Migrant site still an option
U. S.: Kids could stay temporarily
The Arkansas National Guard is at best several months away from being ready to use the former Ouachita Job Corps site near Hot Springs for an expansion of its program targeting at- risk youths, a spokesman said.
The National Guard’s timeline leaves the door open for the U. S. Health and Human Services Department to convert the vacant, federally owned property into a temporary shelter for unaccompanied Central American children apprehended at the U. S. border.
A senior U. S. Health and Human Services Department official said Friday that the agency would defer to the National Guard if it was ready to establish the program, but may look to run the shelter at the site in the interim if the Guard doesn’t plan to use it by summer or fall.
It remains a complicated situation, officials said, because the Garland County complex will require at least $ 2 million in renovation before either of the competing state and federal government proposals to use it can be implemented. And the Health and Human Services Department is still assessing the site, meaning it could opt to scrap the idea altogether.
The Arkansas National
Guard in early December first expressed interest in using the property to accommodate expansion of its Youth Challenge program, which offers life- skills lessons to teenagers who are struggling in school or have dropped out.
But the expansion’s details, the nature of partnerships with other state agencies, how to pay for it and a concrete timeline remain unknown, National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Joel Lynch said.
“Our decision is kind of made: We want [ the property], but we can’t do it without some help,” said Lynch, who was among National Guard and other state officials who toured the site Jan. 13.
Two weeks after a Dec. 4 National Guard memo to the U. S. Forest Service indicating it wanted to use the property to expand the Youth Challenge program, officials with the Health and Human Services Department toured the site to assess whether it could serve as a temporary shelter for unaccompanied aliens 17 or younger.
The news drew rebuke from U. S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, whose 4th District includes Garland County, and U. S. Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton. In a joint news conference, the Republicans urged the Health and Human Services Department to stop considering the site for a shelter, calling it “irresponsible and against the wishes of Arkansans.”
Such shelters are a step between children’s detentions and their long- term releases to sponsors with whom the children live while their immigration cases are heard. The children, 95 percent of whom are from Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador, are fleeing gang violence in their native countries, immigration experts have said.
In the 2014 and 2016 fiscal years, the number of children the U. S. Border Patrol referred to the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement surged. The more than 59,000 referrals the agency received in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 was a record and more than four times the 13,600 children referred to the agency in fiscal 2012.
The shelter considered for Arkansas would be the third temporary facility to complement roughly 100 longer- term but similarly run shelters in the United States.
Temporary shelters, which have higher capacities than the longer- term holding facilities, are needed as overflow centers when the number of apprehended children spikes, said Andrea Helling, the Office of Refugee Resettlement chief of staff, during a conference call Jan. 13 with local and state officials.
“The referral numbers of children coming into our care on a daily basis fluctuate wildly, and our commitment from the lessons we learned [ after a spike] in 2014 is to make sure we have enough beds in our capacity to quickly respond, to bring more beds on line as necessary,” Helling said.
When the agency is short on beds, children spend more time at border stations not equipped to house children for extended periods, Helling said.
Health and Human Services Department officials estimate the former Job Corps site could hold between 500 and 1,000 children at one time, or about half the size of the other two temporary shelters in Florida and on the New Mexico- Texas border, Helling said.
In the call, Helling also said the federal government would defer to a local long- term plan for the abandoned site if the two are in direct conflict. The U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service owns the property, which the U. S. Department of Labor managed for the Job Corps program before shutting it down in July.
“Our exploration of this as a potential temporary site is entirely contingent upon the local community’s plans for longterm use of the site,” Helling said. “If the [ National] Guard needs to use the site as early as March or April, then it may not work out for [ the Health and Human Services Department] to come and use the site temporarily, but if the Guard’s plans are longer- term — summer or fall or later next year — then there might be an opportunity for [ the department] to use the site in the interim.”
Westerman said in a telephone interview that he would not support a plan for the department to operate the facility temporarily as a shelter before handing it off to the National Guard.
“I see it from my perspective that the National Guard should have first dibs on the facility because they started looking at it almost immediately after the Department of Labor shut down the Job Corps Center,” Westerman said. “You’re looking at a program that benefits Arkansas youth.”
Lynch, the National Guard spokesman, said it would take at least six months for the Guard to make use of the facility because that’s how the twice- ayear, 22- week Youth Challenge courses are scheduled. Even that timeline would assume that renovations and funding are in place by then, Lynch said.
“I think this is just an opportunity right now,” Lynch said. “You need to have a checkbook, and we don’t have that.
Everybody wants the program to grow a little bit, but the how is something nobody has really pushed yet.”
A Forest Service supervisor, in a Dec. 21 memo addressed to National Guard Brig. Gen. Gregery Bacon, estimated it would cost at least $ 2 million to ready the building for a new use.
A sea wall needs to be repaired, some buildings would have to be demolished and the existing sewage facility must be replaced, the memo says.
“Our estimate is subject to change pending results of required studies and how much of the site is ultimately needed for future anticipated use,” the memo says, also asking for specific information about the National Guard’s plans.
A surveyor accompanied the Guard- led facility tour Jan. 13, but the scope of necessary renovation remains unclear, Lynch said.
Among unanswered questions, Lynch said, are whether the National Guard would need to lease or own the property, possible partnerships with other local and state agencies and how to pay for the so far unknown costs to start the program and keep it running.
The federal government covers 75 percent of the cost to run Youth Challenge, and the state covers the remaining 25 percent. An expansion will require more staff and more money to run, Lynch said.
The general idea is to offer a second tier of programming to Youth Challenge — perhaps calling it Job Challenge — to offer job- skills training to children who completed the 22- week course, Lynch said.
“That’s where they [ would] get taught more employment skills, not degrees, [ but] maybe certifications,” Lynch said, noting that the specifics are not finalized.
Two Youth Challenge courses run per year, and participation is voluntary — the 16- to
18- year- old attendees can leave as they choose and are not court- ordered to attend, Lynch said. The boarding program typically runs at less than the 170- student capacity, graduating about 100 per course, he said.
The Arkansas Department of Human Services’ Youth Services Division, which addresses youths in the juvenile- justice system, is one of the stage agencies the National Guard seeks to partner with on the expansion, Lynch said.
Human Services spokesman Brandi Hinkle said a department official attended the Jan. 13 tour and that the creation of an alternative program for court- ordered Youth Services’ residential treatment programs was discussed. But it’s not something the Human Services Department would manage or pay for, Hinkle said.
“We were interested to see what plans they have, but it is not our program or project,” Hinkle said. “I know that we are not going to have any funds that will go toward it or anything of that nature. But because our youth programs deal with kids who have needs for some structure, that they might participate in whatever programs are there.”