USA TODAY International Edition
Immigrant children bused thousands of miles to New York
Agencies in North work via federal contracts
NEW YORK – When Hilda Mendoza learned that undocumented Central American children separated from their parents at the southern U.S. border were at a Manhattan social service agency, she felt called to action. The foster care mother went to the Cayuga Centers facility Thursday, hoping to add one of the children to the 15-month-old boy and 8-month-old girl she’s already parenting.
“I’m willing to give at least one child a home for a little bit of time, so they won’t suffer,” said Mendoza, 59, a resident of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “I would try to make it as normal as possible. I would put them in school until they can get reunited with their parents.”
She approached the building but left without success.
As New York City police officers provided safety patrols, young children came and went from the facility. Many wore homemade masks that made it impossible to tell which had been removed from their parents by federal officials.
The Cayuga facility has become one of the latest flashpoints in a national debate that has sharpened following the federal government’s recent decision to send some children thousands of miles away while their parents are detained for immigration hearings.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order Wednesday to temporarily end the removals. As he continued to blame Washington Democrats and years of ineffective U.S. immigration policies for the problem, some near the Manhattan facility
“This is not right. This is America.”
Winston Richard, who works at the mechanic shop next door to the Cayuga facility
“Imagine for any of us that we are ripped away from our parents and sent thousands of miles away with no one we knew. These kids are suffering from that.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio
blamed the White House.
“This is not right. This is America,” said Winston Richard, 69, working at the adjacent mechanic shop.
More than 350 children – including one 9 months old – have been brought to the facility run by Cayuga Home for Children, a nonprofit social services agency that provides foster care and other services under federal government grants.
In all, 239 of those children were under the care of Cayuga employees Wednesday, when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio met with a few of the youngsters. Afterward, he recounted meeting “a young man named Eddie, 9 years old, from Honduras,” who “was sent here 2,000 miles on a bus, to this location, and does not know when he’s going to see his mother again.”
“Imagine for any of us that we are ripped away from our parents and sent thousands of miles away with no one we knew,” de Blasio said. “These kids are suffering from that.”
He said Cayuga employees told him other migrant children sent to the facility from the U.S. border with Mexico arrived with lice, bed bugs, chicken pox and other “physical challenges.”
Cayuga officials did not respond to Thursday messages seeking comment on the company’s services.
Central American children similarly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border or who entered the country alone were also being cared for in at least two other New York-New Jersey facilities.
A small number of youngsters ages 12 to 17 were at Children’s Village, a youth services facility in Hastingson-Hudson, a northern suburb of New York City.
The Center for Family Services in Camden, New Jersey, has serviced 90 children, most of whom entered the U.S. without a parent, said Jen Hammill, a spokesman for the social services agency.
The New York and New Jersey facilities are among dozens of nonprofit, religious, and other companies and organizations that have provided services to the immigrant children separated from their parents.
The companies are working contracts with the Administration for Children and Families, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, federal records show.