State may house migrant children
Lamont considers using closed juvenile training school as temporary home
MIDDLETOWN — The state is considering housing immigrant children who entered the country without permission at the former state-run Connecticut Juvenile Training School, where the governor visited late last week as he reviews options, though a decision not been made, according to his director of communications.
The state’s beleaguered facility for incarcerated male youths under the charge of the Department
of Children and Families, at 1225 River Road, near the Connecticut Valley Hospital campus, closed in April 2018.
“No decision has been made at all and nothing is imminent. This is very much in the planning stages,” Max Reiss, Gov. Ned Lamont’s press secretary, said Wednesday afternoon. “There is no guarantee anything will happen at all.”
The particulars, including the ages of children, numbers of those possibly to be relocated, and where they would be coming from, are unknown, said Reiss, who offered no further details.
The tour included DCF Commissioner Vannessa Dorantes, first lady Annie Lamont, Secretary of the Office of Policy and Management Melissa McCaw and Chief of Staff Paul Mounds, Reiss said.
The state, just as others around the country have, has been “reviewing options for weeks to provide for the safe,
secure, compassionate, humane, and adequate care of migrant children potentially traveling to our state, if the need arises,” Reiss said. “The Lamont administration will only move forward so long as any accommodations are consistent with Connecticut’s standard of care for all children.”
That includes outdoor space and classrooms, he said. “The governor is doing this because it’s the right thing to do.”
A spokesperson for the federal HHS Administration for Children and Families said “We will notify state and local officials well in advance of opening any temporary facility.”
The detention center originally opened in 2001 under former Gov. John G. Rowland. It cost $57 million to build and millions more in annual costs to operate, according to the state.
Prior to the closure of the River Road facility, the number of youths housed dropped precipitously due to a declining rate of juvenile and young adult arrests, a record low crime rate, the impact of former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s criminal justice reforms, and the enhanced behavioral health services made available by DCF to all of Connecticut’s youth, according to Malloy’s office at the time.
The initiative for immigrant children is in the preliminary stages, and other options are being considered, Reiss said. “The governor, with the first lady, wanted to see it with his own eyes what options would look like.”
“I’m glad to see there’s some interest in that site,” Middletown Mayor Ben Florsheim said. “The whole campus is a huge part of Middletown. “We want to work collaboratively with the state however we can for the future of that site.”
John Lugo, community organizing director for Unidad Latina en Acción in New Haven, said he had not previously heard about Lamont looking at the site, but he thinks the former training school site “doesn’t make any sense. There has to me a more proper place to house them.”
Lugo said he thinks it is “important that the state cares, but it’s important which place and in what conditions they are going to be housed.”
He said placing them at the former training school site could be “just another
trauma that they will go through.”
“They should be with their families as soon as possible,” he said. “It’s not a bad thing but it depends where. The bottom line is that they should be released as soon as possible.”
Lugo said the children are supposed to be released to their families, “Places where they feel safe and where they feel loved.”
When an unaccompanied minor crosses the U.S. southern border, they are processed by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and may be held in CBP detention sites near the border for a brief period of time, according to the website.
With children, the U.S. government quickly tries to move children to other facilities run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that are designed to care for children. Then, the government works to reunify the child with family or other sponsors in America, the border protection office said.
In February 2021, more than 100,000 people attempted to cross the U.S. Southern border, a great increase from the month prior, but part of an ongoing upward trend over the past several months, according to CBP data. Most single adults and families are being turned away from the border and denied entry. But the Biden administration is letting unaccompanied minors in.
As of the end of February, about 29,000 unaccompanied children have been encountered along the southern border since October, over 9,000 in the month of February alone, CBP data shows.
HHS is working to increase capacity in its permanent and licensed care provider network by opening new facilities and making adjustments to existing facilities, bringing online more than 200 across the country, a senior administration official said last month. It can take 9 months to 1 year to bring online a new state licensed facility.
In addition to opening new facilities, HHS is using vaccination, increased testing and grouping children into cohorts a strategies to expand the number of beds available in facilities, a senior administration official said. The number of beds have been reduced due to social distancing during COVID-19.
Washington Correspondent Emilie Munson and staff writer Jordan Fenster contributed to this story.