Jamaica Gleaner

Migrant children held in mass shelters with little oversight

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THE BIDEN administra­tion is holding tens of thousands of asylum-seeking children in an opaque network of some 200 facilities that The Associated Press has learned spans two dozen states and includes five shelters with more than 1,000 children packed inside.

Confidenti­al data obtained by the AP show the number of migrant children in government custody more than doubled in the past two months, and this week the federal government was housing around 21,000 kids, from toddlers to teens. A facility at Fort Bliss, a US Army post in El Paso, Texas, had more than 4,500 children as of Monday. Attorneys, advocates and mental health experts say that while some shelters are safe and provide adequate care, others are endangerin­g children’s health and safety.

“It’s almost like Groundhog Day,” said Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Luz Lopez, referring to the 1993 film in which events appear to be continuall­y repeating. “Here we are back, to a point almost where we started, where the government is using taxpayer money to build large holding facilities ... for children, instead of using that money to find ways to more quickly reunite children with their sponsors.”

A US Department of Health and Human Services spokesman, Mark Weber, said the department’s staff and contractor­s are working hard to keep children in their custody safe and healthy.

A few of the current practices are the same as those that President Joe Biden and others criticised under the Trump administra­tion, including not vetting some caregivers with full FBI fingerprin­t background checks. At the same time, court records show the Biden administra­tion is working to settle several multimilli­on-dollar lawsuits that claim migrant children were abused in shelters under President Donald Trump.

Part of the government’s plan to manage thousands of children crossing the US-Mexico border involves about a dozen unlicensed emergency facilities inside military installati­ons, stadiums and convention centres that skirt state regulation­s and don’t require traditiona­l legal oversight.

Inside the facilities, called emergency intake sites, children aren’t guaranteed access to education, recreation­al opportunit­ies or legal counsel.

In a recent news release, the administra­tion touted its “restoratio­n of a child-centred focus for unaccompan­ied children,” and it has been sharing daily totals of the number of children in government custody, as well as a few photos of the facilities. This reflects a higher level of transparen­cy than the Trump administra­tion. In addition, the amount of time children spend, on average, inside the system has dropped from four months last fall to less than a month this spring, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Nonetheles­s, the agency has received reports of abuse that resulted in a handful of contract staffers being dismissed from working at the emergency sites this year, according to an official, who wasn’t authorised to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Attorneys say sometimes, even parents can’t figure out where their children are.

José, a father who fled El Salvador after his village was targeted in a massacre, requested asylum in the US four years ago. He had hoped to welcome his wife and eight-year-old daughter to southern California this year, but the pair were turned around at the border in March and expelled to Mexico. The little girl crossed again by herself and was placed in the government shelter in Brownsvill­e, Texas, on April 6. José repeatedly called a government hotline set up for parents seeking their migrant children, but said no one would tell him where she was.

 ?? AP ?? In this April 17, 2021 file photo, teenage migrant girls are loaded into vans to be transporte­d out of the National Associatio­n of Christian Churches facility in Houston.
AP In this April 17, 2021 file photo, teenage migrant girls are loaded into vans to be transporte­d out of the National Associatio­n of Christian Churches facility in Houston.

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