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Category: Child Detention

  • Nearly 200 Children Who Fled Afghanistan Without Family Are Stuck in US Custody

    Seven months after the fall of Kabul, shelters in the U.S. caring for children evacuated without their parents are experiencing unprecedented violence while workers at the facilities have struggled to respond to the young Afghans’ trauma.

    Some children have run away, punched employees and stopped eating. Others have tried to kill themselves. At one shelter, ProPublica has learned, some children reported being hurt by employees and sexually abused by other minors.

    At least three shelters in Michigan and Illinois have shut down or paused operations after taking in large groups of Afghan children, prompting federal officials to transfer them from one facility to another, further upending their lives.

    “This is not acceptable,” said Naheed Samadi Bahram, U.S. country director for the nonprofit Women for Afghan Women, which provides mentors to children in custody in New York. These children “left their homes with a dream to be stable, to be happy, to be safe. If we cannot offer that here in the U.S. that is a big failure.”

    ProPublica reported in October on serious problems at a Chicago shelter that took in dozens of young Afghans. Since then, we’ve found that the troubles in the U.S. shelter system are more widespread.

    This account is based on law enforcement records, internal documents and interviews with nearly two dozen people who have worked with or have talked with the children in facilities across the country, including shelter administrators and employees as well as interpreters, attorneys and volunteers.

    Advocates for the children acknowledge that the Office of Refugee Resettlement — the federal agency responsible for overseeing the nation’s shelters for unaccompanied immigrant minors — is navigating an exceptional challenge. The haphazard evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan last year as U.S. troops pulled out of the country left little time to prepare ORR facilities, which are accustomed to housing Central American children and teens. The COVID-19 pandemic created additional complications.

    In all, some 1,400 unaccompanied Afghan minors were brought to the U.S. last year and placed in ORR custody. Of those, more than 1,200 have gone to live with sponsors, typically relatives or family friends.

    Nearly all the remaining 190 are teenage boys with nobody here who can take them in. As of March 8, more than 80 Afghan children had been in ORR custody for at least five months, according to government data analyzed by the National Center for Youth Law. In a system that normally houses children for about a month, the young Afghans have been waiting in what seems like never-ending detention.

    It’s unclear how or when children will be reunited with their families. The State Department is working to obtain travel documents for parents who remain in Afghanistan, a spokesperson said, but coordinating departures from Taliban-ruled Kabul has proven challenging.

    The ORR said it has placed 56 of the 190 children in its custody into long-term or transitional foster care as of this week and is recruiting more families to take them in.

    An ORR official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the agency is doing its best to support the Afghan children by providing interpreters, mental health services, additional staffing and, in recent months, Afghan American mentors. But those efforts won’t “change the reality for a child that their parent is hiding from the Taliban or that their family has died or that they are grappling with some really terrible things that nobody should have to grapple with.”

    “I do struggle to know what else we could be doing that we’ve already not been trying to do.”

    And the ORR may soon face another challenge. With the Biden administration’s announcement Thursday that the U.S. will accept 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing war, people who work in the system are bracing for the children who may arrive without their parents.

    On a cold and cloudy evening in early January, 19 boys were shuttled in vans to a shelter run by the nonprofit Samaritas in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

    Employees at the shelter had heard that they might receive Afghan children but thought they’d have two or three weeks to prepare for their arrival.

    Instead, they had 24 hours’ notice, according to one worker. (The ORR says it gave the shelter two weeks’ notice.) A federal emergency intake site that housed dozens of Afghan children almost 85 miles away in Albion, Michigan, had abruptly shut down, scattering children to facilities across the country, including Samaritas.

    The shelter was not ready.

    “Everything from the food to the reading material [to the] grievance procedures and the rules — everything that we had was set up for Central American kids,” one Samaritas employee said. “And now we were really screwed.”

    On a given day, some 10,000 or so children and teens are in ORR custody around the country, the vast majority of them from Central America. Facilities that receive them tend to have employees who know their language and culture. Workers often speak Spanish or are Latin American immigrants or children of immigrants. They understand what motivates Central American teens to immigrate each year: pursuing a better education, fleeing gang violence and earning dollars to support families.

    The children, too, often know what to expect because they’ve heard stories from friends and relatives who immigrated before them. They know it’ll be about 30 days in ORR custody before they’re sent to live with a sponsor.

    “The Afghan kids were a completely different story,” said a former worker at a Pittsburgh shelter run by the nonprofit Holy Family Institute. “I felt so sorry for them. They’ve been there three, four months, and they still did not know if they would ever see their families again.”

    The pivot to housing Afghan children left shelters flat-footed. Many needed prayer rugs, halal meat and connections to local Muslims who could lead Friday prayers. Even with interpreters who spoke Pashto or Dari, communication between children and employees was difficult, leading to misunderstandings and mistrust.

    In the hours before the Afghan children arrived in Grand Rapids, the Samaritas worker said staff members were scrambling: “OK, like, what language do they speak? … It was a culture shock for them. It was a culture shock for us.”

    There were many “unexpected complications,” said Samaritas Chief Operations Officer Kevin Van Den Bosch, but “we looked at the challenge, and said, ‘If not us, who is going to do it?’”

    Employees at several shelters described the trauma among the youths as more severe than anything they’d seen. Children are desperate to call home to check on their parents and other relatives, some of whom worked for the U.S. government or for contractors and are now potential targets for the Taliban.

    Some feel guilty for being in the U.S. while their families fear for their lives in Afghanistan.

    After the Afghan children arrived at Samaritas, Grand Rapids police responded nearly every other day to calls for incidents like missing persons, suicide threats, fights and assaults. The police reports were unavailable, but internal shelter records document many of those incidents.

    One boy put a rope around his neck, “acting like he wanted to hang himself.” Another day, a boy tried to suffocate another child with a plastic bag. A few days later, a worker found a boy scratching his forearm. He told her that “when his body is in pain, it prevents his head from thinking about his problems.”

    Meanwhile, Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the state’s Children’s Protective Services, is investigating allegations related to Samaritas, though it’s not clear what the allegations involve. A department spokesperson, Bob Wheaton, said the agency was prohibited by law from disclosing details.

    Samaritas officials said that, while the nonprofit could not provide information about the allegations, the agency follows robust safety protocols to protect the youth in its care. That includes background checks, cameras at the facility and safety plans for children at risk of self-harm. “We take every, every allegation, or everything that a youth says seriously,” Van Den Bosch said, “and everything gets reported.”

    Advocates said the struggles of some of the Afghan children should have been anticipated.

    “Even children who have no prior traumatic experiences would begin to show signs of distress at this point, being in shelter care for this long,” said Saman Hamidi-Azar, who visits children in ORR facilities as a volunteer with Afghan Refugee Relief, a community organization in California. “There is nowhere to pinpoint blame except for the manner in which Afghanistan is evacuated: way too fast. No one was prepared on the ground here. No one could have expected what happened.”

    In Chicago, ProPublica reported last fall on how the challenges involving Afghan children at a shelter operated by Heartland Human Care Services were exacerbated by the lack of on-site interpreters.

    After the story was published, lawmakers called for an investigation and Heartland received interpreters.

    But in the months that followed, police were called repeatedly to the facility. In January, officers arrested a 16-year-old boy accused of kicking and punching two workers. According to the police report, the boy said he was upset about being separated from his friends.

    In a statement, Heartland said it’s not equipped to provide the mental health support some Afghan children need. “Heartland is not alone in our experience of how the severe lack of access to mental health resources dramatically impacted unaccompanied Afghan youth who arrived in this country last fall,” an official wrote.

    The official said it stopped taking in children “after the challenging past few months” to support front-line staff through team-building and training. Heartland recently resumed operations, though at a reduced capacity.

    Starr Commonwealth, the emergency intake site in Albion, seemed to get off to a better start. It offered a welcoming setting with residential cottages on a lush green campus when Afghan children arrived last fall. Unlike Heartland, it had Dari and Pashto interpreters on site from the outset.

    But attorneys who visited children at Starr raised red flags early on. The site was too restrictive, they said, and children complained about a lack of physical activity and phones to call their families.

    What’s more, because of its status as a federal emergency intake site, Starr wasn’t licensed by the state. Immigration advocates have long criticized the government’s use of these emergency facilities because they operate without independent state oversight.

    The federal government had begun leasing the campus from a nonprofit with the same name last spring in response to large numbers of Central American children crossing the border. Starr later shifted focus to housing Afghan children.

    As the children remained long past the short stays Starr was designed to accommodate, the local sheriff’s office started fielding calls about fights, runaways and suicidal behavior. A volunteer who often visited the facility — and asked not to be identified to avoid the risk of losing access to children in ORR custody — said children would tell her they “were crying all night long” and ask for prayers to help with depression.

    She told her husband the shelter reminded her of a prison.

    Before Starr shut down in early January, the sheriff’s office in Calhoun County received referrals for at least five child welfare allegations in the final three weeks, records show. In one case, a 16-year-old said two workers shoved and yelled at him. When interviewed by a deputy, one of the workers acknowledged yelling out of frustration but said he “does not put his hands” on the children.

    The other worker was separately suspended after being accused of kicking a boy who was praying, according to a report. Neither led to charges. In the case in which the 16-year-old said he was shoved, the Calhoun County prosecutor’s office determined an assault did not take place. In the second, the child who said that he was kicked could not be located because he had been transferred elsewhere, Prosecuting Attorney David Gilbert said.

    There were other troubles. Authorities responded to three allegations of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior between children, including one from an 8-year-old boy who told a counselor that a 13-year-old boy came into his room at night and touched him. “He is scared and does not feel safe,” according to a sheriff’s department report. But by the time the prosecutors got this case, too, the children were no longer at Starr and could not be located, Gilbert said.

    It’s unclear who employed the workers, as Starr was mostly staffed by PAE Applied Technologies, a federal contractor. A company representative declined to comment. Other workers came from a variety of federal agencies that loaned their services to the ORR.

    A spokesperson for Starr said the nonprofit “did share a number of concerns” with both ORR and PAE. But Starr was “purely serving as a landlord,” she added, and “the government, not Starr, is solely responsible for programming and caring for children through its ORR program.”

    Wheaton, from the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, said the agency had no jurisdiction over Starr but forwarded allegations to local law enforcement and federal authorities.

    The ORR official said that the agency has a “zero-tolerance policy for abuse of any kind” and that employees accused of abuse are immediately terminated or put on administrative leave. Facilities also send allegations to local law enforcement, child protective services, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general and the FBI.

    At Starr and shelters around the country, workers said that they were overwhelmed. Some expressed frustration, calling the youth “spoiled” for asking for more phone time and Afghan food — which, over time, they received. Other employees suspected their colleagues were afraid of the children. One volunteer called the situation inside a shelter a “pressure cooker.”

    Workers and others at several facilities said they heard children say they’d been told that if they misbehaved, they’d be sent back to Afghanistan.

    ORR officials said any threats against children are unacceptable, and employees accused of maltreatment are placed on leave until all the details of what happened are understood.

    Staffing shortages exacerbated tensions. In recent weeks, Samaritas administrators offered workers a $500 bonus if they picked up an extra shift, according to emails obtained by ProPublica.

    “The depth and breadth of the need, and the sudden nature of it … put everybody in a really tough spot,” Sam Beals, Samaritas’ chief executive, said. “When I think of what these kids have gone through … it’s shocking they don’t act out more.”

    Last week, Samaritas paused operations at the Grand Rapids shelter to hire and train staff.

    The decision was made by the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, which holds Samaritas’ grant with the ORR, according to federal officials. Lutheran Immigration did not respond to requests for comment.

    Less than three months after they arrived at Samaritas, the Afghan children were on the move again, transferred to new facilities. Employees made it a point to prepare the children by taking them on virtual or physical tours when possible. The last child left the Samaritas shelter last weekend.

    Melissa Adamson, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law who is authorized to interview children in U.S. immigration custody, said the repeated transfers of the Afghan youth “further destabilizes their already fragile sense of security.”

    Last fall, the ORR began offering special training for staff at shelters serving Afghan children. The agency also began allowing volunteer mentors from the Afghan American community to visit and provide emotional support to children, federal officials said.

    In January, the ORR began sending Muslim and Afghan American mental health specialists to shelters through a program with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

    The changes made a difference, said Hamidi-Azar — whose organization is part of a coalition of Afghan American community groups, advocates and others that mobilized last fall to assist evacuees in the U.S. “You have to give credit where it’s due,” she said. “From government agencies to community activists, we have all been trying to find a way to make the situation better.”

    After visiting children at one shelter in California, one Afghan American volunteer realized she could do more: She became a foster mom and welcomed two small boys — cousins — to her home.

    The woman, who asked not to be identified to protect the children’s privacy, took time off work to bond with the boys and enroll them in the neighborhood school.

    “They have adjusted well and are so happy to be in a home environment,” she said. “Being able to experience many firsts has been pretty special” — including a trip to the beach and a ride on a carousel.

    Theirs is the kind of story advocates around the country want for Afghan children languishing in ORR custody. But the foster care system is backlogged, and finding homes for teenage boys is especially difficult. Foster parents often prefer and are licensed to care for younger children.

    The ORR has partnered with organizations like the Muslim Foster Care Association to recruit more foster families. Approximately 80 Afghan families are awaiting licensing, a process that varies by state.

    The foster mom in California thinks often about all the children still waiting for what’s next.

    “As happy as I was that these boys were placed [with me], there were kids at the shelter that were devastated,” she said. “I know that one kid was crying: ‘Why? Why didn’t a family want me? What did I do?’”

    If you or someone you know needs help, here are a few resources:

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Backs Out of Negotiations to Compensate Separated Migrant Families

    protest against family separation at the U.S-Mexico border

    Human rights advocates were incensed Thursday after lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice informed representatives for hundreds of families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border that they were walking away from talks over compensating the families, as President Joe Biden had promised.

    Instead of settling more than 900 claims, the administration signaled it will go to court to determine what compensation is owed to the families, many of whom were forcibly separated for several months by the Trump administration under its so-called “zero tolerance” anti-immigration policy.

    Lee Gelernt of the ACLU, who is serving as the lead counsel for the families, said the administration’s decision to defend the policy in court was “shocking.”

    “Candidate Biden promised to help these children and families,” tweeted the ACLU. “But today, President Biden is shamefully playing politics with their lives and futures. We will never forget who takes action to help these families — and who turns their backs on them.”

    Critics tied the administration’s decision to pull out of the negotiations to right-wing politicians’ and commentators’ condemnation of leaked reports that said families could receive up to $450,000 each.

    After the information was leaked, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Biden planned to “literally make millionaires out of” the families and Fox News spent weeks focusing on the reported payments.

    Asked about the payments by Fox News in November, the president said the reports of the amount were “garbage.”

    Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary and Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro called the decision to terminate the talks “truly an act of cowardice.”

    “All because a Fox reporter scared them out of doing the right thing,” tweeted Castro. “We have to be bigger than this.”

    Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said the DOJ’s decision to defend the policy in court was “beyond shameful,” noting that lasting trauma was inflicted on an estimated 5,500 families who were separated by the U.S. government.

    Kathryn Hampton, deputy director of PHR, said the group “has documented the profound psychological harms and trauma endured by survivors of family separation, which include PTSD, depression, and anxiety that persist to this day. In all of the cases we analyzed, the Trump administration’s forced family separations constituted torture and temporary enforced disappearance.”

    “Instead of bowing to right-wing ideologues, the Biden administration should pursue justice and accountability for the deeply traumatized children and parents who endured these atrocious acts perpetrated by the United States government,” Hampton said. “The survivors deserve transformative reparations and recompense — including but not limited to financial settlements — which would offer a measure of justice in the wake of this disgraceful chapter of American history.”

    The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy targeted undocumented immigrants who crossed the southern U.S. border and who requested asylum at ports of entry. The practice included forcibly separating parents and guardians from their children, including some who were just a few months old, and was condemned by human rights experts, who said the U.S. government violated international law.

    The families affected, most of whom have been reunited, are now coping with the aftermath of the separations, with children exhibiting symptoms of trauma including anger, nightmares, digestive issues, and withdrawal. Legal filings allege sexual abuse in some detention centers where children were held.

    The administration’s withdrawal from negotiations with the families is an “absolute disgrace,” journalist Adam Serwer of The Atlantic said.

    Brian Tashman, an immigrant rights campaigner at the ACLU, said the administration is operating on “pure delusion” and the belief that “Fox News and the GOP will stop attacking them” if it caves to right-wing talking points about immigration and asylum seekers.

    “Biden got elected with a promise to show moral leadership, ‘restore the soul of the country,’ and right the wrongs of Trump’s cruel policy of family separation,” said Tashman. “Now his administration is caving to Fox News and GOP attacks on the settlement negotiations with separated families.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Immigrant Rights Advocates Urge Biden to Stop Detaining Children

    There are now over 15,000 unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody as the number of people seeking asylum at the southern border shows no sign of slowing down. The Biden administration has sharpened its rhetoric in recent weeks, insisting that the “border is closed” and pushing Mexico and Guatemala to stem the flow of migrants. The Biden administration has also maintained one of the most controversial Trump policies, which allows the U.S. to deny almost all asylum seekers on public health grounds. “What is happening at the southern border is shameful,” says Luz Lopez, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center focused on immigration. “We as a country should remain vigilant and hold any administration accountable, regardless of political party, with respect to our treatment of children seeking refuge, who are fleeing countries that are in turmoil, largely because of our geopolitical policies over the past several decades.”

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: Photos released Monday show migrant children crowded into holding areas separated by plastic sheeting at a temporary processing center near the U.S.-Mexico border in Donna, Texas. There is no social distancing in effect as the children huddle on plastic mattresses, covered with foil sheets. The photos were shared by Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas with the news site Axios. Cuellar said eight pods that were meant to house 260 children were packed beyond capacity, with one pod housing over 400 boys. He said Customs and Border Patrol agents were, quote, “not equipped to care for kids.”

    There are now over 15,000 unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody as the number of asylum seekers at the southern border shows no sign of slowing down. Over 5,000 of those are being held in Customs and Border Protection jails. Axios reports over 800 children have been jailed for over 10 days — more than a fourfold increase over the past week.

    This comes as The Washington Post reports CBP has requested airplanes to transport asylum seekers from the southern border to sites near the Canadian border for processing.

    Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas appeared on multiple news shows over the weekend to say the U.S. border is effectively closed.

    DHS SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: The border is closed. We are expelling families. We are expelling single adults. And we’ve made a decision that we will not expel young, vulnerable children.

    AMY GOODMAN: Mayorkas says officials are “rebuilding” systems the Trump administration “tore down.” But Republicans have tried to blame the new administration for the emergency with migrant children’s welfare. During an interview Monday with former President Donald Trump, Fox News host Harris Faulkner falsely reported Mayorkas had resigned after less than seven weeks on the job.

    HARRIS FAULKNER: The DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has resigned, Mr. President. Your first —

    DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’m not surprised. Good. That’s a big victory for our country.

    HARRIS FAULKNER: Hold on. Let me — let me stop. Let me stop. Let me listen to my team one more time. Forgive me. Forgive me. That has not happened.

    AMY GOODMAN: “That has not happened.”

    For more, we’re joined by Luz Lopez, senior supervising attorney with the Immigrant Justice Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. She came to the United States as a 10-year-old refugee with her family from El Salvador, which she writes about in her op-ed for The New York Times headlined “Migrant Children Deserve Better.”

    Welcome to Democracy Now!, Luz. It’s great to have you with us. So, if you can respond to what’s happening on the border, not under President Trump, but under President Biden, and if you can fold in your own experience and history and what needs to be done?

    LUZ LOPEZ: Thank you, Amy. Good morning. And to you, as well, Juan. It truly is an honor to be here. And thank you for this space.

    So, what is happening at the southern border is shameful. We as a country should remain vigilant and hold any administration accountable, regardless of political party, with respect to our treatment of children seeking refuge, who are fleeing countries that are in turmoil, largely because of our geopolitical policies over the past several decades.

    And with respect to how this mirrors our journey, my family’s journey to the United States, it really breaks my heart, Amy, that when we came to the U.S. in 1980, I was accompanied by my parents and my brother. My father had received a death threat. He was a teacher. So was my mother. We were forced to flee El Salvador. The United States was funding a war, was funding the military that was killing thousands of people. And we fled. We left everything we had, everyone we knew, our loved ones, our family, and set for the U.S., where we had family in New York. If we had fled under the conditions that exist now, I very likely would have never had the chance to serve for the United States U.S. Department of Justice. I never would have had the chance to sit here with you to talk about how we can do better. And we must do better for these children and these families.

    You know, one of the things that concerns me the most is that while we recognize that the new administration, the Biden administration, has made some positive impact and overtures to ensure that there is a fairer process — for example, they have removed the — they have revoked, I should say, the law that — the memorandum that had required ICE and ORR, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which generally processes unaccompanied minors, unaccompanied children who come to the U.S. seeking asylum — there had been this process in place where these two federal agencies shared information. That had a chilling effect on many of the sponsors and family members who were seeking to reunite with these children, because ICE was using this process, this process that should be full of hope and should be humane, as a means to identify and deport people, those sponsors who were seeking to reunite with their family members. So, we do recognize that the Biden administration has made some positive — taken some positive action.

    But the fact remains that children continue to come to the U.S. trying to seek refuge and solace and comfort away from the horrible situations that we find in the Northern Triangle — in Guatemala, in El Salvador and in Honduras — and in Mexico, of course. And what we, as a country, and what we would like to hold the Biden administration accountable for are policies that are humane, that are family- and child-centered.

    We have the means, Amy, to be more efficient in terms of reuniting families and children at the border with their hosts here in the U.S. The Biden administration themselves acknowledge that 80% of folks or more who come to the border come because there is a relative, there is someone, waiting for that person or that family here in the U.S. So, instead of spending millions and millions of dollars on CBP and ICE temporary shelters, makeshift shelters for children and families, we can actually divert those funds to ensuring a quicker, more efficient process through which we can reunite these families with their sponsors, these children with their sponsors, who are family members, who are trusted people and who are waiting for them here in the U.S.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Luz, I wanted to ask you, in terms of — you mentioned when your family came in 1980, you and your family, but even back then, even in the midst of civil wars in Central America, the United States granted very few Salvadorans and Guatemalans refugee status or asylum from those countries. What are the conditions that you feel warrant the asylum status now for those who are coming across the border, even if there are nominally no conflicts existing in Central America right now?

    LUZ LOPEZ: Thank you for the question, Juan.

    Well, anyone who is familiar with the present situation in what this country calls the Northern Triangle — in Honduras, Guatemala and in El Salvador — knows that there is rampant crime, corruption. Children, adults are being murdered. There is lawlessness and terror in these countries. And a lot of it goes back to, as I mentioned, these geopolitical games that the United States used to play during the Cold War, which have left these nations without infrastructure and without really any government structure that favors democracy. And as a result, we have children who are fleeing crime, certain death at the hands of gangs and of a corrupt government, or a government that may — you know, governments that may lack the means to protect their own citizens. It is quite lawless.

    My family — I still have family in El Salvador. And each day, things get worse, because COVID, of course, has exacerbated the situation. There is a growing desperation. And while we don’t want to play into the narrative that there is this surge, and we don’t want to spread any misinformation, we know that the rate of children, families, of persons who are coming to the U.S. has been steady. It has not suddenly spiked. It has been steady over the past year, not coincidentally because of COVID. And that has exacerbated these conditions in the Northern Triangle, where crime — there is no protection for families, for children. There are very few jobs. The economies in Latin America are collapsing because of what is happening due to the pandemic. And things were bad before.

    So, we need to be cognizant that many of the families, the people who are fleeing, are doing so because of past policies that need to be remedied. Yes, we must hold the Biden administration accountable for working with those governments to ensure that folks in these areas are actually safe, that they have access to the vaccine, which, you know, in El Salvador, a country of millions, less than 30,000 people have begun to be vaccinated. So, there are a lot of factors, of human factors, that are driving children and families here. And these are not new factors, as you point out, but what is new is that this country has, in some ways, lost its soul. We are —

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Luz, I wanted to ask you —

    LUZ LOPEZ: Yeah.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In terms of the so-called surge that has much been much reported of late, how much of that is actually, from what you can tell, new waves of migrants coming from the Northern Triangle, and how many of those are people who have been shut out over the last several years by the Trump administration and effectively dumped in Mexico right across the border and now think that with the new Biden administration, there will be an opportunity to have their cases reconsidered or their chances reconsidered?

    LUZ LOPEZ: That’s a really good question, Juan. I don’t have data that would indicate one way or another whether the number of folks who are coming are primarily folks who stayed in Mexico, who were not permitted to access the asylum process that the U.S. is responsible for ensuring under international and domestic law. We have an asylum process in place that we seem to ignore. So, I don’t have data in terms of who were folks who remained in Mexico through that Trump-era policy where we completely abandoned the asylum process and did not even process the numbers of folks that we needed to. We asked people to stay and await their number, so that they could seek asylum. That was unprecedented. We had never done that.

    But we do know that there is not a surge. There is data by the American Immigration Council that shows the numbers have been fairly steady for the past year. And what we are seeing, unfortunately, that worries me, that concerns the communities that serve these children and families, is that we are sort of reverting to some of the Trump-era practices, where we are not pushing for means to efficiently, to quickly unite children and families with their U.S. sponsors that have been waiting for them. As I said —

    AMY GOODMAN: Luz Lopez —

    LUZ LOPEZ: Yes.

    AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but 10 more seconds.

    LUZ LOPEZ: I have hope. There are progressive members of Congress that understand, that are willing to work with community organizations to ensure that children are protected and that we remain true to what the values of this country — what we tell the world the values of this country are.

    AMY GOODMAN: And as you write in your article, that children should be treated as children. Luz Lopez, thanks so much for being with us, senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

    When we come back, we’ll be joined by the award-winning investigative journalist Jean Guerrero, who just wrote a piece, “The MAGA Clowns Making Chaos at the Border Have Ugly Pasts.” Stay with us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Kevin McCarthy Is “Lying” About Terrorists Crossing the Border, Says AZ Lawmaker

    House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy addresses the press during the congressional border delegation visit to El Paso, Texas on March 15, 2021.

    House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) made some bold assertions while visiting the U.S.-Mexico border on Monday that Democratic lawmakers say is likely a lie. McCarthy claimed that border agents had told him that terrorists had entered the country due to a relaxation of immigration rules by the Biden administration.

    Speaking to reporters on Monday, McCarthy said that he was told directly by agents that terrorists had entered the U.S. “You saw it in their eyes. They talked about, ‘They’re on the list.’ … The terrorist watch list,” McCarthy said, per reporting from The Washington Post.

    McCarthy also claimed that these purported terrorists were entering the country from places like Yemen, Iran and Sri Lanka. Border agents “even talked about Chinese, as well,” the California Republican said.

    None of the claims made by McCarthy on Monday hold up to scrutiny. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not responded to media inquiries regarding McCarthy’s assertions, and the lawmaker’s office has similarly not provided any evidence that would confirm his statements.

    The claims from McCarthy match those made by former President Donald Trump, who similarly said in 2018 that terrorists were being caught while crossing the border. Those claims by Trump could not be confirmed as well, and according to reporting from Reuters at the time, sources within the federal government said they were untrue.

    Democratic members of Congress from states that share a border with Mexico were openly skeptical of McCarthy’s evidence-lacking claims. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) said she also recently spoke with Border Patrol agents, none of whom made any comments suggesting terrorists were crossing the border.

    In a tweet he authored on Monday, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) described the assertions by McCarthy as “weird,” and said that if such a thing were happening, he would have probably known about it, too.

    “As the Chairman of the subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations and a border state member of Congress [I] haven’t heard anything about this,” Gallego said.

    The Arizona congressman added that he was going to request a briefing from McCarthy in order to learn more. But he also expressed doubts over the veracity of what the Republican leader had suggested.

    “Pretty sure he is either wrong or lying,” Gallego said.

    Despite McCarthy’s questionable claims, there is legitimate reason for concern about other matters pertaining to the U.S.’s southern border. Many more migrants than usual are coming to the U.S., fleeing poverty, natural disasters, crime and repressive governments from their home countries, overwhelming U.S. officials and their ability to process asylum claims.

    The U.S. is witnessing a 20-year high in the number of migrants arriving at the border. Many of those who are braving the trek are young children, a number of whom are unaccompanied by adults, and who are being packed into detention centers in close proximity to each other during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, a worrying development for immigrant rights activists.

    As of Sunday, around 4,200 children were being housed in these facilities, a 31 percent increase from one week prior. About 3,000 of those children have been stuck in the facilities for more than 72 hours, the legal limit for how long minors are meant to be kept before being transferred to health officials within the Office of Refugee Resettlement for more permanent housing solutions.

    Journalists haven’t been allowed into these detention centers to document what’s happening, but lawyers representing the children have said the facilities are cramped and overcrowded. Children have reported that they lack basic hygiene needs, including soap, and that they have not had adequate access to food at times, the lawyers said.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.