Earlier this summer, the Justice Department fought a judge’s mandate that said it must provide things like toothbrushes, soap and beds to migrant children in government custody. It appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
On Thursday, the appeals court dismissed the government’s appeal, in a ruling first reported by our Aura Bogado.
“Assuring that children eat enough edible food, drink clean water, are housed in hygienic facilities with sanitary bathrooms, have soap and toothpaste, and are not sleep deprived are without doubt essential to the children’s safety,” the ruling states.
Read the ruling here.
UPDATES
More details on the new 'tender age' shelters
Aura recently broke the story about the government’s quiet expansion of shelters for migrant babies and toddlers. The facilities in Arizona and Pennsylvania began taking in the children, some as young as 3 months old and without their parents, earlier this summer. We’ve now learned more about these “tender age” shelters.
Last week, I confirmed that a private contractor plans to open another shelter near the Texas border that will also care for infants and toddlers. You might recognize the contractor’s name: Comprehensive Health Services. It’s the same operator running a controversial shelter in South Florida that at one point housed thousands of unaccompanied youth. I recently obtained documents that show employees at the shelter, named Stanford House, will care for babies younger than 17 months of age. I also found several complaints against the company’s other facilities for young children.
Read my Twitter thread about the company’s violations here.
License denied for one of the government's new shelter contractors
We recently partnered with WRAL News on an investigation into the government’s plan to place migrant children in shelters run by providers with little experience or troubling track records. Our colleagues at WRAL learned that New Horizon Group Home was shut down by North Carolina officials last year after inspectors found conditions inside that presented “an imminent danger” to the children. After the government awarded it $4 million this year to open a shelter for unaccompanied youth, New Horizon applied for a new state license.
WRAL is now reporting that state officials denied the application, putting to a halt any plans to open the facility. Now we’ll have to see what the government does: pull the contract and money from New Horizon, or let them operate without a license.
Read the WRAL story here.
Why the government (wrongly) separated this family
Earlier this year, I reported that the U.S. government had separated a single father of two from his children, alleging he was a gang member. The government offered no proof. Meanwhile, the father had plenty of evidence that he wasn’t a gang member. They were eventually reunited, but spent six months apart.
Now, ProPublica has a feature on the man’s attorney that shows why: It was a case of mistaken identity. If the government had presented its evidence earlier, Carlos likely would’ve been released and reunited with his children much sooner. Here’s a snippet from the piece:
Laura Peña could see that her 36-year-old client was wasting away. Gaunt and haggard after nearly two months in jail, he ran his fingers through his hair and opened his hands to show her the clumps that were falling out. He was so distraught that his two young children had been taken from him at the border, he could barely speak without weeping.
After Carlos requested political asylum, border and immigration agents had accused him of being a member of the notorious MS-13 gang in El Salvador — a criminal not fit to enter the United States. But as Peña looked at him, she saw none of the typical hallmarks of gang membership: the garish MS-13 tattoos or a criminal record back home. He was the sole caregiver for his 7-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter. He’d even brought an official letter from El Salvador’s Justice Ministry certifying that he’d never been in jail. Something else about his case bothered her, too: She’d been peppering the government’s lawyers with phone calls and emails for weeks and they’d yet to reveal any evidence to back up their accusation.
Read the story here.
THE IMPACT OF THE ‘PUBLIC CHARGE’ RULE ON IMMIGRANT FAMILIES
This week, the government released its new “public charge” rule that will bar legal immigrants using public benefits from becoming permanent residents. It’s the Trump administration’s latest attempt to further limit legal immigration to the U.S.
Under the new regulation, the Department of Homeland Security would consider factors like education, health and financial status to decide which immigrants will be allowed to live in the U.S. The agency could also deny green cards to legal immigrants using public benefits like Medicaid and Section 8 housing.
When the rule was first proposed last year, immigrant advocates expressed concerns it would impact U.S.-born children who have immigrant parents. Some news reports indicate that’s already happened. In Los Angeles, thousands of children stopped receiving food stamps, an indication that their parents had opted out of the program. One 2018 study found that 1 in 7 adults in immigrant households declined to enroll in public benefits for fear of losing their status. The rule goes into effect Oct. 15.
Read the rule here.
OTHER STORIES WE’RE READING
An organization owned by President Trump has relied on construction crews of undocumented workers. (Washington Post)
The hiring practices of the little-known Trump business unit are the latest example of the chasm between the president’s derisive rhetoric about immigrants and his company’s long-standing reliance on workers who cross the border illegally.
And it raises questions about how fully the Trump Organization has followed through on its pledge to more carefully scrutinize the legal status of its workers — even as the Trump administration launched a massive raid of undocumented immigrants, arresting about 680 people in Mississippi this week.
In January, Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons and a top Trump Organization executive, told The Post that the company was “making a broad effort to identify any employee who has given false and fraudulent documents to unlawfully gain employment,” saying any such individuals would be immediately fired.
He also said the company was instituting E-Verify, a voluntary federal program that allows employers to check the employment eligibility of new hires, “on all of our properties as soon as possible.” And the company began auditing the legal status of its existing employees at its golf courses, firing at least 18.
The Washington, D.C., mayor is criticizing the U.S. government’s plan to open a shelter for migrant children in the capital. (Mother Jones)
In search of additional space to house migrant children, the Trump administration awarded a contract this month to a company that wants to open a facility in the administration’s own backyard of Washington, DC. On Tuesday, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that she would not allow the center to open in the staunchly Democratic city.
“We have no intention of accepting a new federal facility,” Bowser said in a statement Tuesday in response to an inquiry from Mother Jones, “least of all one that detains and dehumanizes migrant children.”
The detention center would house up to 200 unaccompanied migrant children from ages 12 to 17 in the Takoma neighborhood in Northwest Washington. It would be run by Dynamic Service Solutions, a company based in nearby National Harbor, Maryland, that has no record of experience running facilities for children.
ICE is sending immigrants to a North Carolina jail run by a sheriff that once called immigrants “taco eaters.” (The Charlotte Observer)
The racial discrimination coming from his department was so severe, according to a lawsuit by the Department of Justice, that Latino drivers were between 4 and 10 times more likely to be stopped by his deputies. (That lawsuit was later dismissed and then settled.) Even U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement distanced itself from Johnson, canceling a partnership that allowed his office to act on the agency’s behalf and citing his “discriminatory practices.”
In February, though, ICE negotiated a $2.3 million contract to house its detainees in Alamance County Detention Center, about halfway between Greensboro and Durham. More recently, the agency has sent Johnson’s jail dozens of asylum-seekers through that agreement, ICE spokesman Bryan Cox confirmed to The Observer.
Besides showing how the border crisis is quietly reaching North Carolina, the unexpected, unannounced arrival of the migrants in Alamance has also raised concerns among local lawyers and activists. They worry about putting asylum-seekers — many of whom say they are fleeing violence and persecution — in a facility run by Johnson, who has a history of alleged civil rights violations against immigrants and Latinos.
Your tips have been vital to our immigration coverage. Keep them coming: [email protected]. – Laura C. Morel
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