The Trump Administration Is Making Conditions Even Worse For Migrant Children

By Lauren Rearick


More than 13,000 migrant children are being contained at government-funded shelters while in the United States, and based on a new decision from President Donald Trump, these kids could lose access to education, recreation, and legal services.


In a statement to the New York Times, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed on June 5 that the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which assists in housing and caring for unaccompanied migrant children, was to “begin scaling back or discounting” programs for children “that are not directly need for the protection of life and safety, including education services, legal fees, and recreation.” That includes English language classes, and soccer games; the latter aren’t explicitly mandated by the 1997 decision made in Flores v. Reno that stipulates minimum standards for children contained by governmental businesses, however they do count as recreation, and as a way to allocate the children a brief reprieve from the overcrowding and inhumane conditions being forced upon them. Deeming such things “unnecessary” is abjectly cruel.


The cuts would impact children housed at more than 100 shelters while in the United States, the New York Times reports. Under current immigration law, children that cross the United States border without a parent or guardian are sent to shelters up until a case worker can reunite them with a relative or sponsor, the Washington Post reports.


Evelyn Stauffer, Health and Human Services spokesperson, attributed the cuts to a “humanitarian crisis at the border brought on by a damaged immigration system that is putting tremendous strain (on the agency),” Time reports; the Trump administration is now seeking $3 billion in funding from Congress to “increase shelter capacity,” NPR notes.


Several of the people trying to cross the border are doing so group in attempt to seek asylum, which is absolutely legal and must be done in the nation or at the border; the Department of Homeland Security has recently begun detaining asylum-seekers right after Attorney General William Barr categorized them to, as a means to discourage people from migrating altogether. Such tactics have not worked.


Critics of the cuts, including Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, chair of the Home Appropriations HHS subcommittee, pointed out that not offering children with these services could violate the Flores agreement. “Basic educational, recreational, and legal services for unaccompanied children are imperative for their physical and mental well-being,” she mentioned in an interview with The Hill. “ORR’s cancelling of those services will inflict further harm on children... That isn't only unacceptable, it can would be in violation of the law."


Rochelle Garza, a personnel attorney with the ACLU of Texas, told NPR that without recreation or education, children could be living in “prison-like conditions” and Amy Cohen, a psychiatrist who make sure Flores compliance at shelters instructed them New York Times that the move “violates every tenet of generic child welfare practice and will further harm the medical and psychological health of children fleeing extraordinarily dangerous circumstances in their residence countries.”


Carlos Holguin, a lawyer who represented minors in Flores, promised to challenge the decision, telling the Washington Post, “We’ll visualize them in court if they go through with it. What’s next? Drinking water? Food? . . . Where are they going to stop?”


This isn't the initial time President Trump’s administration had faced criticism for its treatment of children at the border. Under his now-defunct “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, he and Attorney General Jeff Sessions determined to prosecute anyone who tried to cross the United States border without prior documentation. Under the law, children were separated from their parents and placed in shelters. The move later made headlines as images from the shelters revealed that children were being kept in cages. More than 2,800 families were separated while in that time, USA Today reports, and following increased pressure, Trump later rescinded the portion of his executive group that called for forced family member separation. Some children are still separated from their families, the ACLU announced in October; others have been forced to wait for hours in vans before they were reunited with their families.