CONFUSION: Fate of 2,300 kids who were separated from their parents remains unclear
The immediate fate of more than 2,300 immigrant children remains unclear as government officials and advocates scrambled Thursday to determine their next steps after President Donald Trump suddenly ended his policy of separating families apprehended at the border.
They will now be detained together, a move all but certain to result in legal challenges. But the president’s order does nothing to reunite the thousands of immigrant children, some only a few months old, who have already been taken from their parents and placed in government care.
“It’s chaos,” said Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission, a national advocacy group. “Everything is just moving really fast … I am not convinced they have a plan for reunifying
those they have separated.”
Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services in charge of immigrant minors, said Thursday the agency has more than 2,440 children in its custody who are 12 and younger.
It’s unclear how many of those have been taken from their parents, but advocates say most may have been. Separated children tend to be younger than other so-called unaccompanied minors who came here alone, usually to find their families, and typically range between the ages of 10 and 17.
In all, the agency is housing about 11,800 children in more than 100 federal shelters across the country.
The office is “awaiting further guidance on the implementation of the Executive Order,” Wolfe said in a statement. “Reunification is always the ultimate goal of those entrusted with the care of unaccompanied alien children, and we are working toward that for those unaccompanied alien children currently in our custody.”
Confusion in courts
Chaos also filled some federal courts in which parents have been criminally prosecuted while their children are removed. Daryl Fields, a spokesman for the U..S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, said in a statement late Thursday that certain pending illegal entry charges for parents have been dismissed following Wednesday’s executive order.
“There is a necessary transition that will need to occur now that those charged are no longer being transferred to the custody of U.S. marshals and are staying together with their children” in Homeland Security detention, he said. “We are moving quickly to keep families together as we process the criminal charges for those who crossed illegally.”
Maureen Franco, public defender for the district, said in an email that she was told it is because the area doesn’t have available facilities allowing the joint detention of parents with their children, as required by the order.
Meanwhile, it is unclear what, if any, procedures have been established to reunite families who have been split among the three sprawling federal agencies overseeing their care.
Under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, parents usually served just a few days of prison time for illegally crossing the border before going to immigration detention centers run by the Department of Homeland Security. From there, they can be quickly deported without their children. In one case, a Guatemalan father was deported and had no idea where his 18-month-old toddler was for five months until they were reunited in December.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement has said it is not routinely informed about how or when parents and children were separated and where the adults may be.
“You’re talking about 2,000-plus children scattered across America,” said U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat. “What a difficult challenge, and our fear is that we lose one child.”
The sudden influx of so many very young children has overwhelmed the federal government, which has put out emergency calls for contractors across the nation to provide more bed space and recruit more foster parents. It has meant some children are not put in a foster home with a family, as has generally been the goal for “tender age” kids, but instead may stay for weeks and even months in a residential shelter intended for older children.
Most child advocates believe this is not in the best interests of the children.
“Kids, particularly young kids, should be in a smaller, more community-based setting, as opposed to the larger scale institutional-like settings,” said Kathryn Kuennen, associate director of children's services with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which cares for unaccompanied minors.
Its only transitional residential shelter holds 12 kids.
Feds overwhelmed
Statewide, shelters are requesting approval to take in hundreds more kids than they were originally licensed to hold, records show. Advocates report at least three facilities in south Texas are frantically being re-outfitted to specifically hold greater numbers of much younger children.
Jackson Lee visited one such facility in Brownsville this week, a shelter known as Casa El Presidente that is owned by Southwest Key Programs. The Texas-based nonprofit has come under the spotlight for its role in housing nearly half of all unaccompanied children in the federal government’s custody.
The facility is licensed to detain up to 304 children between the ages of “0-17,” though officials have submitted a variance to the state Health and Human Services Commission requesting to add another 24. As of mid-May, the latest state information available, it held 56 children, though that has increased significantly since.
In her visit, Jackson Lee said she saw a nursery that held five infants, two of whom had been separated from their parents.
“At night there was one attendant outside the door,” she said. “I’m concerned they are not getting the attention they need.”
One baby, 9-month-old Roger, had been taken from his 19-year-old sister after she was prosecuted for crossing the border illegally. Their mother is dead and they were coming here to find family.
“Frankly, it’s an institution,” Jackson Lee said.
Though she said employees tried their best to care for children, she worried that as the government ramps up capacity at dizzying speed, shortcuts may be taken or mistakes made.
“I’m concerned if they have the right kind of staff to care for such very young, traumatized children,” she said.
Southwest Key has said that it is proud of its decades-long record caring for children and that it does not support separat- ing families at the border.
“For every child who has come through our shelter doors, we start on day one to reunite them with their parents or a family sponsor and to provide the kind of service that will help them thrive,” it said in a statement on its website. “This has been our priority for decades."
A frantic environment
Advocates say other shelters being adjusted to hold young children may include a Southwest Key facility in Harlingen that is licensed to take children between the ages of “0-17” and has capacity to hold 69. It has requested the state allow it to add 18. Another shelter in Raymondville run by BCFS Health and Human Services, which is based in San Antonio, is outfitted to hold 50 children over the age of five. BCFS did not return calls seeking comment.
Advocates who work with small children describe a frantic environment in which children are being placed wherever there is bed space.
“I am hearing that there are kids everywhere,” Brané said.
According to a Houston Chronicle analysis, eight general residential facilities in Texas that contract with the federal government are licensed to hold children “0-17.” Their current capacity is 653 children. Southwest Key, which is trying to open an additional “0 to 17” facility for 240 children in Houston, runs two of those shelters.
The organization houses more than 5,100 immigrant children, nearly half of all those currently in government custody. It came under the national spotlight when U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, was barred from entering one of its biggest facilities, Casa Padre, a former Walmart in Brownsville caring for almost 1,500 immigrant children between the ages of 10 and 17.
The Austin-based nonprofit is paid more than $400 million annually to house immigrant children in 27 shelters across Texas, Arizona and California.