Moments from now Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia is set to provide expert testimony before the House subcommittee on border security, facilitation and operations.
TheMemo will be covering the event live on the North Long Beach News Facebook Group in the link provided here.
The Mayor's expert testimony comes only weeks after Garcia championed a $35 Million contract to temporarily shelter migrant children in the Long Beach Convention Center.
However many questions have arisen this morning as more details of the hearing take shape.
First the house subcommittee refers to Garcia as a "key witness" and a "stakeholder". They are looking to Garcia and 3 other experts for "suggestions for improving our system for unaccompanied children" the subcommittee said in a statement.
This news has caught residents off guard who have been assured by city officials and local mainstream media sources that the City owned Long Beach Convention Center will only temporarily detain migrant children.
Long Beach resident Christian Dominguez asked "how has our City gone from a temporary shelter to a stakeholder?"
Mr. Dominguez's question stems from Garcia's promise that whether or not migrant children are reunified with their hard to find family members the temporary lease agreement with the federal government has a hard end date of August 2nd. This will mean that the children will be evicted from the Convention Center in the first week of August.
City Officials however insist that the lease will expire because the Convention Center has other important upcoming events. The fine print of the City's contract, however, does not draw such a hard line and permits City Council to extend the lease.
Garcia's new national role as a stakeholder and expert witness for unaccompanied migrant children suggest that the Mayor may have further intentions for Long Beach's involvement in providing solutions to federal immigration.
Mayor Garcia's meteoric rise from a self-described humanitarian for migrant children to a stakeholder and expert witness before Congress is a significant advancement and one that Long Beach residents have been sidelined on throughout much of the process.
Members of the Subcommittee say they are " eager to move forward with solutions given the devastation wrought by four years of the Trump administration's cruel and ineffective immigration policies."
But Long Beach has its share of explaining to do with regard to how it's handled local immigration policies just in the last few weeks.
Only weeks ago Garcia and City Council suspended significant portions of the Long Beach Values Act which prohibited local police from collaborating with ICE. In a compromise to house migrant children and in exchange for the $35 Million contract, some Long Beach immigrants lost the protections they once enjoyed. An unintended consequence of suspending the Long Beach Values Act is that it may disincentives families to come forward and claim migrant children when the City has suspended the very policies that protected them.
How Garcia can provide any meaningful "solutions to improving our [national] system for unaccompanied children" to Congress is hard to understand since he only been a temporary leasor to migrant children for 168 hours.
Additionally, his approach to the matter locally has been rife with controversy.
In a few short weeks, he has managed to block balanced public comment. Even established immigration advocates were not given an opportunity to speak to local representatives because Garcia overwhelmed the time allotted for public comment with friends, hand selected supporters and even a family member.
Garcia also promised media access to tour the facility before forbiding nearly all media access in the wee hours before the tour was announced with less than a days notice. In the end Garcia toured the facility with supporters and seven members of City Council.
Following his tour city officials described things they witnessed that were clearly refuted by pictures taken the same day. Some officials described the children as having beds when it was apparent that only military-like cots had been provided for little girls as small as 3 years old.
Not having independent eyes on the ground or a voice at City Council isn't the only way residents have been left out of what Mayor Garcia promised would be a humanitarian process that allowed for substantive community engagement.
After providing local residents and businesses a link to an online form to volunteer supplies as well as food an beverages, a long established Mexican cuisine restaurant, Lola's, was refused when they offered to feed Latin American Migrant children cuisine that would feel like home.
The excuse was that existing vendors and contractors already occupied the space.
This came after Lola's received as much as $5,000 from local community members who quickly supported the need. Instead of helping residents and local business navigate red tape, City officials have limited engagement to a City run foundation ready to accept cash donations only.
What is confusing for residents is why provisions were made for the Long Beach Community Foundation work directly with the Department of Health and Human Services while local residents and businesses are shown the door. The excuse of contract term barriers is flimsy in the face of a naked display of selective application.
Mayor Garcia insist that he is motivated by humanitarianism.
Moments from now Mayor Garcia will speak to members of Congress and in 104 days the Long Beach Convention Center will close its doors to migrant children who have not been reunified with family members. While being a stakeholder and an expert witness Garcia has no exit strategy for the children aside from what he has called a "hard" end date.
For live coverage of the Mayor's expert testimony today please join the Memo on the North Long Beach News Facebook Group.
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