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Common sense, compassion absent in child immigrant shelter debate

 
Published Oct. 16, 2014

There's a soccer ball out back. Foosball and air hockey tables, too — the kind of toys that might get a lot of use among teenage boys. Play time is limited, however. Six hours a day these kids are in class, right in the same building where they eat their meals and sleep four to a room.

They study English and learn about the United States. The curriculum is state approved. They study the same lessons used by the successful PACE program for girls. There are occasional field trips. They get into a van and, under adult supervision, head out to the Florida Aquarium or a similar destination. It's part of the learning process.

These aren't traditional home-schooled children, by the way. These are boys who've fled violence in Central America and made their way, sans parents, to the U.S. border, hoping to be reunited with relatives already in this country.

The boys are living temporarily in a building in Holiday. The average stay is just 17 days. Under different circumstances, they'd be labeled tourists and welcomed to the community as an economic generator.

Their temporary home is surrounded by a 6-foot-tall vinyl fence. The only signs are small placards advising that the premises is under round-the-clock security camera surveillance. Abutting the property are a community civic clubhouse, two lots for parking boats and recreational vehicles, an FGUA utility pump station, and a passive park owned by Pasco County.

Journalists haven't been allowed inside the building, but elected office-holders have. Much of the description here comes courtesy of Rep. Amanda Murphy, D-New Port Richey, who toured the facility in early September.

"Everything seemed very normal, very quiet,'' Murphy said afterward. "The boys are very well-behaved, very respectful and very thankful for everything they are getting.''

Only eight boys were there that day even though, under a federal contract, Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services has permission to house up to 16. Now, the agency is seeking county permission to expand its capacity to 32 children and the request has triggered a firestorm of controversy about national immigration policies. It played out last week before the county's Planning Commission, an advisory body, and is expected to be repeated on Tuesday when Pasco Commissioners make the final ruling.

Except, immigration became a secondary consideration at the Planning Commission. Twenty-eight people, not counting the Gulf Coast CEO and her attorney, stepped to the podium and offered sworn testimony. Only eight spoke in support of the expansion. Many of the rest morphed into health-care experts expressing fears of lice, measles, Ebola virus, tuberculosis and poliolike illnesses. Apparently they think these teenagers are carriers of everything but the bubonic plague. Oddly, though, the staff members at the home including a program administrator, two clinicians, a nurse, a teacher, a cook and an administrative assistant work without hazmat suits.

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Two planning commissioners bought into this regrettable logic and cited the potential for disease as a reason for voting against the expansion. Following their line of thinking, it is amazing that HCA ever won zoning approval to locate its new medical center on former agricultural land in the affluent Trinity development. There are infectious diseases in hospitals, you know. Sick people everywhere.

The other consideration was the effect on surrounding property values. There is no diminished value, the county staff said, because a residential treatment facility has been up and operating in the neighborhood since 2007. Initially, it served disabled adults. The clientele switched to the undocumented children earlier this year amid the influx of tens of thousands of children traversing the border in Texas.

Again, two planning commissioners said they didn't buy that observation. They said adding 16 beds — even though it meant no physical expansion of the 7,000-square-foot-building — would be detrimental to surrounding property. They need to get out more. Abandoned homes and code enforcement violations are an eyesore in the blue-collar Aloha Gardens neighborhood and pose a greater threat to home values than a group of kids from another country.

Many in the audience last week wore white T-shirts with the Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services motto, "In times of need.''

After listening to this debate, we all should be wearing similar T-shirts. This community is much needier than it appears.

What it needs is a dose of humanity.