A 17-year-old girl was held in U.S. custody for more than six years.

Illustration by Molly Mendoza

Last week, I told you about my colleague Aura Bogado’s latest reporting on a 17-year-old girl held in U.S. custody for more than six years. The girl’s case was at the center of the recent Reveal episode An adolescence, seized ([link removed]) .

One of the major questions in this reporting has been how many other children there are out there like the Honduran girl, languishing in prolonged detention.

We sued the government to find out. And the answers are pretty startling. Among the findings from Aura and data reporter Melissa Lewis:
* The U.S. government has detained more than 25,000 migrant children for longer than 100 days over the past six years. That means nearly 1 in 10 children in the system experienced prolonged detention.
* Nearly 1,000 migrant children have spent more than a year in refugee shelters in that time.
* At least three children have spent more than five years in custody since 2013.
* Six babies born with U.S. citizenship to teenage mothers in custody were held for a year or more in shelters in Texas and Arizona. Records show at least one of them was being detained as of August 2020.

"Your findings point to a systemic failure," said Neha Desai, one of the attorneys in the landmark Flores Settlement Agreement, which has protected the rights of migrant children for two decades.

The data covers the final two years and four months of President Barack Obama’s last term and indicates that many of these prolonged detentions happened under his administration. But the detentions accelerated under President Donald Trump. About 6% of children were held for more than 100 days under Obama; that figure jumped to 12% under Trump.

Now, the girl Aura has been reporting on is back in Honduras, facing a world of poverty and violence. From Aura and Melissa’s story:

The girl said that during her years in the (the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s) shelters, she had longed to be reunited with her family in North Carolina. She recalled being told by officials that the family there didn’t have enough room, food or resources to care for her. Meanwhile, her family prepared and waited for years for her to return home.

The girl’s mother wants her daughter to return to the United States because the burden of raising and feeding her is more than she can handle. The girl herself also wants to return, but she says she needs someone who can take care of her. She was adamant that she not be returned to a shelter, which she described as confining.

“Over there, you weren’t allowed to have a boyfriend or give someone a kiss or a hug or a letter,” she said. “You couldn’t share clothes or even a hairbrush or soap. None of that.”

After almost seven years in and out of the shelter system’s educational programs, the girl struggles with basic English. She missed out on a structured education during the times most kids are in grades 6 through 12.

“The only thing they taught me,” she said, “was vowels and the alphabet.”

Read the investigation ([link removed]) , which was co-published with the Los Angeles Times ([link removed]) . Explore our data ([link removed]) interactive to learn more about the nearly 1,000 kids who spent more than a year in shelters. And be sure to read part 1 ([link removed]) of this series from February, if you haven’t already.
Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.
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** LAWMAKERS LEARN MORE DETAILS ABOUT ALLEGED MEDICAL ABUSE OF IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN GEORGIA
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Since 2018, at least 57 women currently or previously held at the Irwin County Detention Center in rural Georgia have been treated by a doctor accused of performing gynecological procedures without proper consent, according to The Intercept ([link removed]) .

Last month, a nurse alleged that Dr. Mahendra Amin ([link removed]) performed hysterectomies ([link removed]) on detained immigrant women, often without an interpreter present or a clear explanation about why the procedure was needed. Following the bombshell accusations, the Department of Homeland Security launched an investigation ([link removed]) .

Now, immigrant advocates and attorneys representing the women have shared a trove of documents with members of Congress that, the documents say, show a pattern of “the uniform absence of truly informed consent.” The attorneys counted 57 women who have been treated by Amin, including 17 who remain at Irwin as of Oct. 25.

Amin is also facing scrutiny from the medical community. The Los Angeles Times ([link removed]) reports that a group of nursing experts and board-certified gynecologists reviewed 3,200 pages of medical records from 19 women treated by Amin and concluded: “Both Dr. Amin and the referring detention facility took advantage of the vulnerability of women in detention to pressure them to agree to overly aggressive, inappropriate, and unconsented medical care.”

More from the Los Angeles Times:

Five of Amin’s patients interviewed by The Times, whose cases were reviewed as part of the report, shared similar stories about their surgeries, and they said the doctor had a reputation at the Georgia facility.

“We found it to be weird that so many women were having the same surgeries,” said Shereace, 34, who asked to be identified by her first name for protection since she’s been deported to Jamaica, a country she left when she was 5.

She requested to see Amin because her previous doctor had told her to monitor her abnormal Pap smears. After she woke up from one procedure, she said, Amin told her that her fallopian tubes were “damaged and no good, and he let me know I’m never going to be able to have kids.”

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** 3 THINGS WE’RE READING
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1. An inside look at a migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico, where hundreds of asylum seekers wait in squalor for the U.S. to hear their cases. (The New York Times ([link removed]) )

It’s been almost two years since the Trump administration enacted its “Remain in Mexico” policy, forcing at least 60,000 migrants to wait in Mexico as the U.S. processes their asylum claims. Many have abandoned their efforts to win their cases, and others have had the means to move into apartments. But hundreds are still living in tent camps scattered across the Mexican border, including one in Matamoros, where migrants live without running water and food that makes them sick, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas.

The kicker: The Trump administration has said the “remain in Mexico” policy was essential to end exploitation of American immigration laws and alleviate overcrowding at Border Patrol facilities after nearly two million migrants crossed into the United States between 2017 and 2019. The Mexican authorities have blamed the American government for the situation. But they have also declined to designate the outdoor areas as official refugee camps in collaboration with the United Nations, which could then have provided infrastructure for housing and sanitation. “It has been the first time we have been in this situation,” said Shant Dermegerditchian, director of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ office in Monterrey, Mexico. “And we certainly don’t support this.”

2. In a medical journal, doctors are calling the U.S. government’s treatment of migrant children at the border “consistent with torture.” (KQED ([link removed]) )

In a new paper published in the medical journal Pediatrics, family medicine doctors and pediatricians make the case that the Trump administration is violating the United Nations Convention Against Torture. They argue that the government knew that family separations and keeping children in unsafe conditions at border facilities would cause severe pain and suffering. This is the second time members of the medical community have described the government’s actions as torture. In March, the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights concluded in a report ([link removed]) that family separation “rises to the level of torture.”

The kicker: Researchers argue that actions like family separations caused "severe pain and suffering" and were inflicted with a specific purpose and with the consent of government officials – oftentimes by order from the president himself. "I would describe cages and sleeping on the floor and being forcefully separated from their parents as severe pain or suffering. No different than I would if someone was beaten with a truncheon," (report co-author Dr. Coleen) Kivlahan explained. " 'Did in fact that occur for a purpose?' Of course it occurred for a purpose. And there are public statements regarding the purpose, and that is to deter people from crossing the border, and especially from (bringing) your children across. And ... it absolutely is done by people working in an official capacity."

3. The government stopped accepting new DACA applications from undocumented youth. Now they face an uncertain future. (Chicago Sun-Times ([link removed]) )

Over the summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration cannot immediately dismantle the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an Obama-era policy that allowed immigrants brought to the country at a young age to remain in the U.S., shielding them from deportation. But since then, the government has still taken steps to limit the program. The Department of Homeland Security no longer accepts new applications for undocumented youth who now qualify for the program. And current recipients have to reapply every year instead of every two years.

The kicker: Pablo Aranda, 18, of Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, applied for DACA protections after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, hoping it would mean that first-time applicants like himself would be accepted. But he later received a rejection letter, he said. He’s studying business at DePaul University and would like to get DACA protections so he could apply for federal aid. Aranda said he’s so far relied on private scholarships to pay for his courses. Because he’s undocumented, Aranda said he’s unable to get a job to help pay his tuition. “It’s a lot of things that you wouldn’t think twice as a U.S. citizen, but for us, it’s different,” Aranda said. “Every little thing is a problem.”
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Your tips have been vital to our immigration coverage. Keep them coming: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .

– Laura C. Morel

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