Since early 2017, one-third of people the Border Patrol has held have been minors, report Anna Flagg and Julia Preston of The Marshall Project (in partnership with Politico Magazine). And of those children, about a third were held longer than the 3-day limit court rulings and an anti-trafficking statute have established. 

Conditions inside Border Patrol stations have elicited "constant reports of neglect and abuse," including a teenager, originally from Guatemala, who was held in a Texas facility for 18 days with a fractured shoulder.  

Even under the Biden administration, "[l]ittle has been done to improve conditions for children in Border Patrol facilities, or to prevent them from ending up there at all, with official efforts focused primarily instead on reducing the time children spend detained," Flagg and Preston report.  

As Congress, advocates, and Border Patrol agents call for change, the agency is trying to respond — and considering plans for new, less jail-like family detention centers. But the percentage of detainees who are minors likely remains about the same. 

Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I hope you had a meaningful Juneteenth. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s strategic communications VP. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

WORLD REFUGEE DAY — Global displacement remains at a record high and refugee resettlement is at a record low this World Refugee Day (yesterday), reports Jeff Gammage of The Philadelphia Inquirer. The U.S. is on track to resettle only 18,962 refugees this fiscal year — nowhere near the refugee ceiling of 125,000. "One of the key problems is the process just takes too long, anywhere from two to 10 years," said our own Danilo Zak. "The program is just not at a place where it can respond in an agile and effective way. If the pipeline is too slow we’re just not going to see those [larger] numbers." For more on how the U.S. can improve refugee resettlement, see the piece in Newsweek by World Relief President and CEO Myal Greene — and catch up on our Facebook Live from Friday.  

DACA — Faith leaders continue to advocate for Congress to pass permanent, legislative solutions for DACA recipients and all Dreamers, reports Mya Jaradat of The Deseret News. "Most DACA recipients still face uncertainty about their future in this country, to say nothing of their families, including hundreds of thousands of U.S.-citizen children, employers and the communities that depend on them," said the Rev. Mario E. Dorsonville, the auxiliary bishop of Washington. "For those confronted by this reality, the church remains committed to walking with you and seeing this injustice remedied." Members of the Evangelical Immigration Table recently renewed their call for broader immigration reforms, including Dreamers. Locally, pastor Patrick Taylor of Aiken, South Carolina, homes in a solution for Dreamers in his op-ed for The Post and Courier, as does Brenda Kirk in The Oklahoman. (Patrick and Brenda, as well as Joel Tooley below, are also Forum mobilizers.) 

‘I’M SADDENED’ — Bethany Christian Services has announced it no longer can serve unaccompanied minors in Florida because of a recent executive order by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Katie LaGrone reports for E.W. Scripps Company. "I’m saddened that organizations like Bethany Christian Services, who have a proven track record of caring for the vulnerable, that they would be forced to make this kind of decision that goes against their standards and goes against their hope to care for children," said Pastor Joel Tooley, a Melbourne Pastor and Bethany Board member.  

CHALLENGE COINS — A "challenge coin" depicting the viral photo of a Border Patrol agent on horseback aggressively grabbing a Haitian migrant is now being circulated, prompting a CBP investigation, Michael Wilner and Jacqueline Charles report in the Miami Herald. As Hamed Aleaziz reports in The Los Angeles Times, details surrounding the production of the coin (and another similar one) are still unclear. "These coins anger me because the hateful images on them have no place in a professional law enforcement agency," said CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus. "Those who make or share these deeply offensive coins detract and distract from the extraordinarily difficult and often life-saving work Border Patrol agents do every day across the country." 

AFGHANS REJECTED — Since June 2, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has approved only 297 humanitarian parole requests from Afghans who were not evacuated to the U.S. — and rejected 4,246, reports Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News. Many thousands more applications have not been processed, in part because USCIS is used to handling only about 2,000 applications yearly. In addition, 70% of applicants are still in Afghanistan, without access to a U.S. consulate for a requisite interview.

On local welcome:  

• Tarjorman, a veteran-founded nonprofit group, helped Afghan interpreter Mohammad escape Kabul and resettle in Maryland. It is now working on a plan to help his mother flee Afghanistan as well. (Tammie Moore, Defense Visual  Information Distribution Service) 
• The nonprofit Global Impact Initiative in Austin, Texas, recently launched a new program to help refugees obtain commercial driver’s licenses, pointing toward jobs in the trucking industry. Forty-two refugees, mainly from Afghanistan, already have signed up. (Conner Board, KVUE) 
• In collaboration with a new food supplier, a group of Vermont-based organizations is helping Afghan refugees in the Brattleboro area gain access to halal chicken, allowing them "to eat comfortably in alignment with their religion." (Caitlin Howard, The Keene Sentinel) 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan  

P.S. This fall, Little Amal, a 12-foot-tall puppet representing a Syrian refugee, will visit New York City for the first time to "promote an open embrace of refugees and immigrants," Julia Jacobs reports for The New York Times.