Crisis as kids cross border into US
Migrant centres struggle with large spike in arrivals
For the third time in seven years, US officials are scrambling to handle a dramatic spike in children crossing the Us-mexico border alone, leading to a massive expansion in emergency facilities to house them as more kids arrive than are being released to close relatives in the United States.
More than 22,000 migrant children were in government custody as of Thursday, with 10,500 sleeping on cots at convention centers, military bases and other large venues likened to hurricane evacuation shelters with little space to play and no privacy. More than 2500 are being held by border authorities in substandard facilities.
The government failed to prepare for a big increase in children travelling alone as President Joe Biden ended some of his predecessor’s hardline immigration policies and decided he wouldn’t quickly expel unaccompanied kids as the Trump administration did for eight months.
So many children are coming that there’s little room in long-term care facilities, where capacity shrank significantly during the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, minors are packed into Border Patrol facilities not meant to hold them longer than three days or they’re staying for weeks in the mass housing sites that often lack the services they need. Lawyers say some have not seen social workers who can reunite them with family in the US.
Both presidents Trump and Barack Obama faced similar upticks in Central American children crossing the border alone in 2019 and 2014. The numbers have now reached historic highs amid economic fallout from the pandemic, storms in Central America and the feeling among migrants that Biden is more welcoming than his predecessor.
Projections from a former top official in the US Health and Human
Services Department, which cares for migrant children until they’re reunited with family, said the agency would run out beds by mid-january or early February. On February 22, the Biden administration reopened a tent facility used during previous increases as smaller shelters ran out of beds.
The Border Patrol encountered 18,663 unaccompanied children in March, the highest monthly total on record, well above previous highs of 11,475 in 2019 and 10,620 in 2014.
The number of children in custody rose after eight months of expulsions that began in March 2020, when Trump invoked an obscure public health law amid the pandemic. More than 15,000 unaccompanied children
were expelled between April and November last year, according to government figures.
In response to a 2019 uptick in crossings, the Trump administration had increased the number of beds in small and medium-size shelters that are better prepared to handle family reunifications – to 13,000 by early 2020.
But pandemic restrictions brought down actual capacity to 7800 beds by November, said Mark Greenberg, who was acting assistant secretary for the Administration of Children and Families at US Health and Human Services during Obama’s second term and part of Biden’s transition team. A February government tally had it at 7100 beds.
During the last months of Trump’s term, unaccompanied minors were allowed to stay after a federal judge ruled in November that the government
couldn’t use the pandemic as a reason to expel them. In January, an appeals court said the government could resume the practice, but Biden decided against it.
The numbers quickly rose under Biden, who ended other Trump policies, including one that made asylumseekers wait in Mexico for court hearings in the US.
Jonathan H Hayes, who directed Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement from February 2019 to March 2020, said the Biden administration needed to listen to estimates on capacity needs before undoing Trump’s policies.
Projections of arrivals threatened to strain the system and should have prompted officials to hit pause, considering the time it takes to get licensed shelters up and running, Hayes said.
It took longer
than
usual
after protests in 2018 and 2019 turned the public against Health and Human Services, Hayes said, referring to demonstrations outside facilities that housed migrant children separated from their parents under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy.
Opening shelters for unaccompanied minors normally took four to six months as the government acquired state licenses and local permits. But in 2019, it was taking anywhere from nine to 12 months because of community pushback.
Recent federal court filings show the problems that Health and Human Services faces as the number of children rises.
The challenge “will likely increase in severity in the coming weeks and months,” Cindy Huang, director of HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, wrote last week. She said the agency is prioritising moving children out of border authorities’ custody, relying on the growing network of large emergency venues run by private contractors.
Setting up the sites has cut in half the number of unaccompanied minors in US Customs and Border Protection custody to 2500, down from 5000 in late March. But the transfers are severely straining Health and Human Services resources.
The first week of April, 5000 children were transferred to HHS sites or shelters, but only about 2000 were released to relatives, according to government figures. This was after already reducing the average length of stay in HHS custody from 51 days in October to 35 in March and instituting measures to speed up releases, such as flying children to their families.
HHS spokesman Mark Weber said the Biden administration has taken “aggressive actions” to expedite transfers out of Border Patrol facilities and shorten stays at the large emergency sites. But they struggle to keep pace with need.
Eleven emergency sites have opened since mid-march. At two visited by lawyers, children said they had not met case managers tasked with reuniting them with family.
—AP