Credit: Patrick Michels/Reveal

Every month, the federal agency that’s supposed to care for detained migrant children, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, sends a spreadsheet to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

In the spreadsheet: the addresses of the parents of the children in its care, according to an ICE document ([link removed]) that became public this week. Congress forbade ([link removed]) ICE from using this information to arrest parents in February, but ICE disclosed in the letter that it continued to pursue sponsors as late as April.

The letter also states that the refugee agency sends fingerprint information to ICE via the FBI.

The letter provides new details on the means and scope of the collaboration between the refugee agency and ICE. Earlier this year, Patrick Michels and I told you the story ([link removed]) of a father who faces deportation after he took in his teenage daughter, liberating her from detention.

The father and advocates believe ICE is using children as bait to deport their parents. In addition, advocates have said the policy forced parents to choose between their own safety and the safety of their children, causing children to spend weeks longer in custody.

Lawyers who are suing ICE over the policy received the letter as part of their suit. Patrick spoke to one of those lawyers, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg with the Legal Aid Justice Center ([link removed]) in Northern Virginia, about the new information and why it looks like ICE is stockpiling information about sponsors.

Patrick Michels: How did you get this letter?

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg: We wanted to know: ORR (the Office of Refugee Resettlement) sends people's fingerprints to ICE so that ICE can run checks. What checks? What is ICE doing behind the black curtain? And what other things is ICE doing with that information?

Patrick: Why did you decide to make this letter public?

Simon: We thought a lot of folks weren’t aware of the fact that sponsor information was actually going (from ORR to ICE) on two separate channels, not just through the fingerprint portal, but also through a roughly monthly list of addresses being sent over to ICE. Which is pretty unjustifiable. We cannot think of any reason why they're doing this other than, “I need the addresses to know where to go to arrest people.”

Patrick: Right now, ICE isn’t allowed to use that information to arrest people, but that prohibition ends at the end of this month. Do you think that deadline is just going to run out, and then ICE will be able to use this information like before?

Simon: What this letter does seem to indicate is that the funding restrictions (set by Congress) in February never stopped ORR from sending this information to ICE and never stopped ICE from receiving the information. It just stopped ICE from acting on the information during the period of time in which the funding restrictions are in place. So ICE has been amassing this information over the course of 2019. And if the restrictions are allowed to expire, they'll be in a position to act.

Patrick: The biggest impact this agreement made was probably in the fear that it generated, and the uncertainty – knowing that you were going to put yourself at risk by coming forward to claim your child from ORR.

Simon: I mean, to the extent that the point of all this was to engender fear in the immigrant community, mission accomplished. Even if the practice was temporarily halted, the intended aftereffect of fear lingers. We have people calling us all the time saying, “I'm worried about this because I remember hearing six months ago that this was dangerous.” And we tell people, “Actually, as of right now, you should be OK. And if anything happens, you've got our phone number, call us anytime, day or night.” But for every person who calls us seeking that type of reassurance, there's countless others who just say, “No, I'm not going to do this.”

Patrick: The timing of this new information is interesting, because stories about kids being used as bait for their parents have sort of subsided, and ORR says its population is going down and the average time kids spend in custody is also way down.

Simon: There's always been two populations of kids, you know, the population of kids who are simple release cases. And then there’s a population of kids that get jammed up. The problem with that overall average is it doesn't tell you anything about the latter group of kids, because they're always going to be smaller than the former group of kids. But for the kids who still get jammed up, they're still taking massively long amounts of time.

Read the letter here. ([link removed])

THE ‘DEPRIVATION OF MEDICAL CARE’ FOR CHILDREN AT THE BORDER

Hundreds of mothers who were held at overcrowded border facilities report that their children were denied medical care by officers or their children’s health worsened while in detention, according to a complaint filed by legal advocates ([link removed]) .

This summer, lawyers and pediatricians visited Border Patrol facilities and observed sick children ([link removed]) with no regular access to showers or clean clothes. The new complaint, filed with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, provides more details into the medical services provided to families.

The lawyers surveyed about 200 mothers who spent time in border custody and later were transferred to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas. Here are some of their responses:
* Nearly 60 percent reported their child did not receive medical care when requested. “It seemed to me like the officials would only provide medical care in a very extreme situation, like if someone had a seizure, but not for most sick children. I did not see anyone receive medical care in the days that I was there, even though most children there looked sick.”

* Another 35 percent said their children’s health deteriorated as they developed high fevers, vomiting, difficulty breathing and diarrhea. “My daughter got sick with a fever, diarrhea and a headache. I tried giving her more water, but the next day, she woke up even more sick. Her lips were chapped from the fever.”

* Nearly half spent more than 72 hours in border custody, the legal limit under federal law. One family spent 11 days. “One Guatemalan mother had a boy who was 3 or 4 years old. He had a cough, diarrhea, fever and vomiting for several days. An official told her to stand (in line) waiting to see a doctor. She waited from 1 in the morning until about 11 at night and still was waiting in the same place without being seen.”

Read the complaint here. ([link removed])

THREE THINGS WE’RE READING

1. The Trump administration has used solitary confinement extensively on detained immigrants. So did President Barack Obama. (The Atlantic ([link removed]) )

Reporter Ian Urbina combines years of public records requests and documents from a whistleblower attorney to shine light on an area of immigration detention that doesn’t get a lot of attention. He finds it’s continually on the rise, and advocates say its use is “excessive, arbitrary and punitive.”

The kicker: From 2016 to early 2018, about 40 percent of the cases of people being placed in solitary confinement by ICE involved immigrants with mental illnesses – even though the agency’s own doctors and lawyers warn that such treatment severely worsens these illnesses.

2. Thousands of asylum seekers have been waiting for their court dates in Mexico. But a United Nations agency is taking them back to their countries in Central America. (Los Angeles Times ([link removed]) )

The U.N.’s International Organization for Migration works throughout the world to return people to their home countries. And its engagement with active asylum seekers is worrying immigration attorneys.

The kicker: Last month, 30 international advocacy groups sent a letter to the U.N. agency’s chief saying that they feared the program was returning migrants to countries they had fled “out of desperation, not choice” and that those with pending U.S. asylum cases “may not fully understand the consequences of failing to appear whenever summoned by a U.S. immigration court.”

3. National Guard soldiers in Mexico are conducting illegal inspections at immigrant shelters along the border. (Arizona Republic ([link removed]) )

Those asylum seekers aren’t having to navigate only the U.N. agency. They’re also targeted by Mexican government forces.

The kicker: The incidents highlight the tension and suspicion that migrant advocates and shelters view toward the newly created National Guard, which is enforcing the Mexican government’s crackdown on immigration under direct pressure from the United States.

Your tips have been vital to our immigration coverage. Keep them coming: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .

– Laura C. Morel
Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.
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