THE FATE OF MIGRANT CHILDREN DURING THE PANDEMIC

This week, my colleague Aura Bogado published a story about the U.S. government’s refusal to release detained migrant children who have families willing to give them homes.

Her story chronicles the case of a 17-year-old from Guatemala, who is being held at a shelter run by BCFS Health and Human Services in Fairfield, California. During an interview, he told Aura that he doesn’t have a face mask and that after a recent soccer game, he rubbed his hands with sanitizer. But beyond COVID-19, the boy has other things on his mind. 

“I want to get out and live with a family,” he said.

The teen has a family in Minnesota that’s eager to sponsor him, but the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the care of migrant children, won’t consider the application. Now, he’s suing to compel the government to acknowledge that application and consider him for release.

The case is part of a larger battle that’s playing out over what to do with migrant children in shelters during the pandemic. In late March, attorneys for migrant children in U.S. immigration custody sought a temporary restraining order to expedite the release of children. Citing the risk of the coronavirus contagion, they asked a federal court to “release as many as 1,193 children who had been in shelters for 30 or more days and for whom a family or other adult sponsor had been identified as ready and willing to take them in,” Aura writes.

In an April 10 order in the case, Judge Dolly M. Gee criticized blanket bans that the refugee agency put into place in March and April in New York, California and Washington barring the release of unaccompanied children.

“The Office of Refugee Resettlement can make its own rules, and exceptions to those rules, when it wants,” Aura writes. “It will defy a judge’s order. A little pressure, and it can change the trajectory of a child’s life.”

Read the story here.

You can also listen to Aura’s interview with the boy in our recent Reveal episode “Detained and exposed.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has filed a motion to hold U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in contempt because it continues to deny most parole requests for immigrants in detention, arguing that the agency is in violation of a court order. 

When I wrote about conditions at ICE detention centers amid the coronavirus pandemic, I told you how ICE has the authority to grant detained asylum seekers parole while they await a decision on their cases.

A decade ago, ICE granted about 90% of these parole requests. But under the Trump administration, denials have surged. At the New Orleans ICE office alone, which handles parole decisions for five states in the South, only two out of 130 requests were approved in 2018.

The low numbers prompted the Southern Poverty Law Center to sue the Department of Homeland Security in May 2019, arguing that ICE has a blanket parole denial policy that traps thousands of asylum seekers who qualified for release. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg sided with the law center’s attorneys in September and ordered ICE to comply with its own parole directive, which states that the agency can grant parole in cases in which the asylum seeker isn’t a flight risk or a danger to the community. Boasberg also ordered ICE to file monthly reports summarizing its parole determinations.

These parole decisions have taken on greater urgency with the spread of COVID-19. Immigration attorneys and advocates believe ICE could use its parole powers to significantly decrease its population inside detention centers, where the virus can spread easily and has already infected hundreds of immigrants and dozens of staff.

In March, the agency denied 82% of new requests and 76% of requests from detainees appealing their denials, according to new documents filed in the case. In April, 75% of appeal requests were denied, and ICE did not provide statistics for new requests last month. The Southern Poverty Law Center argues that the approval rate should be much higher: In 2016, nearly 76% of requests were granted.

The law center also raised concerns about the accuracy of ICE’s data. At least 17 asylum seekers received denial letters that weren’t reflected in the monthly reports, and as many as 300 haven’t received a determination at all. Statistics for three detention centers, the motion says, are also missing from the reports.

In a court declaration, immigration attorney Joseph Saverio Giardina, who represents about 50 asylum seekers detained in Louisiana and Mississippi, wrote that ICE refuses to respond to his clients’ parole requests. “I have to call upwards of 30 times in a day to get a response from their secretary only to have my call unanswered once l am transferred to the officer's desk.”

Meanwhile, the number of COVID-19 cases among detained immigrants continues to rise. As of Friday, 965 detainees have tested positive for the virus, a 28% increase from a week ago. In total, 1,804 detainees have been tested, according to figures released by ICE. Seven weeks ago, two detainees had tested positive. A second ICE detainee died from COVID-19 this week.

Asylum seekers spoke to me last month about their fears of a COVID-19 outbreak inside the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana. When I was reporting that story, there were no confirmed cases there. As of Wednesday, there were 30. 

Read the Southern Poverty Law Center’s motion here.

DEVELOPMENTS WE’RE WATCHING

ICE is exposing rural communities near its detention centers to the virus. In recent years, the U.S. government has opened ICE detention centers in the South with the promise of bringing jobs and property tax revenue to those communities. But now local officials worry that these same facilities could put their residents at risk of COVID-19, Politico reports. In Mississippi, ICE recently transferred 200 detainees to the Adams County Correctional Center. “If we’re under a shelter-in-place order,” one official there said, “that should apply for detained populations as well.” In Pearsall, Texas, local officials want to know what ICE is doing to stop an outbreak inside the South Texas ICE Processing Center, where dozens of detainees have tested positive. “For many of us, this could be a matter of life and death,” a group of elected officials wrote in an open letter to the facility’s private contractor, the GEO Group, ProPublica reports.

Medical experts warn the Haitian government to ban U.S. deportation flights. According to the Miami Herald, a Haitian presidential panel recently submitted a list of recommendations to the government on how to control the spread of COVID-19. Among their recommendations is a ban on deportation flights from the United States. As of Sunday, 182 cases were confirmed in Haiti. And at 8.2%, Haiti’s death rate from the virus is among the highest in the Caribbean. “The deportation flights, which began last month, are also a financial strain on Haiti’s meager resources,” the Herald reports. “Facilities that should be used to quarantine Haitians, who live in confined spaces that are often just one room, are now having to be used for deportees every two weeks.” In a similar move, deportation flights to Guatemala were recently suspended after several deportees tested positive for the virus.

NEWS BREAK: A LOVE STORY

What makes up 72 years of marriage? For Ray and Vivian Whitehurst, it’s raising two children, moving across the U.S. and then abroad, and 50 cruise trips. Now in their 90s, the couple spend most days on side-by-side recliners, watching TV show reruns. One thing hasn’t changed, though: “I still kiss him every night,” Vivian told Tampa Bay Times reporter Lane DeGregory. 

From the story:

They both lean on walkers now. His hearing is gone. Her memory is slipping. Their daughter moved in years ago, to help keep them at home, together.

Family photos, medals and souvenirs fill their duplex. Sometimes, they scan the walls to remind themselves of the life they have shared.

“We’re old,” she said recently, stroking his shoulder as they sat on the sofa. “Too old.”

He laughed. “I’m the old man. You’re only 92!”

Last fall, he had a heart attack, then fell and fractured his leg. The six weeks he spent in rehab was the longest they had been apart – in 72 years of marriage.

“I couldn’t sleep. The bed was too big,” she said. “I had my daughter go to Walgreens and buy me a stuffed bear to fill his side. I didn’t want to be there all by myself.”

Now that he’s home, she lets him have the TV remote, after “All My Children.” In your 90s, love is holding each other, holding on.

Read the story here.
 

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– Laura C. Morel

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.