Parents and families find it difficult to find migrant children in federal detention after the Trump administration has tightened the security restrictions on sponsorships, according to lawyers and other defenders working with them.
The rules have placed undocumented families in a desperate situation, leaving the children who crossed the unaccompanied border of languishing for months under the care of the Resettlement of Refugees, according to the defenders.
Among the new rules programs implemented since January, there is a requirement that families provide proof of their source of income, show American identification and, in many cases, take a DNA test. Planning a test can take weeks in certain states.
A Guatemalan mother living in California had been informed in March that she would soon be found with her children, aged 7 and 14, who had been detained on the border without legal guard in January. Then new policies required identification. In California, the only undocumented immigrant ID can obtain is a driver’s license, and the mother had never driven.
“She had to learn to lead to applying,” said Molly Chew, project manager at Vecina, a non -profit organization whose reunited project works on a national level to help accelerate the process for families with children detained. “She is terrified by driving.”
Chew said she was asking for an exemption, but now the refugee resettlement office also requires the DNA test. The mother has passed the test and has been waiting for the results for a month.
“These families are placed in an impossible link,” said Chew. They are asked to “submit documents that they cannot obtain legally, to respect the procedures which expose them to the application of immigration and to wait indefinitely while their children remain in detention. They are systematically put in place to fail ”.
If a sponsor cannot produce a declaration of income or pay heels for the last 60 consecutive days, a note is advised by his employer on the company’s official header paper, and case managers must be able to speak with a supervisor or human resources.
Neither the refugee resettlement office, nor the Ministry of Health and Social Services, which supervises the office, respond to the requests of the Times. In the past, the administration said that close security restrictions were needed to protect children.
“Safe and timely release must promote public security and guarantee that sponsors are able to predict the physical and mental well-being of children,” said agency’s online policy.
Changes leave many vulnerable people because the Trump administration files other services, including access to lawyers, for migrant children in the midst of a broader immigration repression.
“What we are witnessing is not only a bureaucratic dysfunction – is a strategy calculated to extend children’s detention, discourage and hinder reunification, and extract as much personal data as possible for the future application of immigration,” said Chew.
As of April 4, there were 2,223 children in Orr Care, according to the agency’s website, a significant drop compared to January, while around 6,200 were in detention. But statistics show that children stay in facilities longer.
The children of the orr facilities have been on average for 175 days in March, against 67 days in December, according to orr data. Defenders fear that immigration detention falls against the mental health of children.
We do not know exactly why children stay longer, but some researchers think that it is directly linked to the stricter policy of the administration.
“We can turn to policy changes to explain why it is more difficult to release a child to an approved sponsor,” said Jonathan Beier, associate director of research and assessment of the unaccompanied program for children of Acacia Center for Justice, a group that coordinates legal services for undocumented immigrants.
Other data orrient suggest that the rate in which children are released to sponsored has slowed heavily.
“Every day, our team hears children in distress, crying while they lose the hope of seeing their families again,” said Marion Donovan-Kaloust, director of legal services to the immigrant Defenders Law Center, who works with immigrant children. “Obligning the parents of a child to show proof of income or to submit to long and invasive DNA tests, even if there is no reason to question the parent-child relationship with appropriate documentation already leads to a new crisis in family separation.”
Another Guatemalan family with which chewing worked was informed last month that it would be gathered with their 7 -year -old boy, to be informed a few days later that they had to comply with new identity requirements. The mother could not legally obtain an acceptable identification in the state in which she lives.
“A 7 year old child cannot understand why he is still in detention, I do not understand why he was not released to his mother when he was told that his release was imminent,” she said. “He said to his mother, through tears and an incredibly emotional phone call, that she really shouldn’t want to want it after all.”
Children detained on the border often flee the persecution, violence or poverty in their country of origin and try to find the family that had come earlier. They are particularly vulnerable to trafficking, exploitation and abuse.
Without a parent or legal guardian, unaccompanied minors are transferred to the Orr within 72 hours. Before these new rules, the sponsors could recover them after proving their relationship and were verified to ensure that they could meet the needs of the child’s physical and mental well-being.
According to orr policies, they made sure that children were released “in a safe and effective way without unnecessary delay”.
“I think it will be very difficult for a family to come forward in this climate,” said Nerea Woods, a lawyer who works with unaccompanied minors.
Orr has canceled its policy not to share information on sponsors with immigration agencies and police, and a wave of well-being controls on minors in the past unaccompanied has made many setting families.
“We are obviously very skeptical about the real objective of these well-being controls,” she said. “Do they use this information to really arrive at undocumented sponsors or undocumented people who live at home?”
California Daily Newspapers
