A growing number of migrant children might spend their entire childhoods in U.S. custody
"An unprecedented number of unaccompanied migrant children are at risk of spending the rest of their childhoods in federal custody," CBS News reported Tuesday evening, citing an interview with the head of the Health and Human Services Department's Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and a tour of an ORR detention center outside Brownsville, Texas. At least one migrant child has been in U.S. custody going on four years, CBS News' Manuel Bojorquez reports.
The number of Category 4 child migrants has risen sharply under President Trump, and the percentage of children released from ORR custody dropped dramatically in fiscal 2018, agency records show. Former ORR officials said Trump's hardline immigration policies and onerous sponsorship requirements have prevented relatives from stepping up to request custody of the detained children. Ricardo de Anda, a Texas lawyer who successfully sued ORR to allow a Category 4 migrant to go live with a sponsor family, said "the reason children are stacking up in these detention camps is because ORR does not allow qualified American families to take these children in."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Life for children housed at the 168 ORR facilities in 23 states is unstable and sometimes dehumanizing, lawyers and former ORR officials tell CBS News. Under the Flores Agreement, migrant children must be released to suitable sponsors as soon as possible, but due to the uptick in Category 4 designations, "they could be indefinitely in our custody, which is not a healthy situation for children," former ORR Director Bob Carey tells CBS News. "And these children are for the most part already traumatized."
-
Minnesota's legal system buckles under Trump's ICE surgeIN THE SPOTLIGHT Mass arrests and chaotic administration have pushed Twin Cities courts to the brink as lawyers and judges alike struggle to keep pace with ICE’s activity
-
Big-time money squabbles: the conflict over California’s proposed billionaire taxTalking Points Californians worth more than $1.1 billion would pay a one-time 5% tax
-
‘The West needs people’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Trump sues IRS for $10B over tax record leaksSpeed Read The president is claiming ‘reputational and financial harm’ from leaks of his tax information between 2018 and 2020
-
Trump, Senate Democrats reach DHS funding dealSpeed Read The deal will fund most of the government through September and the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks
-
Fed holds rates steady, bucking Trump pressureSpeed Read The Federal Reserve voted to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged
-
Judge slams ICE violations amid growing backlashSpeed Read ‘ICE is not a law unto itself,’ said a federal judge after the agency violated at least 96 court orders
-
Rep. Ilhan Omar attacked with unknown liquidSpeed Read This ‘small agitator isn’t going to intimidate me from doing my work’
-
Democrats pledge Noem impeachment if not firedSpeed Read Trump is publicly defending the Homeland Security secretary
-
The billionaires’ wealth tax: a catastrophe for California?Talking Point Peter Thiel and Larry Page preparing to change state residency
-
Hegseth moves to demote Sen. Kelly over videospeed read Retired Navy fighter pilot Mark Kelly appeared in a video reminding military service members that they can ‘refuse illegal orders’
