County ready if needed for immigrants
Nelson blasts Trump policy, pledges tough questions at hearing.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson blasted the Trump administration’s zero tolerance immigration policy Monday, and a Palm Beach County commissioner said the county will lend a hand if children recently separated from their parents end up here.
The policy of separating families has drawn an intense political and social backlash even as the president doubled down on it verbally and confusion reigned over whether it was still being carried out.
The senator, locked in what is expected to be a grinding, high-profile re-election battle against Gov. Rick Scott, blasted the Trump policy and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, saying he planned to ask the secretary a series of questions when he testifies before a Senate committee today.
“I will be asking Mr. Secretary, ‘What are you hiding?’ ” Nelson said. “Why would they not let me talk to the 70 children they said they had that day?”
The federal government has said more than 2,000 immigrant children were separated from their parents and are scattered at
facilities across the country, including several in MiamiDade.
None is known to be housed in Palm Beach County. Still, they could end up getting help from some of the same organizations helping unaccompanied minors who have resettled in the county while their immigration cases are heard, immigration experts say.
County Mayor Melissa McKinlay said the responsibility for addressing the current situation rests with the Trump administration.
“If the federal government has yet to figure out a plan to reunify these children with their parents, then Palm Beach County will do our part,” she wrote in response to questions from The Palm Beach Post. “But it is up to the Trump administration to figure out now to adequately fund this foster care, health care costs (including behavioral, since these children have been traumatized), housing, and any other federal responsibility. I am not optimistic President Trump and his U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has prepared for this nor that Congress is ready to fund these costs appropriately.”
Unaccompanied minors and immigrant children recently separated from their parents are in different circumstances, though they could eventually get some of the same assistance if the federal government is unable to reunite recent arrivals who have been separated from their parents under the new policy.
While images and sounds of cry i ng children has sparked a backlash, the president’s supporters have backed him, agreeing with him when he argues that their parents should have not have entered the U.S. without documentation.
“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our country,” the president tweeted on Sunday.
Local groups such as Catholic Charities of Palm Beach County, the Youth Cooperative and Church World Service have long provided a range of services to unaccompanied minors — children who entered the country on their own in hopes of escaping violence or poverty and reconnecting with friends or relatives already living in the U.S.
Those services, offered while the immigration cases of unaccompanied minors is being decided, include an assessment of the sponsor’s home, legal assistance referrals and information about how to get health care and how to sign up for school.
Unless they have been determined to be victims of human trafficking or granted refugee status, they are not eligible for federal assistance such as food stamps, Medicaid or Supplemental Security Income through Social Security.
As of April 30, 19,658 unaccompanied minors have been released to sponsors throughout the country, according to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, which tracks immigrant resettlement and provides funding to local groups set up to help them.
A county-by-county breakdown, referred to in a recent tweet by McKinlay, indicates that only two counties — Los Angeles County and Harris County in Texas — have more unaccompanied minors than Palm Beach County.
ORR reports that 519 unaccompanied minors were in Palm Beach County. Harris County, which includes Houston, had 1,127, and Los Angeles County had 1,107, the agency reported.
Unaccompanied minors are allowed to live with sponsors until their case is decided.
“Usually, once they’re released from the border, they will go to family members,” said Maureen Porras, an attorney for Church World Service. “Then, they come to our office looking for legal services.”
Some unaccompanied minors can qualify for permanent residency if a judge decides they qualify for special immigrant juvenile status, a designation offered if an unaccompanied minor is determined to have been abandoned by their parents or suffered abuse.
Judges have been less willing to offer special immigrant juvenile status since 2013, when a wave of unaccompanied minors reached the U.S., Porras said.
“As more and more of these children came in, state courts started to get stricter,” she said. “Nowadays, it’s a lot more strict than when it first started.”
There is another path to permanent residency — asylum.
Unaccompanied minors must demonstrate that they have a reasonable fear of returning to their home because of the prospect of persecution or abuse based on their race, nationality, political opinion, religion or because they are a member of a particular social group.
That final designation was one frequently sought by unaccompanied minors, but Porras said it, too, became much harder to get after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said victims of domestic abuse or gang violence won’t automatically qualify for asylum.
“Generally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by non-governmental actors will not qualify for asylum,” Sessions wrote earlier this month to judges on the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals, typically the final arbiter of immigration cases. “The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes — such as domestic violence or gang violence — or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim.”
Critics contend that Sessions’ ruling eviscerates the claim many offer in seeking asylum in the U.S.
Immigration experts say some asylum seekers who have entered the country without documentation are now subject to arrest and prosecution under the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy.
Porras said she anticipates that some of the children recently separated from their parents will eventually need to be placed with sponsors. And that will mean local groups like hers will attempt to assist them.
“We’ll eventually start to see this,” she said. “I’m sure this will make its way here.”
Rosario Noa, program officer for Youth Cooperative, said the new policy traumatizes children who have already had a difficult time.
“It makes their experience more traumatic than it already is,” she said.