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Five months after the administration of US President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency, Scrambling to set up a shelter Child welfare advocates say that in order to accommodate a record number of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border alone, children continue to struggle in these places, and more children continue to flow in.
According to a statement submitted to the federal court that supervises the custody of immigrant youths, more than 700 children spent three weeks or more in unlicensed government premises in mid-July.
Advocates say that children should be quickly released to their relatives in the United States or sent to a licensed agency.
In one of the documents, a 16-year-old Salvadoran boy said that the children were eating raw meat. It took more than a month for the boy to be released to his father in Georgia. He said he would talk to his parents every week.
“When I wake up every day, I feel very depressed. Among the young people who come with me, I am the last one.” The boy said in a statement. “I want to go home with Dad now.”
When the Biden administration established emergency stations in March to alleviate dangerous overcrowding at border stations, they were originally a temporary solution. But a few months later, some people doubted whether this is still the case.
Children crossing the border without an adult in July Close to the same level Despite the hot summer, they did it in March.
“If you plan to host a three-person dinner, but 30,000 people are present, you will have problems,” said Dolly M Gee, the U.S. District Judge who oversaw the decades-long regulatory settlement agreement, at a recent hearing. Said the conditions of the children.
“Infrastructure is not built for thousands of people entering at once, and somehow the paradigm must be shifted to figure out how to handle these types of numbers.”
The number of children crossing the border soars
US border authorities reported that there were more than 18,000 encounters with unaccompanied immigrant children in July, a 24% increase from a month ago. This rise was the busiest month for the Biden administration at the border. Although the speed of crossing the border in summer is usually expected to slow, there were nearly 200,000 encounters in total.
According to a government report in early August, the Department of Health and Human Services cared for nearly 15,000 children, but only had 11,000 licensed asylum beds for immigrant children.
The use of large facilities can fill this gap, but advocates say that the government can do better by expanding licensed shelters in which children can receive caseworkers, entertainment, and six per week. Hours of education.
The mission of the Department of Health and Human Services is to take care of the children until they can be sent to relatives or other sponsors in the United States while waiting for the immigration judge to decide whether they can stay in the United States legally.
Although the agency has a scalable network of state-licensed shelters, ample space for foster care programs, and large so-called influx care facilities that meet specific staffing and condition standards, it continues to turn to these emergency sites.
Proponents say that emergency reception points that do not comply with any of the agency’s existing standards are an inadequate and expensive option, especially for young, vulnerable children who are already dealing with the trauma of leaving home and taking a dangerous trip to the north. In terms of.
“There are other ways to do this.” Leecia Welch, senior director of legal advocacy and child welfare at the National Child Welfare Center, said: “They seem to bury their heads in the sand and act as if the emergency shelter is the only game in the city. The facts are far from each other. One of the lawyers representing children in Youth Law and federal court cases. “When you start to be terrible, the better is still terrible, that’s not okay. “
Advocates demand that Gee order the government to comply with standards in emergency situations, just like its influx of nursing facilities, which is also intended to offset the increase in the number of arrivals.
For example, the Carrizo Springs, Texas facility can accommodate up to 1,000 children, must provide a caregiver for every eight children who are awake, and provide each child with a separate consultation at least once a week service. A hearing on this issue is scheduled for October 1.
Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not answer questions from the Associated Press.
“Misconduct is rewarded”
The administrations of former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump also opened temporary facilities when the number of children crossing the border alone increased sharply, but this number was far from what the Biden administration had seen.
Once the coronavirus emerged, the Trump administration largely closed the southwest border to asylum seekers Pandemic-related measures, Rejected many immigrants. Then, in November, a federal judge ordered the government to stop the deportation of unaccompanied children under the policy.
Two months later, President Joe Biden took office, and the number of migrant children seeking to transit began to rise.
Due to coronavirus concerns, shelters for young immigrants are still reducing their capacity, and HHS suddenly has no space to accommodate them.
In recent months, the average length of stay at emergency reception points has decreased, and HHS has closed some stations and worked hard to improve conditions at other stations. But according to the statement submitted to the court, at some point, some children were so eager to leave the government’s largest emergency facility at Fort Bliss, Texas, that they tried to escape.
After being caught, some children were sent to a more restrictive youth shelter in New York. A 16-year-old from Honduras said that this is an improvement because they received pizza and other delicacies instead of raw blood chicken from the army base. They also have teachers, but there were no classes before.
“If anything, misbehavior is rewarded,” said the teenager who felt like a hostage after spending a day in Fort Bliss. “I’m so grateful that I tried to escape that hell. It’s terrible, I can’t sleep.”
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