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The Southwest Key-Casa Padre Facility in Brownsville, Texas, formerly known as Walmart, is one of more than 150 unaccompanied minors under federal contract who will lose their educational and legal programs due to Health and Human's mandate. Services.
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Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Southwest Key-Casa Padre Facility in Brownsville, Texas, formerly known as Walmart, is one of more than 150 unaccompanied minors under federal contract who will lose their educational and legal programs due to Health and Human's mandate. Services.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Trump administration is canceling English classes, leisure activities, including football, and legal aid for unaccompanied migrant children in federal migrant shelters.
The Refugee Resettlement Office, tasked with taking care of minors arriving at the southern border without a parent or guardian, says the massive influx of migrants in recent months is putting a strain on his budget already at the limit of rigor. ORR is part of the Department of Health and Social Services.
HHS spokeswoman Evelyn Stauffer said in an e-mail that the ORR was asking its shelters to reduce their activities "not directly necessary for the protection of life and safety", as the l & # 39; requires the law on the fight against disability.
A shelter provider employee told the Associated Press that the facility had been notified on May 30 " they would not reimburse the costs associated with education and other activities, "frightening the heads of the accommodation houses the way they will cover the expenses they pay for them. 39; outset.
Last month, the White House informed Congress that the Migrant Shelter Program could run out of money in June. The administration has requested nearly $ 3 billion to strengthen the program in an additional budget request, but Congress has not yet approved the funds.
According to Stauffer, the additional funding would serve to increase "the accommodation capacity to meet the needs of minors in our custody, while the ORR strives to find sponsors, usually family members. , for kids".
Advocates for migrant children say the decision to cut services is careless and possibly illegal. Children illegally arrested in the country must remain supported by the government in shelters until they are reunited with their parents or sponsor while awaiting immigration court hearings.
Rochelle Garza, a lawyer with the Texas ACLU, told NPR that all facilities housing unaccompanied minors are required to comply with federal law to obtain federal contracts. "But they must also comply with state law because all such facilities must be licensed in the state in which they are located." And among these requirements are educational and recreational provisions.
Garza works in Brownsville, Texas, near Casa Padre, the former Walmart, which has been converted into a shelter for about 1,500 boys aged 10 to 17. She described an average day for children placed in a regular safety shelter as equivalent to a full day. school that includes English, math, science and reading courses. Children have periods of outdoor activity and often play basketball and football. There are even sporadic trips to a nearby church, park or zoo.
She added that without these programs, the children accommodated "will be sitting in conditions similar to those of a prison". She noted that many minors are vulnerable children from Central America who escaped the violence.
About 2,200 minors are currently being held in federally registered reception centers on June 2, an HHS spokesman told NPR. The average duration of care for a child participating in the program is approximately 48 days.
On Wednesday, the Customs and Border Protection Office announced that the number of migrant children crossing the southern border without a parent or guardian had reached a record high in May. More than 11,000 people, twice as many as six months ago, have entered the country. CBP recorded another sharp increase in all areas; more than 144,000 immigrants were arrested along the US-Mexico border.
"We are in a crisis and I can not say any more, the system is down," CBP acting commissioner John Sanders told reporters.
The contracts in question include those provided by legal services groups, which provide minors with information about your rights. Without them, Garza said: "We will see a lot of kids being brought to justice with absolutely no one on their side without a legal representative."
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