Statement: HHS custody of unaccompanied minors
We are concerned by the ongoing crisis involving unaccompanied minors in HHS custody.
Though the Biden administration successfully mitigated an unprecedented border surge with limited resources, reducing the number of children detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the work is not finished. Thousands of unaccompanied minors are still awaiting release to family members and sponsors in HHS facilities. These facilities are intended to be an improvement compared with previous CBP detainment facilities, providing recreation, classroom education, and mental and medical health services. However, the administration has cut corners in order to quickly expand these facilities’ capacity, reducing the quality of services. Now we are seeing the consequences of not properly building out these facilities, as reports of poor conditions persist including COVID outbreaks, poor medical treatment, undercooked food, lice, and more. As a result, many of the minors living in these facilities are suffering from severe mental health problems.
We urge President Biden to direct more resources to foster and refugee organizations, releasing the children to a safe and healthy environment as soon as possible. Allowing these conditions to linger is unacceptable. Now that the surge at the border has subsided, the administration must enact tougher oversight procedures in these facilities to prevent inhumane conditions from arising in the future.
In addition, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Vice President Kamala Harris have both made worrying recent anti-immigration comments, expressing that migrants should not come to the US and will be turned away or sent elsewhere if they do. Such comments cut against core American values. The Neoliberal Project believes that America was built by immigration and must continue to be fundamentally open and welcoming to immigrants, and that America’s basic message to migrants should never be “Do not come, you will be turned away”.
The pressure from seasonal border crossing surges is a symptom of our broken immigration system. Until Congress and the Biden Administration can pass comprehensive immigration reform that dramatically increases the number of immigrants allowed into the US each year, provides a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants who are currently in the US, and removes the incentives for families to make the difficult decision to send their children unaccompanied to the US instead of immigrating to the US as a family, these crises will continue for the foreseeable future.
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Media Contact: Colin Mortimer; colin@cnliberalism.org