San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Immigrant children shipped off across U.S.
AUSTIN — The little girl hardly has said a word since she landed at the airport in Columbia, S.C., and walked off the plane, between a man and woman hired to accompany her on the flight.
Days earlier, she and her mother had been detained along the U.S.Mexico border. The mother was taken into custody to face criminal charges of illegal entry. At that moment, the girl, not yet 10, became an “unaccompanied minor” — and a ward of the U.S. government.
She then was put on a plane to South Carolina — her first-ever flight — and met at the airport by Lutheran Services Carolinas employees, who took her to a foster home.
That was a week ago. The girl and her mother have not spoken since they were split apart. Staff members at Lutheran Services have been unable to find a phone number for the mother.
It was a traumatic entry into America and one that thousands of other children — some teenagers, some not yet 1 year old — are experiencing as the Trump administration enforces a “zero-tolerance” policy at the border.
More than 2,300 migrant children have been separated from parents, and dozens now are being
funneled from Texas shelters to foster homes across the country, including in South Carolina and Michigan.
The children face daunting questions about where they will live and in what conditions, about who will raise them and when they will see — or even talk to — their parents again.
“When the child first arrives, there’s a lot of distrust,” said Rebecca Gibson, program director for Lutheran Services Carolinas, who described how the girl was placed in the agency’s care, while withholding her name, age and other details. “Just knowing that mom’s OK makes a really big difference.”
President Donald Trump abruptly reversed course Wednesday, signing an executive order calling for families to be kept intact when parents are detained. But the shift does little to address how the thousands of the already separated families will be reunited.
Parents languish in detention centers as they pursue asylum claims or await deportation. Their children, meanwhile, are sent into the federal foster care system, which ships them to homes across the country.
Their court cases can proceed before different judges, in different states, with no clear process — let alone a guarantee — for reuniting them.
“As far as I know, there’s no mechanism ICE has to reunite the family when the parent is going to be deported,” said El Paso immigration attorney Eduardo Beckett, who has represented a Brazilian grandmother separated from her grandson.
Providers say they aim to give unaccompanied children loving, safe foster homes. But in some instances, the care has fallen short. State inspection records show Texas foster parents licensed to take in unaccompanied minors denied them food or showers and shamed them as punishment.
The federal government’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the unaccompanied minors, wouldn’t say how many of the separated children are in foster care.
Similarly, the six organizations paid to recruit and oversee foster families in Texas declined to answer specific questions about the children they’ve taken in.
When children are separated from parents at the border, they’re moved into shelters that often house hundreds of kids, such as the tented encampment in Tornillo and a Brownsville facility at a former Walmart.
Toddlers and younger children are sent to “tender age” shelters or to transitional foster homes. From there, they can be released to a family member who is vetted by the government.
Many relatives are afraid to come forward and claim these kids for fear of being arrested themselves.
“Many have family members they are supporting in the U.S. and family back home. They may not be willing to risk it for a child in ORR custody,” said Lauren Heidbrink, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Development at California State University Long Beach whose research focuses on unaccompanied migrant children.
Without a familial sponsor, the child may stay months in a foster home, which already are in short supply.
“There is such a great need around the country for foster families, and certainly here in the Carolinas,” said Ted Goins, head of Lutheran Services Carolinas. “Just finding families who are willing to serve in this way is a number one priority for us.”
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services has taken in at least 148 migrant children separated from their parents at its operations across the country. The organization issued a plea on its website this week for donations and volunteers.
At least 50 more children have been placed in Michigan foster homes overseen by the nonprofit contractor Bethany Christian Services, a spokeswoman said. The children’s average age is 8 years old.
The placements pose challenges for both the children and their caregivers. The children often are frightened and don’t speak English.
Alice, a Texan who asked that her last name not be published to protect the children’s privacy, took in a Honduran teenager and her infant son in 2014, during a surge of unaccompanied children fleeing violence in Central America. The girl told Alice she fled after seeing family members murdered in front of her.
“All of that, she was dealing with then, when she got up to the U.S.,” said Alice, who is retired and lives in North Texas with her husband.
As of mid-May, foster homes across Texas had taken in at least 240 unaccompanied minors, according to state data. It’s not clear how many of those children were separated from parents or arrived in the U.S. alone. Hundreds more children were sent to New York, where their arrival sparked furor and protest at LaGuardia Airport.
Violations
The federal government pays contractors to recruit and oversee the foster families, but state health officials inspect the homes.
They haven’t documented instances of death or abuse, but inspectors found one family left a child “unattended for two months” and allowed him to drive alone with a learner’s permit but no insurance. In six other instances over the past three years, inspectors found families violated children’s rights by denying them food, showers or clothes.
Issues with foster placements are not uncommon. It’s not clear whether problems in the federal foster care outnumber those in the statewide system for Texas children .
Publicly available state records offer scarce detail about the incidents. More importantly, they don’t reveal whether families cited for wrongdoing ever stopped receiving children.
International Foster Care, run by Catholic Charities Fort Worth, oversaw the foster home accused of abandoning a child, whose gender and age aren’t provided in public records.
State investigators found the child was allowed to go to school independently and manage household expenses, but said the money provided wasn’t enough to buy food. Meanwhile, a caregiver was “out of the country for a period of time and could not be contacted via telephone,” state inspectors said.
A spokeswoman for Catholic Charities Fort Worth said the child was an unaccompanied refugee minor, adding later that the home was closed immediately. As of mid-May, the agency oversaw three homes that had taken in eight unaccompanied children, state data show.
In January, inspectors found children were denied access to food and shamed at a home overseen by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese Of Galveston-Houston. The organization didn’t respond to questions about the incidents.
In one home licensed by Lutheran Social Services of the South — also known as Upbring — inspectors noted in 2015 that parents in one home allowed children to shower only once a week. They also found one family didn’t provide a safe environment because a child “was not protected from harm when an adult living in the home entered the child’s bedroom at night.”
Upbring CEO Kurt Senske said he couldn’t discuss specific cases.
“The safety of the children in our care is always our top priority, and every single citation is resolved as swiftly and efficiently as possible,” he said in a statement.
Similarly, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement did not answer any questions about the violations or say whether it had taken any action.
Reunification
Once children are separated from their parents at the border, their cases for asylum split onto separate tracks, potentially in separate states before different judges. Attorneys fear a parent might receive a deportation order, while a child is locked in ongoing legal proceedings hundreds of miles away.
It’s too soon to know whether that’s happening to families separated under the Trump administration’s policy.
In at least one case, a father was deported back to Guatemala before his 10-year-old son, Samuel. The pair were separated in October after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border into Arizona. Samuel watched his father taken away in handcuffs before he was sent to a foster home in Michigan.
On Wednesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents escorted Samuel on a flight to Guatemala City, where he was reunited with his father, ABC News reported.
“Parents are deported, kids are left here to fend for themselves,” Beckett said. “If a kid wins his case, or gets some kind of legal status, then that’s it. They might not be able to see their parents again.”
Federal officials have yet to lay out a plan for reunifying children separated from their parents. The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement did not answer questions about when and how the families will be brought back together.
In South Carolina, the first priority is a phone call. Find the child’s parent, let them check in. The next step, look for a sponsor. The success rates dwindle as time passes.
Lutheran Services Carolinas has taken in five children separated from their parents, all age 7 to 11. Four of them know where their parents are and have spoken to them. One has been released to an aunt.
It’s tough finding relatives because the children came to the United States planning to be with their parents. Now that the adults are detained, few children know of a backup plan.
“We are still in the process of figuring out how that’s going to look. It’s kind of new territory for everyone,” Gibson said. “Our goal is to reunite the kids with their family.”