1 in 5 immigrant children detained during ‘zero tolerance’ border policy are under 13
The Trump administration has detained 2,322 children 12 years old or younger amid its border crackdown, a Department of Health and Human Services official told Kaiser Health News on Wednesday.
They represent almost 20 percent of the immigrant children currently held by the U.S. government in the wake of its latest immigrant prosecution policy.
Their welfare is being overseen by a small division of the Department of Health and Human Services – the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) – which has little experience or expertise in handling very young children.
The number of children has exploded in the past six weeks since the Trump administration moved to stop parents and their children at the U.S. border and separate and detain them in different facilities. A total of 11,786 children under age 18 are currently detained, the official said.
Since 2003, ORR has been charged with sheltering and finding suitable A young boy is detained along with his family members in Texas.
homes for “unaccompanied alien children” – generally teenaged immigrants who reach the United States without a parent or guardian.
But its responsibilities have morphed and multiplied since April because the immigration crackdown means that the ORR is now responsible for detaining not only more children, but minors who are far younger than those who had arrived in the past, experts said.
Beyond specialized medical care, younger children have different food and housing needs, and require more personal attention.
“The children are
younger and will be there for a longer time and are deeply traumatized by being forcibly separated from their parents,” said Mark Greenberg, a former administration official at HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, which oversees the ORR. “All of that makes it much more difficult to operate the program.”
The complex crisis is magnified by the inexperience of some of the political appointees leading the response, said critics who include former officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations of the past decade.
ORR Director Scott Lloyd is a lawyer whose career has been focused on anti-abortion efforts. He led the Trump administration’s legal efforts to prevent abortions for detained teen immigrants. Lloyd’s main immigration experience before leading ORR was research for a report on refugees for the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service organization with an anti-abortion stance, according to a deposition he gave in lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Kenneth Wolfe, the HHS spokesman who provided the figures, declined to address how many people are currently working at ORR or whether ORR had secured additional staff or expertise to cope with the influx of young children.
He also would not say how many of the 2,322 children 12 and younger have been separated from their families.
The administration had previously refused to provide the ages of the children separated from their families – saying only that about 2,300 children have been separated and detained since the policy took effect.