Children belong in safe, loving homes, not detention centers.
Over 22,000 asylum-seeking children are currently detained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In recent months, the government has opened over a dozen unregulated overflow sites under Health and Human Services to hold unaccompanied migrant children, signalling an institutional alignment with detention over release as the primary immigration policy.
These convention centers and military bases that have been converted to hold children are not regulated like traditional facilities, background checks have been waived for staff, and, in at least three sites, a private security company that specializes in military readiness has been awarded multi-million dollar contracts to oversee the welfare of children. There are reports that detained children are treated like prisoners and are depressed and hungry.
We cannot stress this enough: it does not have to be this way.
There are immediate steps our leaders can take to improve the conditions of treatment of youth at the border and reduce the number of detained children:
1. Stop separating children at the border from their aunts, uncles, grandparents, and siblings.
2. When parents are already in the US, release their children to them immediately.
3. Prioritize expediting the release of asylum-seeking children to their families in the U.S.
While the government no longer separates children from their parents, they do continue to separate children from aunts, uncles, and grandparents—family members that raised these children and who are effectively parents in the child’s eyes. These children do not arrive unaccompanied, yet they are separated from their caregivers and put in detention for unaccompanied minors. Keeping these families together would reduce the number of children in detention.
The New York Times reports about half the children arriving at the border are coming to reunify with a parent. Current policy dictates that the children must be held until the parent goes through a time consuming process to prove they can care for their own children. If children could be released directly to their parents, we could cut the population of unaccompanied minors nearly in half.
The average stay in detention for unaccompanied minors is 42 days. The math is simple. If 450 children are arriving at our border every day and the average stay is 42 days, then we need 18,900 beds. But if the average stay is only 10 days, we need only 4,500 beds.
How can the government reduce the average number of days in detention? This requires fundamental change to the cultures of departments within our immigration system. In our work through Each Step Home, we encounter at an alarming frequency detention center employees who place ever-increasing obstacles in front of families working to get their children released. This cannot stand. There must be structural and cultural change to ensure that the Office of Refugee Resettlement works with families to swiftly reunite them, not interfere with their reunification.
We must continue to show the government we are here to hold them accountable. The reliance on overflow facilities, especially when there are clear and available options to mitigate their necessity, signals a commitment to stick to the status quo, not consideration for the needs of vulnerable children.
It’s on us to hold our elected leaders to their promises. Help us make it clear to them overflow facilities do not protect the interests of children and their use must end immediately.
Sign your name today and then consider sharing this petition on social media to help strengthen our message. Our voice carries far when we speak together.