Here's How the Government Managed to Lose Track of 1,500 Migrant Children

[babylonsister]

Here’s How the Government Managed to Lose Track of 1,500 Migrant Children
The problem is getting “even more disturbing” under Trump, says an expert on immigrant detention.

Noah Lanard
May. 25, 2018 3:00 PM


At a Senate hearing last month, Steven Wagner told legislators that the refugee resettlement office he oversees had lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children. In Wagner’s words, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) was “unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts” of 1,475 children between October and December. The admission raised an obvious question: How do you lose 1,500 kids?

The answer to that question is even more important now that the Trump administration is seeking to criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the US-Mexico border, including parents. The policy is likely to separate thousands of families who arrive at the border by placing parents into the criminal justice system. Without their parents, children will be placed into the custody of ORR.

The agency will then work to find the children sponsors—ideally close relatives—who can take care of them while their parents are prosecuted. The agency is already responsible for finding sponsors—often parents who came before their children—for minors who arrive at the border alone. At the April hearing, Wagner said that 80 percent of the sponsors ORR was able to reach late last year were still hosting the children placed with them. Most of the other minors could not be located, although some were determined to have moved in with non-sponsors, run away, or been deported.

I interviewed Michelle Brané, the director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission and a leading expert on immigration detention and the ORR, about how the agency loses track of children and why the Trump administration’s policies could make the problem worse.

What does it mean when ORR loses track of a child?

The short answer to that is that we don’t know. Once a child is released to a parent or a sponsor—and very often a sponsor is somebody who is not in any way related to the child—ORR does very little to no follow-up. ORR’s position is that they no longer have any responsibility for that child. In most cases, they will do a follow-up phone call to check in. If there is no answer or if there is a problem that is uncovered by that phone call, I think they said [at the hearing] they may call child protective services. But other than that they don’t do anything. As a result, they have numerous cases where they have identified that that child is either no longer in that house or not reachable, but they have done nothing to follow up.

Children may have moved—they may have gone to live with another family member—and things may be OK. Or there have been cases where these children end up in the hands of traffickers. So it is possible that some of those [children] could be in very dangerous and vulnerable situations.
more...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/05/heres-how-the-government-managed-to-lose-track-of-1500-migrant-children/

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Easy to explain: no organization, no plan, no morals.

The kids could have been TEMPORARILY placed with Child Protection of each state with a REGISTERED foster family being monitored by CP caseworkers.

But they weren't.

[shraby]

2. It's abominable. The animals in the animal shelter are tracked better and people who get them

are scrutinized before the animals are released to them.

These are PEOPLE we are talking about who are treated worse than animals in a shelter.
Heads should roll over this.

[mercuryblues]

4. Better tracked

Hell, I couldn't adopt from our local shelter because I didn't have a fence around my 3 acre property, on a dead end.

I can't adopt a dog, but I could probably go into an ICE facility and come out with a human being.

[Iggo]

3. They don't care. That's how. (n/t)

[politicaljunkie41910]

5. "ORR's position is that they no longer have any responsibility for that child." This is bullshit.

Is there any way the Democratic Party can file a Class Action Lawsuit against the Trump Administration? We know that Trump doesn't give a damn about these children and their reunification with their parents, but certainly there is something we can do as a Party.

[grantcart]

6. This article states that 80% are with family members. The Brookings institute states 90%

What the writer doesn't appear to understand is that these UNACCOMPANIED MINORS (not the accompanied minors that are being separated from their parents now) were mostly from Honduras and El Salvador and placed with relatives who had legal status.

Trump has removed their legal status and their is no longer any reason for them to cooperate with authorities.

There aren't 1500 "missing" children, there are instead 320,000 previously legal migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Haiti who lost their legal TPS status under Trump and are now hiding.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210658852