"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.
More than 4,000 of the 10,100 "unaccompanied" children currently in ORR custody have been designated Category 4 cases, meaning they have no identified sponsor to host them in the U.S., ORR director Jonathan Hayes told CBS News in June. If they aren't released to a suitable sponsor by their 18th birthday, the migrant children are handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, usually a precursor to deportation.
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."
Subscribe to 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."
-
Denmark's 'pornographic' mermaid statue is in hot waterUnder the Radar Town will reportedly remove voluptuous Big Mermaid, despite statue being 'arguably a bit less naked' than Copenhagen monument the Little Mermaid
-
August 10 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday's political cartoons include a global plastics problem, GOP enthusiasm over tariffs, and more
-
5 thin-skinned cartoons about shooting the messengerCartoons Artists take on unfavorable weather, a look in the mirror, and more
-
Trump officials reinstating 2 Confederate monumentsSpeed Read The administration has plans to 'restore Confederate names and symbols' discarded in the wake of George Floyd's 2020 murder
-
Trump nominates Powell critic for vacant Fed seatspeed read Stephen Miran, the chair of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers and a fellow critic of Fed chair Jerome Powell, has been nominated to fill a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
-
ICE scraps age limits amid hiring pushSpeed Read Anyone 18 or older can now apply to be an ICE agent
-
Trump's global tariffs take effect, with new additionsSpeed Read Tariffs on more than 90 US trading partners went into effect, escalating the global trade war
-
House committee subpoenas Epstein filesSpeed Read The House Oversight Committee has issued a subpoena to the Justice Department for its Jeffrey Epstein files with an Aug. 19 deadline
-
India rejects Trump threat over Russian oilSpeed Read The president said he would raise tariffs on India for buying and selling Russian oil
-
NY's Hochul vows response to Texas gerrymanderSpeed Read Gov. Kathy Hochul has promised to play ball with redistricting that favors the Democrats
-
Texas Democrats exit state to block redistricting voteSpeed Read More than 51 legislators fled the state in protest of the GOP's plan to redraw congressional districts
