafficking. The bill also would not fund housing the immigrants, but it would offset costs until those countries demonstrated they were doing what they could to mitigate the influx.

Weber is looking for cosponsors for the bill which he says would send a clear message to those countries.