Where do detained children go?
Detained immigrant children in the US stay in shelters that are already full and are not equipped for babies, reports Dyana Mason, Assistant Professor of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon.
THE Trump Administration has been deliberately taking immigrant children away from their parents. This practice, which has already elicited objections from the United Nations, is being applied when foreign families are either caught crossing the border without documents or if they turn themselves in to seek refugee status.
Many of these children are under the age of 4 and some are infants, according to media reports and rights advocates.
Just like when immigration authorities and border agents encounter children who arrive on their own, children from families the Government splits up initially spend a few days in federally run processing centres that are by all accounts illsuited for childcare. Then they are relocated to approximately 100 federally funded shelters run largely by nonprofit organisations or put into foster care homes supervised by many of the same organisations.
These nonprofits provide unaccompanied children with healthcare and education. They also help find “sponsors” — usually extended family members — with whom children can be placed while waiting for their cases to be heard. When no sponsors are found, the children stay in shelters or foster care until their asylum cases are heard, or they are deported.
When I researched this largely hidden aspect of immigration policy, I found little evidence this patchwork system can absorb what promises to be an influx of thousands more children, many requiring roundtheclock attention. And I have no doubt that forcibly separating children from their families is completely impractical and bound to make a bad situation worse.
New policy v old rules
The Trump Administration reportedly began to pilot this practice in 2017. John Kelly openly discussed family separation to deter new arrivals in March of that year when he was leading the Department of Homeland Security. It became official when the Government adopted a new zerotolerance immigration policy in April 2017, announced a month later, that calls for prosecuting everyone who enters the US without permission.
Regardless of what President Donald Trump has insisted, this is a new interpretation of federal immigration law. Family separations like these did occur during the Bush and Obama administrations but were rare.
Trump’s policy change is turning children into unaccompanied minors. Thousands of children, who previously would have stayed briefly with their relatives in family detention centres before appearing in court or being deported, now must depend on the Government for room and board.
Some 11,000 immigrant children were in federal custody as of late May, a 20% increase over the prior month, The Washington Post reported, citing the Department of Health and Human Services.
Known as HHS, the agency estimates the Trump Administration has given approximately 50 organisations located in more than a dozen states across the nation $US1.6 billion over the past 20 months to house, feed, educate and care for these children, according to the data I found on the agency’s website.
Many of these organisations are faithbased, and often they are rooted in their local communities. Others may be juvenile detention facilities or homeless shelters. Simply put, they must have at least some beds to spare but they do not necessarily have to employ culturally competent staff or run programmes designed specifically to accommodate immigrant children.
But to house children under the age of 18, providers must — at least ideally — prove they can support them in a humane and homelike environment, provide case workers and if necessary, locate more permanent and appropriate arrangements like foster care, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
At a minimum, these contractors must be statelicensed and employ qualified professionals capable of helping the children reconnect with their relatives. That demands not just legal expertise but the ability to communicate with them in their own languages.
Children housed in shelters do not attend local schools. They are taught onsite instead, which means the facilities need to provide ageappropriate teaching staff. That drives up costs further.
Little public scrutiny
I had previously found the nonprofits the Government pays to provide these services are often granted significant leeway in terms of how they fulfil their contracts. However, it is hard for Congress and the public to find out what goes on behind closed doors.
Indeed, one of these non-profit-run shelters in Brownsville, Texas, recently refused to let Senator Jeff Merkley visit. Later, the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement, which manages the nonprofit’s government contract, said this was how it responds to all ‘‘unannounced’’ visits, even though the Oregon Democrat had requested a tour and had scheduled two similar tours nearby.
Like the senator, I cannot tell whether shelters like this one are equipped to support children for extended periods of time, or if they are appropriate locations for infants and toddlers. While it may be necessary to maintain the privacy of the children housed in facilities like this, the public should be able to learn whether these children are being cared for in places that keep them safe and healthy. That said, HHS only contracts with facilities licensed by the states where they operate.
Notably, 83% of all unaccompanied immigrant children were between the ages of 13 and 17 in 2017 fiscal year. That suggests the shelters have little experience caring for the babies and very young children being taken into custody and held miles away from their parents.
Military bases
Because these shelters are already nearly full, HHS is seeking “additional properties identified by federal agencies” that reportedly include military bases. To house children, without their parents, on military bases seems to violate both the spirit and policy of how these children should be treated.
In addition, when asked by radio host Hugh Hewitt to clarify how the new rules will work, Attorneygeneral Jeff Sessions said that “if they get into a prolonged asylum process, the children are then turned over to some sort of family that is to take care of them while the adult may be in trial”.
That is, to be sure, how the Government has handled cases of unaccompanied children who arrive alone. But previously, families entering the country without papers stayed together in family shelters while awaiting deport ation or their asylum hearings. Others were enrolled in a family case management programme, which the Government is shutting down. It helped immigrant families secure legal services, housing and healthcare.
Concerns about this policy are spreading as the public hears more about how it is traumatising children and their families. One organisation said at least six children known to them were accidentally left behind after their parents were deported.
In some instances, these parents are saying they do not know where their children are or how they will be reunited with their kids. Marco Antonio Munoz took his own life in a Texas jail soon after the Government “separated” the Honduran man, his wife and their 3yearold son. The undocumented family had entered the US to seek political asylum.
It is not clear how long this may continue. A federal judge has already allowed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of taking children away from their parents to move forward.
A Senate Bill that would stop this practice is pending and more than 100 lawmakers have signed a letter calling for the cessation of funds for immigrantfamily separation. — theconversation. com