Tag: migrant children

The number of migrant children in Border Patrol custody is down significantly.

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The Biden administration is starting to see some success in its efforts to suitably house the migrant children flooding to the southwest border, with a fraction of the number of children in Customs and Border Protection custody than there were a month ago.

Over the past month, the number of migrant children in the jail-like facilities of the Border Patrol dropped 83 percent, from 5,767 on March 29 to 954 on Thursday, according to government statistics. The length of time children are staying in border shelters is down as well, from an average of 133 hours to 28. By law, children are not supposed to stay in border shelters for more than 72 hours.

The improvements are attributable in part to an increase in facilities overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services where children can be housed under better living conditions. Continue reading.

Migrant parents could face fateful choice: Be separated from their children or stay together in jail

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The federal judge who oversees long-running litigation about the treatment of migrant children in U.S. custody ordered the government Friday to finalize its procedures for providing parents a fateful choice: allow their children to be released to a designated guardian, or remain together in immigration jail.

Such a decision, known informally as “binary choice,” could transform the family migration dynamics that have confounded the Trump administration and the Obama administration before it as successive waves of Central American families crossed the border and overwhelmed U.S. capacity to process their humanitarian claims.

Most important, it would shift the nature of the decision about whether to separate children from their families at the border. Instead of it being up to the government, as it is now, it would be up to the migrant parents. Continue reading.

HHS Official Says Separated Migrant Kids Suffer ‘Extraordinary Trauma’

Cmdr. Jonathan White, a career public health official at the Department of Health and Human Services, told Congress on Wednesday that children separated from their families face “extraordinarily severe” trauma leading to likely lifelong harm of both a mental and physical nature.

Children were taken away from their families as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to discourage crossings at the border. The practice instead backfired, with the U.S. government thrust into the role of holding on to children who have been taken from their families.

White testified to a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee at a briefing titled “Oversight Hearing: Mental Health Needs of Children in HHS Custody.”

View the complete September 18 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

A Border Patrol Agent Reveals What It’s Really Like to Guard Migrant Children

With the agency under fire for holding children in deplorable conditions and over racist and misogynistic Facebook posts, one agent speaks about what it’s like to do his job. “Somewhere down the line people just accepted what’s going on as normal.”

The Border Patrol agent, a veteran with 13 years on the job, had been assigned to the agency’s detention center in McAllen, Texas, for close to a month when the team of court-appointed lawyers and doctors showed up one day at the end of June.

Taking in the squalor, the stench of unwashed bodies, and the poor health and vacant eyes of the hundreds of children held there, the group members appeared stunned.

Then, their outrage rolled through the facility like a thunderstorm. One lawyer emerged from a conference room clutching her cellphone to her ear, her voice trembling with urgency and frustration. “There’s a crisis down here,” the agent recalled her shouting.

View the complete July 16 article by Ginger Thompson on the ProPublica website here.

Judge Orders Swift Action to Improve Conditions for Migrant Children in Texas

New York Times logoLOS ANGELES — A federal judge has ordered a mediator to move swiftly to improve health and sanitation at Border Patrol facilities in Texas, where observers reported migrant children were subject to filthy conditions that imperiled their health.

Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Central District of California asked late on Friday that an independent monitor, whom she appointed last year, ensure that conditions in detention centers are promptly addressed. She set a deadline of July 12 for the government to report on what it has accomplished “post haste” to remedy them.

“We are hoping we can act expeditiously to resolve the conditions for children in Border Patrol custody,” said Holly Cooper, part of a team of lawyers who asked the federal court to intervene.

View the complete June 29 article by Miriam Jordan on The New York Times website here.

IG: Trump administration took thousands more migrant children from parents

In this July 26, 2018, file photo, a migrant child holds the hand of a Lutheran Social Services worker helping to reunited children separated from their parents. Credit: Matt York, AP

The Trump administration separated thousands more migrant children from their parents at the U.S. border than has previously been made public, according to an investigative report released Thursday, but the federal tracking system has been so poor that the precise number is hazy.

According to the report issued by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, the separated children include 118 taken between July and early November — after the administration halted a short-lived family separation effort that provoked a political firestorm and public outrage.

The report estimates that thousands of other youngsters were taken starting early in the Trump administration, months before the government announced it would separate children in order to criminally prosecute their parents, through late last spring.

View the complete January 17 article by Amy Goldstein on The Washington Post website here.