Mayor of Lynn, Massachusetts on influx of illegal immigrants

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Mayor of Lynn, Massachusetts on influx of illegal immigrants

How is wave of kids impacting city?

This is a rush transcript from "Your World," July 16, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

STUART VARNEY, GUEST HOST: From checking in to getting tapped out. Officials in Lynn, Massachusetts, say the surge of illegal immigrant children and families is overwhelming the system, from trash collection to health care services to overcrowded classrooms.

Judith Kennedy is the mayor of Lynn. She joins us on the phone.

Your Honor, I understand that you have got, what is it, 248 children from Guatemala alone in your school system on very short notice. Is that accurate?

JUDY KENNEDY, R-MAYOR OF LYNN, MASSACHUSETTS: Yes, that's the number that we have received between the ages of 14 and 17 in the last two school years.

VARNEY: How -- who's paying for them?

KENNEDY: We are.

VARNEY: What special services do you have to provide for nearly 250 teenagers? I mean, do they speak English?

KENNEDY: Often, they come in not speaking English, and not even speaking Spanish, but speaking a tribal dialect, a village dialect from their home province.

So -- and, in that case, many of them are also illiterate in both of those languages. We're really starting with older children, if you want to call them that, who have had little or no formal schooling.

VARNEY: Did you know they were coming?

KENNEDY: No. We have gotten no notice from anybody until they arrived.

VARNEY: I mean, they literally arrived on buses or planes and were then shuttled to Lynn, Massachusetts, and put straight into the school system?

KENNEDY: Well, I don't think they came all at once. We started noticing in the fall of 2012 that we had about 60 new registrations in the city schools that were all coming from -- I think it's called San Marcos in Guatemala and we started to question why this was happening. And as it turns out, it was the first wave of these unaccompanied minors.

VARNEY: Now, can you cope? I'm talking financially. Can you cope financially?

KENNEDY: This year, I have had to increase my school department budget 9.3 percent, and have had to cut all of my other city budgets between 2 percent and 5 percent to make up for the influx of the unaccompanied children and the surge.

We have had over 1,000 not-native-born children enter our school system in the last four years.

VARNEY: Have you applied for federal assistance?

KENNEDY: We have reach out to members of the federal delegation here and have not gotten any response, have not gotten any financial assistance, so I plan to go to Washington, D.C., next month and meet with members of the Judiciary Committee to see if I might be able to obtain some kind of assistance to help my city.

VARNEY: One last one. We said 248 youngsters from Guatemala. Are there other youngsters, illegal immigrants, in your school system, and how many?

KENNEDY: Yes, there are, but it's a handful compared to the number that are coming from this particular province in Guatemala.

VARNEY: Mayor Kennedy, thank you very much for taking time with us today. I know that you're -- you're busy with flooding in your area.

Thanks for taking the time. We do appreciate it, ma'am. Thank you.

KENNEDY: And thank you. Thank you for having me.

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