Kids separated from relatives at border strain U.S. shelters
“I am afraid that the current administration is going to start looking at solutions to speed up processing, and then with some of those decisions, they could choose expediency over safety.” Chad Wolf Former acting homeland security secretary under President Donald Trump
SAN FRANCISCO — Tenyear-old Leonardo had not seen his mother in years. His hope, as he set out from Guatemala with his aunt and her young daughter, was that they would all be able to reunite with his mother, Emiliana, in California together.
Instead on Feb. 23, he descended an escalator in the Los Angeles airport for the long-awaited reunion alone. After Emiliana finally embraced her son with tears streaming down her face, Leonardo’s first question was: “Why aren’t Aunt Rosa and my cousin here?”
As President Joe Biden’s administration grapples with how to house thousands of unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, advocates say ending a longstanding practice of separating children like Leonardo from caretaking relatives would help reduce overcrowding in U.S. government custody.
Under U.S. immigration law, families are narrowly defined as children and their parents or legal guardians. Children separated from grandparents, aunts, older siblings and other relatives are classified as “unaccompanied” and sent to shelters or foster care overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) until they can be released to a vetted sponsor, usually a parent or close family member.
Immigrant advocates say the separations are, in many cases, unnecessary. They argue that thousands of children could stay out of the shelter system if they were released with their accompanying relatives to pursue U.S. asylum cases in immigration court.
SEPARATIONS
Since November, a handful of non-profit groups that work with unaccompanied children have compiled tallies showing that as many as 10 to 17 per cent of children in custody were separated from relatives, according to three people briefed on the data, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss internal estimates.
The numbers have not been made public before and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency told Reuters they do not track such separations.
The White House referred a request for comment on the policy of separating children from relatives to CBP and the Department of Homeland Security, which said the statutory definition of an unaccompanied minor is a child with no parent or legal guardian available to provide care.
About 11,900 children were in HHS shelters and nearly 5,800 children were in border patrol custody as of March 28. To reduce overcrowding, the administration is rapidly expanding emergency influx shelters and surveying military bases to host migrant children.
Immigrant advocacy groups are working on a provision they hope will be included in the upcoming U.S. government spending bill that would fund reception centers where children could remain with non-parent family members and be evaluated by child welfare experts for joint release, according to a draft text reviewed by Reuters.
While it is too early to say if the proposal will become law, Biden has hired members of the advocacy community as top immigration advisers, and his administration consults with them frequently.
Salvador Zamora, a former CBP official who retired in December, questioned how such a center would work in practice. Verifying the nationality and identity of a person arriving at the border is time consuming, he said.
The process involves backlogged consulates of the migrants’ country of origin, who often need to send officials to the municipality the person claims to be from. “How do we verify identity, nationality, let alone familial status within a reasonable amount of time?” he said.
Echoing those concerns, Chad Wolf, who was acting homeland security secretary under President Donald Trump, said changing the policy could encourage smugglers to falsify family relationships.
“I am afraid that the current administration is going to start looking at solutions to speed up processing,” he said, “and then with some of those decisions, they could choose expediency over safety.”
NOWHERE TO GO
When U.S. authorities separated Leonardo and sent him to a shelter in New York, they expelled his aunt Rosalina — eight months pregnant at the time — and his cousin Marisol to Mexico.
The policy used to expel them, a Trump-era public health rule known as Title 42, was implemented in March 2020. Biden has left the rule largely intact, although he has exempted unaccompanied minors.
When Rosalina was expelled, she fainted on a street near the international bridge in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
“I had no idea where I was, I had no idea where to go,” Rosalina said in an interview from a Mexican shelter where she is staying after recently giving birth to her baby. She said she fled Guatemala with Leonardo and Marisol after a brutal assault and fears going back.
The family asked to be identified by their first names for their safety and so as not to impact their asylum claims.
While Leonardo had his mother waiting for him, some children separated from their relatives at the U.S.-Mexico border do not.