No room at the inn in Texas for vulnerable migrant kids
There’s no room at the inn. Not for children fleeing persecution, anyway. That’s according to Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who last week ordered his state to yank the licenses of shelters and foster-care programs that provide care to unaccompanied migrant children. Abbott is a self-proclaimed advocate of family values, religious liberty, and law and order. Yet in one fell swoop, he undermined all three.
The number of children crossing the border without their immediate families has surged recently. This is the result of multiple factors — including the violence, persecution and climate disasters that have ravaged parts of Latin America. Another significant factor is a COVID-era policy established by the Trump administration — and largely left unchanged — to expel single adults and families crossing into the United States without allowing them to apply for asylum, in violation of our legal obligations.
With some recent exceptions, only unaccompanied children have reliably been allowed in.
This has encouraged thousands of desperate parents to send their children over the border alone. This suggests just how unendurably dangerous are the lives such children leave behind.
The influx has placed tremendous stress on the system set up to receive and care for unaccompanied children while more permanent placements are found. To make matters worse, state-licensed shelters and foster-care programs have had to reduce their capacity due to COVID.
Facing a shortage of beds at licensed facilities, the Biden administration opened unlicensed, triage-like centers. These are better than holding cells, perhaps, but they lack the services needed by kids recovering from trauma. Many have been plagued with allegations of misconduct, inadequate training and safety failures.
The entire project has (deservedly) been attacked by Republicans — including Abbott, who recently referred to a San Antonio site as a health and safety nightmare. So, how did Abbott act on such unacceptable conditions? He decided to force more vulnerable kids into them. Abbott ordered regulators to discontinue state licensure of any child care facility that has a federal contract to temporarily house unaccompanied minors in Texas, giving these facilities 90 days to do so. This is, ostensibly, because he believes the influx of migrant kids threatens to hurt facilities that serve Texas children, even though domestic kids generally are placed at separate locations and served by different programs. State-licensed facilities house about a quarter of unaccompanied kids in federal custody. Some 4,200 are likely to be displaced by Abbott’s directive. Many may end up having longer stays in those “nightmare” intake sites Abbott criticized.
Abbott is deliberately making it harder for the federal government to fulfill its legal obligations to vulnerable children. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it is assessing the Texas directive and does not intend to close any facilities as a result of the order.