Originally posted by the Voice of America.
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US Reveals It Held Hundreds of Immigrant Kids in Adult Detention
by Kate Woodsome
Newly released data collected by the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) suggests hundreds of immigrant children, unaccompanied and
undocumented in the United States, have been held in adult detention
centers, contrary to federal regulations.
The revelation comes as immigration authorities are grappling with an
unprecedented rise in the number of youths illegally migrating to the
U.S. from Latin America.
''DHS detained at least 1,366 children in adult immigration facilities
between 2008 and 2012, according to [1]data released by the National
Immigrant Justice Center this week.
The Chicago-based advocacy group obtained the data after a two-year
legal battle with DHS.
The legal settlement required DHS to release information for just 30 of
the approximately 250 immigration detention facilities whose services
it contracts.
The National Immigrant Justice Center says the limited reporting
suggests the number of children locked up with adults could be much
higher.
It's a startling revelation," said the center's executive director,
Mary Meg McCarthy. "These children were isolated from access to legal
counsel and may have been denied protections under U.S. law. It's
beyond time for Congress to step in and hold DHS accountable for an
immigration detention system that has gotten too big and out of
control."
The findings come as Congress is drafting new legislation to manage the
U.S. immigration system, including the rights afforded to undocumented
foreigners being detained.
''Currently, federal regulations require DHS to refer children under
the age of 18 to the Department of Health and Human Service's Office of
Refugee Resettlement within 72 hours of their apprehension. ORR is
specifically tasked to work with unaccompanied immigrant children,
placing the kids in a network of shelters offering mental and physical
support, translators, recreational activities and family reunification
services.
''However, the DHS data shows more than 1,300 children were detained in
adult facilities for more than three days. Across 13 states,
approximately 390 undocumented immigrant minors were held for more than
a month in county jails, detention centers and private prisons run by
the Corrections Corporation of America. Of that number, 15 were held in
adult detention facilities for more than three months, and four were
detained for between 1,000 and 3,600 days, according to the data.
Pushed from home
The data may speak to a larger issue. The number of immigrant children
entering the U.S. by themselves is soaring, although border crossings
overall have declined sharply in the last decade.
It's difficult to pinpoint exactly how many foreigners - adults and
children - are entering the U.S. illegally because the people coming in
don't announce their arrival. The best measure is data on
apprehensions and detentions, which are also imprecise because of the
many bureaucracies involved.
But ORR says one thing is clear: More kids are coming to the U.S. alone
than ever before.
On average, ORR serves between 7,000 and 8,000 children annually. That
number soared to 13,625 children in fiscal year 2012. By the end of
this year, the office is expecting to have served 23,000 children.
And those are only the children referred to ORR by immigration
authorities. The actual number may be much higher, as suggested by
Customs and Border Patrol, which says its agents apprehended [2]31,029
juveniles in fiscal year 2012.
Emergency state
Strained services
The influx has been so great that ORR has had to set up temporary
emergency shelters to house children in gymnasiums and at an air force
base.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement says the kids, most of them boys
over 14 years old, are coming primarily from Guatemala, El Salvador,
Honduras and Mexico. The ORR says gangs, drug cartels and poverty are
pushing them from home.
Representatives from the Women's Refugee Commission interviewed
children at the emergency facilities last June and found children who
said that while in Border Patrol custody, they sometimes slept on
crowded cement floors in facilities with no showers, where the lights
stayed on 24 hours a day.
Jennifer Podkul, senior program officer at the Women's Refugee
Commission, said ORR was doing "the best it could" considering the
circumstances and has since increased its number of beds and closed the
emergency shelters.
But she said the strained situation her group was able to monitor
raises questions about the situations it wasn't able to monitor -
children in adult immigration detention centers.
"I think this information was a surprise to people, and there's still a
lot of information we don't know," she said. "Why were they there? Were
they misclassified or improperly screened? Was there a backup during a
period when a lot of kids were coming in?"
Room for improvement
Podkul said the newly released DHS data is worrisome because it
suggests the government has not been completely successful in improving
the treatment of unaccompanied immigrant minors. As part of the 2002
Homeland Security Act, the U.S. government separated the duties of
immigration authorities who were once tasked with both apprehending and
prosecuting kids, and with taking care of them.
Podkul acknowledged the government's efforts to improve the situation
for immigrant children, but she said there's room for improvement.
"The government has to be more careful with children - they need to
make sure they're being held in the appropriate facilities," she said.
"Even if it's a border patrol station, they still need to make sure
there's special conditions," like emotional support and a place to
play."
DHS did not respond to requests for comment. But the office of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said in a statement it takes
its responsibility seriously to care for unaccompanied immigrant
children in the U.S. illegally.
"It is against ICE policy to detain an unaccompanied minor for more
than 72 hours and in no instance will an unaccompanied minor be housed
in an ICE detention facility while awaiting transfer to HHS," the
statement said. "Unaccompanied minors are carefully kept in staging
facilities away from the general population and minors are only held in
ICE custody when accompanied by their parents in a facility designed to
house families."
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[3]http://www.voanews.com/content/us-held-hundreds-of-young-immigrants-
in-adult-detention/1677421.html
References
1. http://www.immigrantjustice.org/sites/immigrantjustice.org/files/NIJC%20Fact%20Sheet%20Minors%20in%20ICE%20Custody%202013%2005%2030%20FINAL.pdf
2. http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/border_security/border_patrol/usbp_statistics/usbp_fy12_stats/usbp_juv_adult_appr.ctt/usbp_juv_adult_appr.pdf
3. http://www.voanews.com/content/us-held-hundreds-of-young-immigrants-in-adult-detention/1677421.html