As of this week, more than 4,200 youth are now languishing at Border Patrol stations.

Migrant families walk toward a Customs and Border Patrol processing center near Mission, Texas, U.S.. Credit: Sergio Flores/Bloomberg via Getty Images

We started this newsletter in 2018 to closely document the treatment of refugee children in U.S. care. It was a story that dominated the Trump era after the zero-tolerance immigration policy brought family separation.

Now, the issue is once again front and center, less than two months into a Biden administration that pledged to dramatically change how the U.S. treats immigrants. Pushed by the fallout ([link removed]) from deadly hurricanes and an even deadlier pandemic, record numbers of refugee children are showing up at the U.S. border without their parents. Facing an overwhelmed immigration system, the Biden administration is turning to the same problematic solutions that have left children living in squalid conditions that violate federal law.

As of this week, more than 4,200 ([link removed]) youth are now languishing at Border Patrol stations with an average custody time of 120 hours. Under federal law, they can spend only up to 72 hours ([link removed]) in these facilities, which are the same ones that came under scrutiny under former President Donald Trump. In 2019, lawyers and doctors who toured the stations told horrifying stories ([link removed]) about older children taking care of toddlers, lice infestations ([link removed]) and children in soiled clothes with no regular access to showers.

The children are supposed to be transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which runs a shelter system charged with keeping them safe until they can be placed with a relative or suitable sponsor. But that system has now reached capacity.

And the situation is worsening. Border agents are encountering 565 children on average per day, up from 313 children per day last month, NBC News reports ([link removed]) . To process children out of border facilities at a faster pace, the Department of Homeland Security has directed FEMA ([link removed]) to “support a government-wide effort over the next 90 days to safely receive, shelter, and transfer unaccompanied children who make the dangerous journey to the U.S. southwest border.”

“We are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Tuesday.

The border facilities, with their frigid temperatures, cramped concrete cells and hard benches, are not built to keep children for long periods of time. Agents are bringing in bunk beds, some of them three bunks high, to accommodate children as young as 6 years old, CNN reports ([link removed]) . Many haven’t taken a shower or seen the sunlight in days. Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, who visited a border facility last week, told the El Paso Times ([link removed]) that the conditions inside are “unacceptable.”

"The center is at capacity – pre-COVID capacity,” she said. “COVID capacity should be significantly lower. I did see everybody, including small children, wearing masks. It's an unacceptable situation."

The government is also opening emergency “influx” shelters. These makeshift shelters of tents and trailers are used during peak immigration periods when the government’s regular shelter system can’t contain the number of children in detention. Unlike the regular shelters used by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, influx shelters aren’t monitored by state agencies for child care violations and can house thousands of children at a time. Lawyers and advocates previously criticized the Trump administration for keeping children in these settings for months, sometimes without access to legal services. In 2018, we wrote about the secrecy ([link removed]) surrounding an influx shelter made up of large tents near El Paso, Texas. It closed the following year
([link removed]) .

But in spite of these previous problems and faced with a growing number of children at the border, the new administration is resorting to these influx facilities. A 66-acre site in Carrizo Springs, Texas, that served as an influx shelter under Trump is being reactivated ([link removed]) to hold up to 700 youth between the ages of 13 and 17. Another temporary shelter is opening in Midland, Texas ([link removed]) . And this week, the Biden administration announced plans to house boys between the ages of 15 and 17 at a convention center ([link removed]) in Dallas in what it is calling a “decompression center.”

Some immigration advocates say they want to see the Biden administration move children to smaller shelters or foster care programs, where they can receive more individualized care.

“We’d really like to see them reform the system and really focus on smaller, better places for kids and improving the process overall,” Leah Chavla, a senior policy adviser at the Women’s Refugee Commission, told Politico ([link removed]) .

Other advocates point out that withdrawing the Trump administration’s pandemic ban on immigration ([link removed]) at the border would allow children to come with their families, so there would be no need to place them in influx or regular shelters. Last year, the Trump administration invoked the ban, under Title 42 of the U.S. Code, to turn back migrants at the border during the pandemic. The policy no longer applies to unaccompanied children, but it does to other migrants such as adults and families traveling with children.

As my colleague Aura Bogado told Democracy Now ([link removed]) last week, President Joe Biden knew he was likely to face a humanitarian crisis at the border. She noted that shortly after the election, border agents had apprehended 1,000 children within six days ([link removed]) .

“The Biden administration long knew that there would be an increase of children at the southern border and had a long time to prepare. While he’s only been in office less than two months, he had been elected prior to that,” Aura said. “And he campaigned on specifically changing policies and practices that happened under the Trump administration. Some of that has indeed happened. But when it comes to the number of children that are in certain facilities, whether they’re cages or shelters, and how long they’re being kept for, we haven’t really seen that much of a change.”

Watch the interview here ([link removed]) .
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** MORE CRIME VICTIMS WILL BE APPROVED FOR U VISA UNDER BIDEN PROPOSAL
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The Biden administration’s sweeping immigration reform bill ([link removed]) that seeks to create a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants includes a provision that would increase the annual cap ([link removed]) on U visa approvals from 10,000 to 30,000.

In 2019, I published an investigation ([link removed]) that exposed how local law enforcement undermined the U visa program. The U visa was created in 2000 to increase trust between police and immigrant communities. In order to apply, victims need police to sign a form, called a certification, that confirms their cooperation. But my analysis of policies from more than 100 agencies serving large immigrant communities found that nearly 1 of every 4 create barriers ([link removed]) never envisioned under the program.

There’s another hurdle standing in the way of crime victims getting relief: The government caps the number of U visas it gives out at 10,000 a year. Once victims do get certified and apply, they join a backlog of more than 200,000 cases and can wait for more than a decade to get their petition approved. These applicants became at risk of being deported in 2019 ([link removed]) , when the Trump administration granted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement the authority to arrest immigrants with pending applications.

“These people have upheld their side of the bargain, and we’re asking the government to make good on the promise they made to these victims,” David Freedman, a Pennsylvania lawyer who handles visa cases, told The Associated Press ([link removed]) .
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** 3 THINGS WE’RE READING
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1. ICE is releasing COVID-19-positive detainees without alerting local health authorities. (The Washington Post ([link removed]) )

Under ICE’s pandemic guidelines, the agency is supposed to notify local health authorities when it releases a sick person from custody. But immigrant advocates and county officials say ICE isn’t making these notifications, posing a public health threat to their communities.

The kicker: The asylum seeker from Cameroon exited the van that had taken him from federal immigration detention to a bus station in the California border city of Calexico. Volunteers were waiting to pick him up, drive him to a hotel and help him book a plane ticket to join a sister living in Michigan. But the man held up his hands instead. "Stand back," he said, disclosing that he had been diagnosed with COVID-19. The next day, advocates for immigrants said, it happened again when Immigration and Customs Enforcement dropped off a Cuban man holding a sheet of paper that said he had just tested positive for the often-deadly virus. In a border area that has suffered from ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks, advocates for immigrants and ICE are at odds over the agency’s treatment of infected detainees. Advocates and county officials say they had no idea ICE was dropping detainees with COVID off at the bus stop, while ICE says it is the agency’s protocol to notify local authorities ahead of time.

2. Vaccination and economic support efforts during the pandemic are leaving undocumented immigrants behind. (Time ([link removed]) )

A year into the pandemic, lawmakers continue to leave out undocumented immigrants from economic relief packages. And despite the Biden administration’s assurance that undocumented residents are eligible for the vaccine, fears of the government and local law enforcement have discouraged many from seeking out appointments.

The kicker: Advocacy groups have argued for “inclusive” aid packages that provide direct aid to as many immigrants as possible no matter citizenship status, and while a few states set up aid for the undocumented, it’s not nearly enough, according to Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “Immigration status shouldn’t be the gatekeeper to any of these programs. It really ultimately is about need and ensuring that families have the economic stability to not only survive, but to get through this pandemic that all of us are impacted by,” Hincapié says. “Eighty percent of undocumented immigrants are working as essential workers. We are relying on them, and yet are denying their families this basic support that everyone else is getting.”

3. The Biden administration grants temporary immigration relief to Venezuelan migrants. (Los Angeles Times ([link removed]) )

Venezuelans fleeing poverty and hunger back home will be able to remain here under Temporary Protected Status, a decades-old program that has helped immigrants who fled their countries due to natural disasters or war settle in the U.S.

The kicker: “The living conditions in Venezuela reveal a country in turmoil, unable to protect its own citizens,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a statement. “It is in times of extraordinary and temporary circumstances like these that the United States steps forward to support eligible Venezuelan nationals already present here, while their home country seeks to right itself out of the current crises.” Venezuelans who were physically present in the U.S. as of Monday were eligible and would have 180 days to apply, pay fees and prove their residence through bills or other documentation, according to a release from the Homeland Security Department and officials.
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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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