#Unaccompanied minors in HHS custody

[thesocialmag]

Tragic Death of Honduran Teen in U.S. Immigration Custody

The mother of a 17-year-old boy who tragically died in U.S. immigration custody is demanding answers from American officials. Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza, a teenager with no known illnesses and no signs of sickness, left his hometown in Honduras on April 25 in pursuit of the American Dream. Crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, Ángel Eduardo was subsequently referred to the U.S. Department of…

[dertaglichedan]

DHS Watchdog Says ICE Has Lost Track of as Many as 291,000 Unaccompanied Migrant Children

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lost track of up to 291,000 unaccompanied minors over the last five years, according to a blistering new report released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General.

The IG report, titled “Management Alert – ICE Cannot Monitor All Unaccompanied Migrant Children Released from DHS and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Custody,” confirmed that more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children [UCs] are no longer accounted for by ICE.

“During our ongoing audit to assess ICE’s ability to monitor the location and status of UCs who were released or transferred from the custody of the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), we learned ICE transferred more than 448,000 UCs to HHS from fiscal years 2019 to 2023,” the internal watchdog reported. “However, ICE was not able to account for the location of all UCs who were released by HHS and did not appear as scheduled in immigration court. ICE reported more than 32,000 UCs failed to appear for their immigration court hearings from FYs 2019 to 2023.”

Migrant children are counted as unaccounted for when their sponsors fail to appear at immigration court hearings after being released from government custody.

“Despite its responsibilities for overseeing UCs through the immigration process, we found ICE cannot always monitor the location and status of UCs once they were released from DHS and HHS custody,” the report states.

[beardedmrbean]

A teenager from Maryland arrested as the lead suspect in the robbery, rape, and murder of an autistic American woman last summer was an illegal immigrant and known member of MS-13 in his home country.

Police in Aberdeen, Maryland, announced late last week the arrest of a 17-year-old Hispanic boy on Jan. 15 in connection to the strangulation-induced death of 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton in July 2022, according to a statement issued late last week.

The suspect had not been identified by police other than his age and as a citizen of El Salvador. The Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, a nongovernmental organization that advocates tighter immigration laws, published a blog Sunday that stated the suspect had been allowed into the United States as an unaccompanied minor earlier in the Biden administration.

“The 17-year-old UAC allegedly strangled 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton to death in July 2022, only months after being released into the United States,” wrote Jon Deere, CIS director of investigations and the former senior adviser to the ICE director during the Trump administration. “While his illegal alien status has been reported, the fact that he entered as a UAC has not been reported until now.”

MAYORKAS SCOLDED BORDER PATROL IN 'WHIPPING' INCIDENT AFTER LEARNING AGENT DID NOT HAVE A WHIP

Local police said in a statement that the federal agency U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement identified the suspect as a Salvadoran citizen who is known in his home country as a known member of MS-13, one of the most violent criminal gangs in the world.

DNA evidence recovered from the crime scene also matched DNA in federal databases. ICE did not respond to a request for comment about the circumstances by which it interacted with the suspect or at what point his DNA was collected by the government.

"The case raises a number of questions, and Congress must obtain a full accounting from the Biden administration officials running the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), now that is known that both departments played a role in the release of this dangerous individual," said Deere.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment about if its Border Patrol or Office of Field Operations personnel at the U.S.-Mexico border had apprehended the suspect for illegally entering the country, conducted a background check, the results of that check, and if or when he was transferred to ICE or the Department of Health and Human Services given that HHS takes custody of all unaccompanied children after they are processed by Border Patrol.

First responders initially discovered Hamilton's body on July 27, 2022. Police reported that they had responded to a cardiac arrest, though they did not disclose why or how they were notified of the incident.

When officers arrived, Hamilton was "suffering from injuries consistent with a homicide," and they stated they found her deceased.

Hamilton had recently moved in with her 22-year-old boyfriend. The motive of the attack has not been disclosed.

The suspect is being held without bail at the Harford County Detention Center in Maryland.

[mariacallous]

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to aid and support efforts "to safely receive, shelter, and transfer unaccompanied children" crossing the country's southern border in a Saturday statement.

The announcement comes on the tail of a week that saw the number of unaccompanied migrant children in US Border Patrol custody rise to unprecedented heights -- more than 3,200 unaccompanied migrant children were in CBP custody, according to documents obtained by CNN and dated Monday.

Of those, around 2,600 were awaiting placement in shelters suitable for minors, but there were just more than 500 beds available to accommodate them.

"I am incredibly proud of the agents of the Border Patrol, who have been working around the clock in difficult circumstances to take care of children temporarily in our care," Mayorkas wrote Saturday. "Yet, as I have said many times, a Border Patrol facility is no place for a child. We are working in partnership with (the Department of Health and Human Services) to address the needs of unaccompanied children, which is made only more difficult given the protocols and restrictions required to protect the public health and the health of the children themselves."

On Friday, the Biden administration announced the termination of a Trump-era agreement that had allowed DHS and HHS to share information on potential sponsors for migrant children with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which a Biden administration official said had had a "chilling effect" on undocumented family members coming forward.

[go-redgirl]

The number of migrant children now held in U.S. custody surged past 15,000 on Saturday, with some 5,000 unaccompanied minors alone being held in a tent holding facility run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other stations along the U.S.-Mexico Border.

According to a CBS News report, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed HHS is housing nearly 10,500 unaccompanied minors in emergency housing facilities and shelters licensed by states.

[newstfionline]

Monday, March 15, 2021

Call of the wild: Great outdoors is great escape in pandemic (AP) For those venturing off the beaten path, be advised—it’s a little crowded out there. By nature’s standards, anyway, as the great outdoors has become the great escape. Hiking trails, parks and other open spaces were packed in 2020 with a cooped-up population searching for fresh air during the coronavirus pandemic. Locked down, shut in or just fearful of crowds, people took up hiking, biking, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, camping, tennis and golf—to name several—in significant numbers. 8.1 million more Americans went hiking in 2020 compared to ‘19, according to a preview of an upcoming outdoor participation report from the Outdoor Foundation, the philanthropic wing of the Outdoor Industry Association. 7.9 million more went camping last year. 3.4 million more participated in freshwater fishing. The foundation’s research also reflected a decline in inactivity for most age groups and across all income levels.

U.S. airport passengers hit highest level since March 2020 (Reuters) The Transportation Security Administration said it screened 1.357 million U.S. airport passengers on Friday, the highest number screened since March 15, 2020, as air travel begins to rebound from a pandemic-related drop. Covid-19 has devastated air travel demand, with U.S. airline passenger demand down 60 percent in 2020 and down 63 percent in January. But with a growing number of Americans getting vaccinated, demand and advanced bookings have started to rise in recent weeks. Friday’s numbers were still down 38 percent over pre-Covid-19 levels.

Winter storm closes roads in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska (AP) A powerful late winter snowstorm intensified over the central Rocky Mountains on Sunday with heavy snow and wind leading to airport and road closures, power outages and avalanche warnings in parts of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska. The National Weather Service in Wyoming called it a “historic and crippling” winter storm that would cause extremely dangerous to impossible travel conditions through at least early Monday. Major roads southeast of a line that crosses diagonally from the southwest corner of Wyoming to its northeast corner were closed Sunday, including roads in and out of Cheyenne and Casper. Farther south, a record of over 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow had fallen just outside Cheyenne by noon Sunday, the weather service reported. A SNOTEL site at Windy Peak in the Laramie Range reported 52 inches (1.3 meters) of snow in a 24-hour period ending Sunday morning, the weather service said.

FEMA to help manage unaccompanied minors at US-Mexico border (AP) The Biden administration is turning to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for help managing and caring for record numbers of unaccompanied immigrant children who are streaming into the United States by illegally crossing the border with Mexico. Government figures show a growing crisis at the border as hundreds of children illegally enter the U.S. from Mexico daily and are taken into custody. The Homeland Security Department is supposed to process and transfer unaccompanied minor children to the Department of Health and Human Services within three days so that they can be placed with a parent already living in the United States, or other suitable sponsor, until their immigration cases can be resolved. But more children are being held longer at Border Patrol facilities that weren’t designed with their care in mind because long-term shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services have next to no capacity to accommodate them. Children are being apprehended daily at far higher rates than HHS can release them to parents or sponsors.

Spanish Police Seize Submarine Built to Carry Drugs (WSJ) Spanish police Friday said they had seized a 30-foot long narco-submarine that could carry 2.2 tons of narcotics, a sign of the lengths cartels are going to transport illegal drugs to the booming European market. Police said they discovered the narco-sub in Malaga on Spain’s Costa del Sol last month as part of an international police operation that led to the arrest of 52 people and seizure of more than 400 kilos of cocaine, along with other illegal drugs and cash. The vessel was made of fiberglass and plywood and powered by two 200-horsepower engines, although it had never sailed, police said. Narco-subs are semisubmersibles that float mostly below the waterline and have long ferried cocaine from Colombia to Central America. In 2019, Spanish law enforcement discovered a narco-sub off Spain’s Atlantic coast, confirming persistent rumors that they can reach Europe.

Italy prepares for an Easter lockdown as Covid-19 cases grow exponentially (CNN) Italy is facing another lockdown, as the government attempts to contain a recent surge of coronavirus cases, marred by the presence of new variants. Half of Italy’s 20 regions, which include the cities Rome, Milan and Venice, will be entering new coronavirus restrictions from Monday, March 15. The measures will be effective through April 6, according to a decree passed by Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s cabinet on Friday. In regions demarcated as “red zones” people will be unable to leave their houses except for work or health reasons, with all non-essential shops closed. In “orange zones,” people will also be banned from leaving their town and their region—except for work or health reasons—and bars and restaurants will only be able to do delivery and take-away service. Additionally, over Easter weekend, the entire country will be considered a “red zone,” and will be subject to a national lockdown from April 3 to 5.

Born in Soviet Exile, They Might Die in a Russian One (NYT) Long lines of people waiting to buy milk, toilet paper and other essentials disappeared from Russia decades ago. But one line has only grown longer—the one Yevgeniya B. Shasheva has been waiting in. For 70 years. That is the time that has passed since her birth in a remote Russian region. Her family was sent into exile there from Moscow during the height of Stalin’s Great Purge in the 1930s, when millions were executed or died in prison camps. Throughout the past seven decades, Ms. Shasheva says, she has been waiting to move home to the Russian capital. A 2019 ruling by Russia’s Constitutional Court ordered that the government make this happen, mandating that such “children of the gulag”—around 1,500 of them, according to some estimates—be given the financial means to move to the cities from which Stalin banished their parents. But the process has stalled completely, leaving Ms. Shasheva with nearly 55,000 people ahead of her in line for social housing in Moscow. So she waits 800 miles away in Nizhny Odes, a town so far off the beaten track that wild bears appear regularly on the streets.

US-Turkey reset faces long list of hurdles (AP) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has toned down his anti-Western and anti-US rhetoric in an apparent effort to reset the rocky relationship with his NATO allies, but so far he’s been met by silence from U.S. President Joe Biden. Nearly two months into his presidency, Biden still hasn’t called Erdogan, which some in Turkey see as a worrying sign. By contrast, former President Donald Trump and Erdogan spoke just days after the 2016 election. Ties between Ankara and Washington—which once considered each other as strategic partners—have steadily deteriorated in recent years over differences on Syria, Turkey’s cooperation with Russia and more recently on Turkish naval interventions in the eastern Mediterranean, which U.S. officials have described as destabilizing. Despite tensions, many within Erdogan’s government were hoping for four more years of the administration led by Trump, who had a personal rapport with Erdogan and didn’t give him any lectures about Turkey’s human rights record. Biden drew ire from Turkish officials after an interview with the New York Times in which he spoke about supporting Turkey’s opposition against “autocrat” Erdogan. Analysts say it’s going to be very difficult to reset the relationship, given the range of issues where the two countries don’t see eye to eye.

At least 39 killed in Myanmar district after Chinese factories burned, media say (Reuters) Security forces killed at least 22 protesters in the poor, industrial Hlaingthaya suburb of Myanmar’s main city on Sunday after Chinese-financed factories in the area were set ablaze, according to local media. A further 16 people were reported killed elsewhere in Yangon and other parts of Myanmar and state television said a policeman had died in one of the bloodiest days of protests against the Feb. 1 military coup against elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. China’s embassy said many Chinese staff were injured and trapped in arson attacks by unidentified assailants on garment factories in Hlaingthaya and that it had called on Myanmar to protect Chinese property and citizens. As plumes of smoke rose from the industrial area, security forces opened fire on protesters in the suburb that is home to migrants from across the country, local media said.

In China, millennials embrace Spanish (NBC News) Yilin Ye, a student from Anji, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, China, is spending time abroad at the University of Zaragoza in Spain. Ye, 25, said she first started learning Spanish after having heard about its “excellent reputation.” She said she feels she takes on a slightly different persona when she speaks Spanish. “It’s a really beautiful thing, really fascinating,” she said. “When I’m speaking Chinese, I’m more calm. When I’m speaking English, I’m probably a bit more open, and when I speak Spanish, I’m very ‘wow.’” Just how popular is the world’s second-most-popular spoken language in China? There are about 50,000 Spanish speakers in China, a figure scholars say is growing by the year. “The Spanish language is making waves in China,” Lu Jingsheng, an author and national coordinator of Spanish for the Chinese government, said in an interview.

China Eases Visa Rules for Foreigners Who Get Chinese Vaccines (Bloomberg) The China-made vaccine is becoming the ticket to enter the mainland. China said it will ease visa application requirements for foreigners seeking to enter the mainland from Hong Kong if they have been inoculated with Covid-19 vaccines made in China. Foreigners visiting the mainland for work will face less paperwork in visa applications if they are able to show they have received vaccines produced in China. With the vaccine certificates, these travelers will also be able to skip the requirement for a Covid-19 test or fill out a travel declaration form. The rule also expands the scope of applicants eligible for a visa due to humanitarian needs, such as taking care of family or attending funerals, if they have received Chinese vaccines. Other applicants should still follow the earlier visa procedure, according to the statement.

Mysterious attacks on at least a dozen tankers carrying Iranian oil are reportedly due to covert Israeli operations (Business Insider) Israel has used water mines and other weapons to sabotage at least a dozen tankers carrying Iranian oil and bound for Syria, according to a Wall Street Journal report, which cited US and regional officials. In violation of US and international sanctions, Iran has continued trading oil with Syria. Israel is reportedly concerned that the profits from these sales help fund terrorism in the region, and has targeted the tankers as a result. These tankers tend to carry hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil, per the Journal. A shipping professional told the Journal that Israel conducted three strikes against ships carrying Iranian oil in 2019, and a separate shipping professional said six ships used by Iran were targeted last year. There are not any known instances of ships being sunk as a result of these suspected operations, but at least two were forced to return to Iran. The alleged Israeli attacks may represent a new front in the conflict between these two historic adversaries.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 13, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Republican pundits and lawmakers are, once again, warning of an immigration crisis at our southern border.

Texas governor Greg Abbott says that if coronavirus spreads further in his state, it will not be because of his order to get rid of masks and business restrictions, but because President Biden is admitting undocumented immigrants who carry the virus. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is also talking up the immigration issue, suggesting (falsely) that the American Rescue Plan would send $1400 of taxpayer money “to every illegal alien in America.”  

Right-wing media is also running with stories of a wave of immigrants at the border, but what is really happening needs some untangling.

When Trump launched his run for the presidency with attacks on Mexican immigrants, and later tweeted that Democrats “don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country," he was tangling up our long history of Mexican immigration with a recent, startling trend of refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (and blaming Democrats for both). That tendency to mash all immigrants and refugees together and put them on our southern border badly misrepresents what’s really going on.

Mexican immigration is nothing new; our western agribusinesses were built on migrant labor of Mexicans, Japanese, and poor whites, among others. From the time the current border was set in 1848 until the 1930s, people moved back and forth across it without restrictions. But in 1965, Congress passed the Hart-Celler Act, putting a cap on Latin American immigration for the first time. The cap was low: just 20,000, although 50,000 workers were coming annually.

After 1965, workers continued to come as they always had, and to be employed, as always. But now their presence was illegal. In 1986, Congress tried to fix the problem by offering amnesty to 2.3 million Mexicans who were living in the U.S. and by cracking down on employers who hired undocumented workers. But rather than ending the problem of undocumented workers, the new law exacerbated it by beginning the process of guarding and militarizing the border. Until then, migrants into the United States had been offset by an equal number leaving at the end of the season. Once the border became heavily guarded, Mexican migrants refused to take the chance of leaving.

Since 1986, politicians have refused to deal with this disconnect, which grew in the 1990s when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) flooded Mexico with U.S. corn and drove Mexican farmers to find work, largely in the American Southeast. But this "problem" is neither new nor catastrophic. While about 6 million undocumented Mexicans currently live in the United States, most of them--78%-- are long-term residents, here more than ten years. Only 7% have lived here less than five years. (This ratio is much more stable than that for undocumented immigrants from any other country, and indeed, about twice as many undocumented immigrants come legally and overstay their visas than come illegally across the southern border.)

Since 2007, the number of undocumented Mexicans living in the United States has declined by more than a million. Lately, more Mexicans are leaving America than are coming.

What is happening right now at America's southern border is not really about Mexican migrant workers.

Beginning around 2014, people began to flee "warlike levels of violence" in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, coming to the U.S. for asylum. This is legal, although most come illegally, taking their chances with smugglers who collect fees to protect migrants on the Mexican side of the border and to get them into the U.S.

The Obama administration tried to deter migrants by expanding the detention of families, and made significant investments in Central America in an attempt to stabilize the region by expanding economic development and promoting security. The Trump administration emphasized deterrence. It cut off support to Central American countries, worked with authoritarians to try to stop regional gangs, drastically limited the number of refugees the U.S. would admit, and—infamously—deliberately separated children from their parents to deter would-be asylum seekers.

The number of migrants to the U.S. began to drop in 2000 and continued to drop throughout Trump’s years in office.  

Now, with a new administration, the dislocation of the pandemic, and two catastrophic storms in Central America in addition to the violence, people are again surging to the border to try to get into the U.S. In the last month, the Border Patrol encountered more than 100,000 people. They are encouraged by smugglers, who falsely tell them the border is now open. Numbers released on Wednesday show that the number of children and families coming to the border doubled between January and February.

The Biden administration is warning them not to come—yet. The Trump administration gutted immigration staff and facilities, while the pandemic has further cut available beds. Most of those trying to cross the border are single adults, and the Biden administration is turning all of them back under a pandemic public health order. (It is possible that the 100,000 number is inflated as people are making repeated attempts.)  

At the same time, border officials are temporarily holding families to evaluate their claims to asylum, and are also evaluating the cases of about 65,000 asylum seekers forced by the Trump administration to stay in dangerous conditions in Mexico—this backlog is swelling the new numbers. Once the migrants are tested for coronavirus and then processed, they are either deported or released until their asylum hearing.

This has apparently led to a number of families being released in communities in Arizona and Texas without adequate clothing or money. In normal times, churches and shelters would step in to help, but the pandemic has shut that aid down to a trickle. Residents are afraid the numbers of migrants will climb, and that they will bring Covid-19. Biden offered federal help to Texas Governor Abbott to test migrants for the coronavirus, but Abbott has refused to take responsibility for testing. (Migrants in Brownsville tested positive at a lower rate than Texas residents.)

There is yet another issue: the administration is having a hard time handling the numbers of unaccompanied minors arriving. Their numbers have tripled recently, overwhelming the system, especially in Texas where the state is still digging out from the deep freeze. The children are supposed to spend no more than 72 hours in processing with Border Patrol before they are transferred to facilities overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services while agents search for family members to take the children. But at least in some cases, the kids have been with Border Patrol for as much as 77 hours. Last week, there were more than 3,700 unaccompanied children in Border Patrol facilities and about 8,800 unaccompanied children in HHS custody.

The Biden administration is considering addressing this surge by looking for emergency shelters for minors crossing the border, activating the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or placing more HHS staff at the border. It has asked for $4 billion over four years to try to restore stability to the Central American countries hardest hit by violence. Yesterday, the administration announced that HHS would not use immigration status against those coming forward to claim children, out of concern that the previous Trump-era policy made people unwilling to come forward.

The Senate has not yet confirmed Biden’s nominee to head HHS, Xavier Becerra, who is the son of Mexican immigrants. It is expected to do so next week at the earliest. When he finally takes office, he will have his work cut out for him.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[feelingbluepolitics]

Highly recommended.

"The White House sought this month to embed immigration enforcement agents within the U.S. refugee agency that cares for unaccompanied migrant children, part of a long-standing effort to use information from their parents and relatives to target them for deportation, according to six current and former administration officials.

"Though senior officials at the Department of Health and Human Services rejected the attempt, they agreed to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to collect fingerprints and other biometric information from adults seeking to claim migrant children at government shelters. If those adults are deemed ineligible to take custody of children, ICE could then use their information to target them for arrest and deportation.

..."The arrangement appears to circumvent laws that restrict the use of the refu­gee program for deportation enforcement; Congress has made clear that it does not want those who come forward as potential sponsors of minors in U.S. custody to be frightened away by possible deportation. But, in the reasoning of senior [t]rump administration officials, adults denied custody of children lose their status as 'potential sponsors' and are fair game for arrest.

"The plan has not been announced publicly. It was developed by Stephen Miller, [t]rump’s top [Nazi] immigration adviser, who has long argued that HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement is being exploited by parents who hire smugglers to bring their children into the United States illegally. The agency manages shelters that care for underage migrants who cross the border without a parent and tries to identify sponsors — typically family members — eligible to take custody of the minors.

..."[t]rump administration attempts to give ICE more access to the refu­gee program have generated significant opposition, because it potentially forces migrant parents to choose between reclaiming their children and risking arrest.

...After the [t]rump administration began a similar information-sharing initiative last year, which predictably led to fewer sponsors coming forward and created a massive backlog of children in U.S. custody, Democrats fought to put a firewall between ICE and ORR. Language in the 2019 funding bill specifically prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from using child sponsor data — addresses, names, phone numbers — to generate ICE target lists.

"According to those provisions, no federal funds 'may be used by the Secretary of Homeland Security to place in detention, remove, refer for a decision whether to initiate removal proceedings, or initiate removal proceedings against a sponsor, potential sponsor, or member of a household of a sponsor or potential sponsor of an unaccompanied alien child.'

"HHS officials have generally tried to keep ICE at a distance, insisting that their agency’s mission is to safeguard children and not to facilitate the arrest of their relatives.

"Cox defended the legality of the program, citing the technical wording of the law: When a potential sponsor’s application is rejected, 'that individual is no longer considered to be a sponsor or potential sponsor,' and the person is therefore open to ICE arrest, he said.

..."Some officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection have objected to past information-sharing efforts between ORR and ICE, saying that the practice discourages adult sponsors from reclaiming children in U.S. government custody. When fewer adults come forward, more children must stay in shelters and border stations, and CBP has been faced with caring for infants and young children in austere facilities designed for the short-term detention of adults.

"As the migration crisis at the border has abated in recent months, Miller has once again worked to tear down the information wall between the refu­gee agency and ICE, according to those familiar with his efforts."

[dragoni]

Nielsen “no policy” except for the fact that her Border Patrol was "executing the [separation policy] on a limited basis in the El Paso sector."  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"If CBP issues an ER [expedited removal] for the entire family unit, places the parents in the custody of the U.S. Marshal, and then places the minors with HHS, it would seem that DHS could work with HHS to actually repatriate [deport] the minors then," the official wrote.

Sen. Jeff Merkley released a draft memo, leaked by a whistleblower, showing that the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security thoroughly gamed out different ways they could tear children from their parents and use it as a deterrent to keep migrants from seeking asylum at the border.

The memo dates to December 2017, when border crossings were dramatically lower than in December 2016, yet is titled “Policy Options to Respond to Border Surge of Illegal Immigration.” 

In the memo and in comments on it, Trump administration officials floated the possibility of taking children from their parents but then denying them a hearing before an immigration judge and deporting the whole family—without necessarily reunifying them first. 

“It appears that they wanted to have it both ways,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said. “To separate children from their parents but deny them the full protections generally awarded to unaccompanied children.”

From NBC

The draft also shows officials wanted to specifically target parents in migrant families for increased prosecutions, contradicting the administration's previous statements. In June, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the administration did "not have a policy of separating families at the border" but was simply enforcing existing law. 

"It would take coordination with the home countries, of course, but that doesn't seem like too much of a cost to pay compared to the status quo."

[capitalismisoverparty]

In total, between October 2014 and July 2018, 4,556 sexual abuse complaints were reported to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) — an agency within HHS in charge of caring for unaccompanied migrant minors.

[despazito]

just throw the entire country away.

[bountyofbeads]

Pregnant teens especially vulnerable in border centers

https://apnews.com/3defe7a843a14d12845227b5e6f930d0

As Trump speaks in front the Lincoln Memorial remember he has children and pregnant teens in cages getting no medical care at the Southern Border. 🤬🎇🇺🇲

Pregnant teens especially vulnerable in border centers

By ASTRID GALVAN | Published July 4, 2019 | AP | Posted July 4, 2019 |

PHOENIX (AP) — As tales of wretchedness and overcrowding in government border detention facilities abound, one group of migrants is particularly vulnerable: teen moms and pregnant girls without parents of their own.

Immigrant advocates and lawyers say the young mothers don't get special medical consideration while they're being crammed into U.S. facilities so packed that migrants are forced to sleep on floors or stand for days on end. As a result, the girls say they're underfed, have poor hygiene and their babies get sick.

Their hardships aren't over once they're released, which can't happen until a vetted sponsor — usually a relative — takes them in as their immigration cases wind their way through the courts. Their lack of legal status and inability to afford child care makes it nearly impossible for them to find a job, and staying in the U.S. legally is an uphill battle even if their children are American citizens.

"The average unaccompanied minor who's coming is facing so many challenges because of lack of access to legal representation, issues in education, lack of support, lack of mental health treatment," said Priya Konings, the deputy director of legal services for Kids in Need of Defense, which helps unaccompanied minors.

"When you compound that with anything else such as being a young parent or being pregnant, everything becomes twice as hard."

An attorney's shocking discovery last month of an ailing 17-year-old girl from Guatemala cradling a clearly premature infant inside a U.S. detention center prompted a national outcry and highlighted the challenges facing the teens. The mother had had an emergency cesarean section in Mexico in early May and crossed the border with the baby on June 4. She was in a wheelchair in extreme pain when legal advocates found her.

The girl and her baby are now doing well after leaving the processing facility in McAllen, Texas, where they were held, said her attorney, Hope Frye.

"The place where they are, it's safe and the baby is the belle of the ball," Frye said.

The accounts from lawyers and advocates come as U.S. immigration agencies have been struggling to handle a growing influx of migrants who cross illegally from Mexico and end up in the facilities of the ill-prepared and increasingly overwhelmed Customs and Border Protection, the first agency in charge of their detention. CBP is supposed to release the unaccompanied children to Health and Human Services — which contracts with shelter providers — within 72 hours, but the overcrowding has created a backlog that has resulted in children sometimes spending weeks in the custody of the CBP.

Customs and Border Protection has said repeatedly that it is not equipped to handle the large number of families and unaccompanied children coming to the border, and says its agents aren't trained to be caregivers. When asked to comment on the treatment of pregnant teens and teens with babies, a spokesman pointed to the agency's guidebook on treatment of detainees, which says underage migrants and those who are pregnant or nursing must have regular access to snacks, milk and juice.

The conditions have prompted protests such as one Thursday in Philadelphia in which about 300 people demonstrated outside the building housing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. Police say some members briefly interrupted the Salute to America parade and 33 were detained and cited. Organizer Sarah Giskin said earlier that protesters were demanding closure of border detention centers and abolition of the ICE agency.

The number of unaccompanied minors who travel to the U.S. has grown over the last year. Customs and Border Protection apprehended over 56,200 unaccompanied youths in the Southwest border from October to the end of May, compared to 50,000 in the last fiscal year. It's not known how many were pregnant or had babies. But the HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement says the agency has had about 500 teens with babies in its custody since October.

The trip to the U.S. can be particularly dangerous for pregnant teens, said Nicole Ramos, refugee program director for Al Otro Lado, an organization that helps asylum seekers.

"I feel young pregnant girls are vulnerable to human trafficking. They don't have resources. They're kids, so they're not savvy in all the ways of the world," Ramos said.

A series of reports and federal court documents have shown that their tribulations don't end once they are in U.S. custody. Two reports by U.S. government inspectors found severe and dangerous overcrowding at Border Patrol holding facilities in El Paso and McAllen, Texas.

In interviews with attorneys last month, young mothers who were being held in several Texas border facilities as unaccompanied minors described feeling hungry, cold and terrified because their babies were sick.

A 17-year-old Honduran girl with a 1-year-old daughter said she was detained for weeks at the processing center in McAllen after crossing the border on May 29. The girl told a lawyer she was separated from her husband and put in an area so crowded that some people had to sleep sitting up. The girl said she was allowed to shower once when they were detained but had not been able to again in the 12 days since, and her baby's clothing was dirty with vomit.

"We are given sandwiches that are cold and raw, and so we don't eat them," the girl said.

In a separate interview, a 16-year-old Guatemalan girl with a 1-year-old son who spent at least two weeks in CBP custody told an attorney she and her child were not eating properly.

"Before we came here my baby was eating solid food three times a day but now he is only getting breast milk and sometimes a cookie. I'm only making a little breast milk because I am not eating or drinking enough," the girl said.

Once they're released, the young mothers face a whole new set of challenges, said Konings, of Kids in Need of Defense. Minors don't automatically get legal representation in immigration court because it's considered civil, not criminal. They often have no access to mental health treatment. And though U.S.-born children qualify for welfare services, their mothers are usually afraid to ask for it for fear it might negatively affect their immigration case. Young mothers also have a hard time finding work while also caring for a child, and can't make ends meet, Konings said.

Having an American-born child also does not guarantee the parent can stay in the country legally, Konings said. A U.S. citizen has to be 21 years old before he or she can sponsor a parent. And even then, parents found living in the U.S. illegally are banned from returning to America for 10 years.

"The whole concept of, 'Oh I'll just have a baby in the U.S.' I mean that's not a thing," Konings said. "You're talking about 31 years. That's just not reality."

___

Associated Press writer Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, California, contributed to this report.

[rightsinexile]

Detention and Deportation News

AUSTRALIA:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison toured the Christmas Island immigration detention camp south of Jakarta, Indonesia, to show Australians that the re-opened detention centre was "up to the job" of providing healthcare to all single male asylum seekers brought to Australia under new medical transfer legislation.

The Australian government says it will dramatically expand healthcare operations at the Christmas Island Detention Centre to cater for more than 500 refugees and asylum seekers. 

Most of the 57 men currently earmarked for Christmas Island detention have been classed as refugees under the government's processing procedures. However, according to the PM, anyone on Manus or Nauru deemed a risk to Australia would be sent to the centre's high-security North West Point facility if they apply for a medical transfer under the legislation.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet criticizes Australia's refugee policies, specifically condemning plans to reopen Christmas Island detention centre.

GERMANY:

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Germany may deport asylum-seekers to other EU member states, stating that shortcomings in the welfare system of a member state should not prevent asylum-seekers from being deported, and exceptions apply only in extreme cases, where the individual is deprived of his or her "most basic needs, such as feeding, washing and finding shelter."

According to Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, Germany failed to deport 27,000 rejected asylum seekers last year, nearly half of the total 57,000 cases, but the government will soon step up deportation efforts.

INDIA:

The Supreme Court of India has asked the government to review its repatriation policy regarding foreigners in detention and to come up with other ways to allow detainees to live a dignified life, including granting refugee status on them.

UNHCR has expressed regret over India's decision to repatriate a group of Rohingya to Myanmar, the second such return in three months, and has sought clarification from India on the circumstances under which the asylum seekers were sent back, voicing concern over the unconducive conditions for such returns.

LIBYA:

UNHCR is troubled by reports of the use of force against protesting asylum seekers in Sikka detention centre in Libya; around 50 people were reportedly injured when police moved to end the protest and two individuals were badly injured and transferred to hospital.

Refugees and migrants – particularly men and boys – are being subjected to brutal and routine sexual violence in Libyan detention centres and all along the Central Mediterranean Route to Italy, a recent report based on surveys and focus groups conducted by the Women’s Refugee Commission finds. The extent of sexual violence perpetrated against refugees appears in part to be contingent on their financial resources, their connections, and the year that they travelled – those traveling in recent years are seemingly more likely to have experienced sexual violence. Perpetrators often film the abuse and send (or threaten to send) it to victims’ relatives in an attempt to extract extra ransom money.

QATAR:

Qatar authorities are threatening to forcibly expel a Yemeni national without considering his claim for asylum, according to Human Rights Watch, who state that the Qatar government has so far failed to implement a law passed in September 2018 that sets out the standards for granting asylum and the rights and benefits for people granted asylum in the country, claiming that the infrastructure necessary to enforce the law has not yet been established.

UK:

A man faces deportation to Malaysia, where homosexual acts are punishable under federal and sometimes sharia law, after the Home Office said it did not believe he was gay suggesting it was suspicious that he did not have a boyfriend.

US:

The US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that the government may detain — without a hearing — legal immigrants long after they have served the sentences for crimes they committed, reversing a ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has made it harder for the US government to quickly deport asylum-seekers if they fail an initial “credible fear” screening at the border. The court held that a law passed by Congress in 1996 limiting asylum-seekers’ access to US courts if they want to challenge decisions of an asylum officer and immigration judge is unconstitutional. The ruling in Thuraissigiam v. USDHS could give thousands of asylum-seekers the right to seek habeas review in the federal court system.

According to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) documents released on Capitol Hill by Florida Democratic representative Ted Deutch’s office, thousands of allegations of sexual abuse against unaccompanied minors (UAC) in the custody of the US government have been reported over the past 4 years. The allegations range from adult staff members having relationships with minors, and the showing of pornographic videos, to forcible touching. 

The US government is keeping at least 16 unaccompanied minors, some as young as nine years old, in at least five undisclosed facilities in Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia; the facilities have never been acknowledged by the US Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) says it has uncovered evidence that the Office of Refugee Resettlement was proactively sharing information that it gained during the family reunification process with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in effect using the children as bait to snare undocumented sponsors. “We suspected it all along but what cemented it for us was the leaking of a memo that this policy is being used for the purpose of deterring immigration” said Saira Draper, a senior staff attorney with the SPLC.

At least nine infants under the age of one are being held in a Texas immigrant detention facility, according to a complaint filed with the US Department of Homeland Security that warned of an “alarming increase” in how many infants are detained.

In the past five years, median bond amounts for immigration cases in the US have increased by 50 percent, to USD 7,500. For those who can’t afford to pay, Libre by Nexus acts as a sort of middleman, connecting detainees with licensed bond companies that front the money.

[go-redgirl]

Media Silent as Biden Illegally Holds Unaccompanied Migrant Children, Says Border Patrol Union

The mainstream media is being silent as the Biden administration holds unaccompanied migrant children in Border Patrol custody longer than legally allowed, the head of the Border Patrol union stated. The minors are being held in the same “cages” the media and Democrat politicians loudly criticized the Trump administration for.

National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd told Breitbart Texas that as of Monday, Border Patrol officials held more than 800 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) in custody. Despite the legal requirement to release the children to other federal agencies within 72 hours, more than 212 remained in custody longer than the legal limit.

“Today, [White House Press Secretary] Jen Psaski said the Administration could not hold the children in other locations due to the Covid protocols including social distancing,” Judd told Breitbart, “but what she didn’t tell the media was that the children in [Border Patrol’s] custody were being held in conditions that have nearly no way to social distance.”

Psaki’s remarks came in a Tuesday press briefing in response to questions from Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy. Forbes tweeted a video of the exchange.

To be clear, Judd states that the Biden administration is holding unaccompanied minors in Border Patrol custody longer than the law allows in conditions where social distancing cannot be maintained in order to keep social distancing in other federal facilities.

“The hypocrisy from the left and the mainstream media truly shows they care nothing for the children they used as pawns to attack President Trump.”  Judd said.

“Today Jen Psaski said ‘Customs and Border Control’ [not Customs and Border Protection] continue to transfer unaccompanied children to HHS’ Office of Refugee and Resettlement (ORR),” the Border Patrol union leader explained. “She went to great lengths to explain that due to the pandemic and social distancing, ORR only has capacity for a certain number of children.”

“What she didn’t explain is that the children that ORR doesn’t have that capacity to take are left in facilities far worse than those of HHS,” Judd continued. “In fact, they are being held in the same locations they accused the Trump Administration of inhuman acts when they said he was holding ‘kids in cages.'”

Last night, nearly 200 illegal aliens were apprehended in frigid temperatures in Mission, TX, to include 44 unaccompanied children. Even with the spread of the #COVID19 human smugglers continue brazen attempts with zero regard for the lives they endanger.

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) attacked the Biden administration for their expanded policy of opening detention facilities in South Texas, Breitbart’s John Binder reported.

“This is not okay, never has been okay, never will be okay — no matter the administration or party,” the New York congresswoman wrote.

Despite shortages of detention space, the Biden administration, through the U.S> Border Patrol, issued instructions to immediately release migrants in South Texas in order to deal with overcrowding in temporary holding facilities, Breitbart’s Randy Clark reportedTuesday night.

The continuing increase in the apprehension of unaccompanied minors is creating a crisis for the Biden administration along the Southwest border.

The number of Unaccompanied Alien Children illegally crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S. is increasing from month to month, according to reports from U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. In January 2021, Border Patrol agents apprehended 5,871 unaccompanied minors. This is up from 4,995 in December 2020 and 3,076 in January 2020.

Breitbart Texas reached out to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol for confirmation of the numbers of migrants being held in custody by Border Patrol and how long they are being held. An immediate response from officials was not available by the time of this article’s publication.

READ MORE STORIES ABOUT:

Border / Cartel Chronicles Media Politics Brandon JuddJen Psaki National Border Patrol Council Peter Doocy unaccompanied alien children Unaccompanied Minors

[newstfionline]

Detaining immigrant kids is now a billion-dollar industry

By Martha Mendoza and Larry Fenn, AP, July 13, 2018

SAN ANTONIO (AP)--Detaining immigrant children has morphed into a surging industry in the U.S. that now reaps $1 billion annually--a tenfold increase over the past decade, an Associated Press analysis finds.

Health and Human Services grants for shelters, foster care and other child welfare services for detained unaccompanied and separated children soared from $74.5 million in 2007 to $958 million in 2017. The agency is also reviewing a new round of proposals amid a growing effort by the White House to keep immigrant children in government custody.

Currently, more than 11,800 children, from a few months old to 17, are housed in nearly 90 facilities in 15 states--Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

They are being held while their parents await immigration proceedings or, if the children arrived unaccompanied, are reviewed for possible asylum themselves.

In May, the agency issued requests for bids for five projects that could total more than $500 million for beds, foster and therapeutic care, and “secure care,” which means employing guards. More contracts are expected to come up for bids in October.

HHS spokesman Kenneth Wolfe said the agency will award bids “based on the number of beds needed to provide appropriate care for minors in the program.”

The agency’s current facilities include locations for what the Trump administration calls “tender age” children, typically under 5. Three shelters in Texas have been designated for toddlers and infants. Others--including in tents in Tornillo, Texas, and a tent-and-building temporary shelter in Homestead, Florida--are housing older teens.

Over the past decade, by far the largest recipients of taxpayer money have been Southwest Key and Baptist Child & Family Services, AP’s analysis shows. From 2008 to date, Southwest Key has received $1.39 billion in grant funding to operate shelters; Baptist Child & Family Services has received $942 million.

A Texas-based organization called International Educational Services also was a big recipient, landing more than $72 million in the last fiscal year before folding amid a series of complaints about the conditions in its shelters.

The recipients of the money run the gamut from nonprofits, religious organizations and for-profit entities. The organizations originally concentrated on housing and detaining at-risk youth, but shifted their focus to immigrants when tens of thousands of Central American children started arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years.

They are essentially government contractors for the Health and Human Services Department--the federal agency that administers the program keeping immigrant children in custody. Organizations like Southwest Key insist that the children are well cared for and that the vast sums of money they receive are necessary to house, transport, educate and provide medical care for thousands of children while complying with government regulations and court orders.

The longer a child is in government custody, the potential for emotional and physical damage grows, said Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“The foundational relationship between a parent and child is what sets the stage for that child’s brain development, for their learning, for their child health, for their adult health,” Kraft said.

“And you could have the nicest facility with the nicest equipment and toys and games, but if you don’t have that parent, if you don’t have that caring adult that can buffer the stress that these kids feel, then you’re taking away the basic science of what we know helps pediatrics.”

[fumpkins]

Migrant children are being held in toxic U.S. detention centers

President Joe Biden’s administration has actually represented its migration policy as a gentle departure from current precedent. In a March instruction at the White House, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated that his firm was coming “out of the depths of cruelty” in which it ran throughout the Trump administration. But as the brand-new administration prepares to apprehend countless migrant children at websites with histories of toxic contamination, ecological justice supporters are questioning whether such situations can really be thought about humane.

Last month, hundreds objected in the Miami-location residential area of Homestead, where the once-largest youth migrant detention center in the U.S. was slated to resume, in spite of the reality that it had actually been considered too ecologically toxic for human beings by the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Air Force, and Miami-Dade County. The Homestead Migrant Detention Facility, which previous President Donald Trump momentarily closed in 2019 next-door neighbors a Superfund website where 16 sources of extremely infected military waste, consisting of arsenic, lead, and mercury, are still discovered. (It was likewise well-known for reports of sexual assault by personnel.)

In a relocate to stop the racket, Biden informed the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal firm charged with looking after migrant minors in U.S. custody, to discover other alternatives. However, 2 of the websites they went on to provide rather, Texas’ Fort Bliss and Joint Base San Antonio, are themselves understood to be infected with toxic chemicals that go beyond federal government security limits. While Joint Base San Antonio is still waiting on brand-new arrivals, 500 unaccompanied youth were transferred to El Paso’s Fort Bliss recently.

After the Trump Administration initially started dabbling the concept of utilizing Fort Bliss as a holding website in 2019, the ecological not-for-profit Earthjustice launched federal government files revealing that the center’s premises had a history of cancer-causing chemical contamination far above main security limits — which clean-up of these toxic locations had actually not been validated. In 1998, some carcinogenic unpredictable natural substances were discovered at more than 460 times the level considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. Since then, a minimum of 80 toxic websites on the base have actually been recognized and remediated, however even after the clean-up effort websites were discovered to include levels of arsenic as high as 19 times the EPA’s optimum safe level for property soil.

At Joint Base San Antonio on the other side of Texas, the water is infected with the so-called “forever chemicals” called PFAS at levels 2 times greater than what the EPA considers safe, thanks to the armed force’s decades-long usage of toxic firefighting foam. The air contamination levels on the base and in the surrounding neighborhood are a few of the worst in the nation.

The administration’s transfer to open these brand-new holding websites comes in the middle of a duration that has actually left approximately 20,500 unaccompanied minors in U.S. custody since Thursday, according to Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS. Reports from the border have actually explained overcrowded centers that have actually left numerous children more youthful than 13 imprisoned for longer than the optimum 72 hours allowed by law. 

In reaction to issues from ecological justice activists about the brand-new holding websites, HHS informed Livescience.Tech that the firm continues to take “the safety and health of unaccompanied children referred to [its] care with the utmost seriousness” which it would carry out ecological evaluations prior to children get in any brand-new centers, in accordance with its longstanding policy.

News reports and administrative leakages reveal that other toxic websites are under factor to consider as brand-new holding websites too. Since 2018, Earthjustice has actually recognized a minimum of 6 youth centers, either in active usage or under factor to consider for future usage, that are house to levels of contaminants and chemical waste thought about unsuited for property usage. Many of them are present or previous military bases. Earthjustice states that HHS’s ecological evaluations are inadequate which lots of previous websites were considered safe by the department in spite of proof revealing contamination levels that were possibly damaging to human beings. 

“These children don’t deserve to be sentenced to cancer and other consequences of environmental hazards within these facilities,” stated Raul Garcia, a legal director at EarthJustice. “They shouldn’t be punished for something that isn’t their fault and is out of their control.”

Garcia called it paradoxical that a lot of those displaced by natural catastrophes are subjected to a brand-new kind of ecological violence once they reach the U.S. A big part of youth getting to the border are from Central American nations that were ravaged by Hurricanes Eta and Iota in November.  

“Poor people of color generally tend to receive all the burden of the racist system that already exists within the United States,” stated Garcia. “There is this cycle of environmental trauma for immigrants.”

Historically, Earthjustice and other advocacy groups have actually discovered more success obstructing making use of migrant detention websites that are privately-owned, instead of military bases. In addition to the canceled resuming of the Homestead Migrant Detention Facility in Florida, 2 other detention websites have actually been nixed for their ecological failures over the previous month. A website in Midland, Texas, was briefly near brand-new arrivals after the state cautioned that its water wasn’t drinkable due to chemical contamination. A proposed holding area at a NASA proving ground in Moffett, California, was likewise ditched after activists highlighted its distance to a recognized Superfund website with high levels of toxic chemicals.

In a declaration following the opening of Fort Bliss, Earthjustice stated that the Biden administration’s current relocations reveal that the nation has actually stopped working to produce conditions to keep those in custody safe. Pointing to reports of forced sanitation, making use of commercial chemical disinfectants at other migrant detention centers, and unrestrained break outs of COVID-19,” the group is getting in touch with Biden to right away stop making use of both personal and government-owned websites that “place children in such unsafe facilities” and discover alternatives that don’t utilize “toxic sites, military sites, or detention-like settings” to home children.

This story was initially released by Livescience.Tech with the heading Migrant children are being held in toxic U.S. detention centers on Apr 9, 2021.

New post published on: https://livescience.tech/2021/04/10/migrant-children-are-being-held-in-toxic-u-s-detention-centers/