U.S. migrant children living in crowded shelters with little supervision Human Rights News

According to the Associated Press, the Biden administration is seeking ten thousand child asylums in an opaque network of 200 facilities in two dozen states and includes five shelters with more than 1,000 children inside.

Shows the amount of confidential data obtained by the AP migrant children it has doubled in government custody in the last two months, and this week the federal government has taken in about 21,000 children, ranging from young children to teenagers.

A Fort Bliss facility, a U.S. military post in El Paso, Texas, had more than 4,500 children as of Monday.

Lawyers, advocates and mental health experts say some shelters are safe and provide adequate care, while others endanger children’s health and safety.

“It’s almost like‘ Groundhog Day ’,” said Luz Lopez, a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, referring to the film that gives the 1993 events a constant repetition.

“We started here almost back to a point where the government is using taxpayer money to build large farm facilities … instead of using that money for children to find ways to get children to interact more quickly with sponsors.”

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Mark Weber said department staff and contractors are working hard to keep children healthy and safe in their care.

Some of the current practices are the same as those criticized by President Joe Biden and others in the administration of former President Donald Trump, including the failure of some guards to see full FBI fingerprint checks.

At the same time, court documents show that the Biden administration is working to resolve multimillion-dollar lawsuits alleging that immigrant children have been abused in Trump-held shelters.

There are about a dozen unauthorized emergency facilities within the government’s plan to manage thousands of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, within military facilities, stadiums and convention centers that surround state regulations and require no traditional legal oversight.

Within facilities called Emergency Environmental Areas, children are not guaranteed access to education, recreational opportunities or legal advice.

Some of the facilities that currently have children are run by contractors who allege that children were physically and sexually abused in their shelters under the Trump administration, while others are new companies with little or no experience working with migrants.

In a recent news release, the administration said it was “restoring the focus on childless friends,” and shared daily diaries of the number of children in government care and some photos of the facility. This reflects a higher level of transparency than the Trump administration.

In addition, the average time children spend in the system has dropped from four months last fall to less than a month this spring, the Department of Health and Human Services said.

However, the agency has received it reports due to the abuse caused by the resignation of a few contract workers for working in emergency areas this year, according to an official who was not allowed to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

‘No one would tell me any information’

Lawyers sometimes say that even parents can’t guess where their children are.

Jose, who fled El Salvador after his father massacred his country, applied for asylum in the United States four years ago.

He was expected to welcome his wife and eight-year-old daughter to Southern California this year, but the couple turned the border in March and were deported to Mexico.

The little girl herself was crossed and placed on April 6 in a government shelter in Brownsville, Texas.

Jose called a government phone number for parents who are repeatedly looking for their migrant children but no one will tell him where he was.

“I was very upset because I kept calling and calling, and no one was going to tell me where he was,” Jose said, asking him to identify himself only by his name for fear of jeopardizing his immigration case.

“I was finally told that I had to pay $ 1,300 to cover his plane ticket and that if I didn’t pay I would have to wait another month, and I was very worried.”

For nearly three weeks, her daughter was inside the Brownsville facility before being released in late April when a defense agency intervened to get the government to pay her flight bill, as required by the agency.

HHS does not mean that there are standards that can be legally met or monitored for the care of children in emergency areas.

The Biden administration has allowed very limited access to the news after the children entered the facility, citing the coronavirus pandemic and restrictions on privacy.

“HHS has worked as quickly as possible to increase the capacity of the bed and allow potential sponsors to provide safe housing while the child conducts immigration procedures,” HHS spokesperson Weber said in a statement.

“As soon as the surrounding services (including local primary care, including vaccinations and physical care, case management, phone calls to family members, education, recreation, etc.) become available as a result of infrastructure and additional staff, they are provided as part of the operation.”

Weber confirmed specific shelter populations from data obtained by the AP.

‘Very dysfunctional’

They are of particular concern to supporters for the massive shelters, with hundreds of beds in each. These facilities can leave children isolated, less supervised, and without basic services.

About half of all migrant children arrested in the U.S. were found to be sleeping in shelters with more than 1,000 other children. More than 17,650 are in facilities with 100 or more children. Some shelter and foster care programs are small, something more than a home with a few children.

A large facility in Houston was suddenly shut down last month after learning that children were being given plastic bags instead of being given access to toilets.

“The system has been very dysfunctional, and it’s getting worse,” said Amy Cohen, a child psychiatrist and executive director of the nonprofit Every Last One. She works to help immigrant families fleeing violence in Central America. Although many children have been arriving in the U.S. for years, Cohen said he has never seen the situation as bad as it is today.

Cohen described parents who received calls from people who refused to identify themselves.

They are told to be at an airport or bus station for the next two hours to pick up their children, have been without warning for more than a month, or would not be released.

Some parents have been told they have to pay thousands of dollars to a travel agency to send their children, he said.

“Kids are coming out sick, with COVID, full of lice, and I won’t be surprised to see kids die as a result, as we’ve seen in the Trump years,” Cohen said. “The Biden administration is feverishly clinging to these facilities, many of which have no experience working with children.”

One reason for the arrival of many children without parents is a 2020 emergency order by the Trump administration, especially to all migrants who closed the U.S.-Mexico border, citing public health concerns about the spread of COVID-19.

That emergency order it still applies adults, but the Biden administration has begun to provide asylum for children traveling without parents if they enter the country and seek asylum. As a result, some parents send their children to the other side of the border.

Most already in the U.S. have a parent or other adult relative or family friend, known as a sponsor, waiting to receive them. But first, they tend to be arrested by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, and then taken to a government shelter.

“Because it’s as unacceptable for children to spend days at CBP, it’s also like children are spending weeks in unauthorized emergency areas,” said Neha Desai, a lawyer for the National Center for Youth Law. “As we go through each day, it becomes increasingly critical that these children be released to sponsors or taken to authorized facilities.”